Last year’s beaten league finalists Longford bowed out of this year’s Allianz National Hurling League Division 3B at the semi-final stage, as Leitrim came out on top by seven points, recording a 2-16 to 1-1-12 victory in Páirc Shane McGettigan in Drumshanbo.
Apart from a fifteen-minute purple patch that began at the start of the second-half, Leitrim dominated the majority of the contest and deservedly booked their place in next weeks’ final against table toppers Cavan.
Both sides were dramatically changed from last weeks’ dead rubber which Leitrim won by a single point, with Leitrim only starting four of last weeks’ starting fifteen, while Longford started just eight of the same players.
This was the second successive year that the teams met at the semi-final stage, with Longford comfortably winning by ten points with home advantage last year, but Leitrim made up for that disappointment with an excellent first half display that provided the platform for victory this time around.
Although Leitrim were the better team for most of the first half, Longford’s more accurate scoring rate had them ahead by four points to three after nineteen minutes. Longford only shot one wide in the half, while Leitrim fired six wides, hit the upright, and dropped some efforts short.
Gavin O’Hagan knocked over Leitrim’s first two scores in the opening three minutes, one from a free and one from play, while Paddy Lynam fired over a superb point for Longford from the left to open the visitors’ scoring, sandwiched between those the two O’Hagan scores.
The sides were level on four minutes when a superb Matthew Hawes block down and pass set-up Evan Tully, and he split the uprights on the spin.
Leitrim keeper Clement Cunniffe put the home side up by three points to two with a monster free from all of seventy-five metres out in the sixth minute, however, Cathal Mullane levelled for Longford two minutes later after receiving a brilliant pass from Reuben Murray despite Murray being surrounded by three Leitrim defenders.
Longford took the lead for the first and only time of the contest in the eighteenth minute when Lynam sent over a free from a central position from just inside his own half to put them ahead by four points to three.
Longford’s Karl Murray at full-back came up with some brilliant defensive plays and clearances, but Leitrim still rattled off 1-06 without reply, as the hosts came roaring back to lead by eight points, 1-09 to 0-04 by the twenty-sixth minute.
Tadhg Brannigan drew Leitrim level on nineteen minutes after good set-up play from Enda Moreton, and then Moreton gave the home side the lead with a point just a minute later, and sixty seconds later an O’Hagan free made it 0-06 to 0-04.
Joe Murray then scored 1-01 for Leitrim inside the next two minutes. He flicked over O’Hagan’s ball from the left, and then he latched onto a brilliant catch and puck forward from Beirne to blast the sliotar to the Longford net.
Suddenly, the hosts had opened up a six-point lead which was then increased to eight points after scores from Feeney and Brendan Delaney, the latter flicking over from a long Seán O’Riordan pass.
Longford halted the Leitrim onslaught when Mullane fired over a free, only for David McGovern to respond for the hosts.
The half ended with both Mullane and O’Hagan scoring two points for each side as Leitrim went in at the interval up by 1-12 to 0-07. It also ended with Longford Centre-half back David Buckley substituted through injury after a knock to his hip.
Adrian Moran’s charges needed a blistering start to the second-half if they were to have any chance of a comeback victory, and that is exactly what they produced, scoring 1-02 without reply in the opening eight minutes of the new half.
Mullane converted a free with Reuben Murray adding another point on forty minutes. The goal came three minutes later. A long-range free from Burke was dropping dangerously in the parallelogram, and Longford substitute Dan Crossan Jumped up for the sliotar with the Leitrim goalkeeper Cunniffe, and the ball ended up in the Leitrim net off Cunniffe for an own goal.
With Longford now back to within three points and Leitrim under serious pressure, the game was in the melting pot, but Feeney and James McNabola rallied their side by firing over the next two scores within a minute of each other to give them a five-point advantage.
Longford then reduced the arrears back to three with a brace of scores from Reuben Murray and Lynam.
The visitors created another two opportunities. Ronan Sheahan fired a goal attempt narrowly wide for Longford and Cathal Mullane’s thirty-yard effort on goal produced a good save from Leitrim keeper Cunniffe.
The ‘Blue and Gold’ finally ran out of steam and Leitrim got on top again, and when Joe Murray raised the green flag for his second goal on sixty-two minutes to increase the advantage back to six points, victory was finally secured.
It was a brilliant move for the goal that was aided by a bad Longford defensive error. Moreton started the move, he picked out McNabola, and although his pass was intercepted by a Longford defender, poor control of the ball allowed O’Riordan to pounce and retrieve possession, he laid the ball off to Joe Murray and he rattled the onion bag.
That gave Leitrim a 2-14 to 1-11 advantage, and they went eight points clear with further scores from O’Hagan and Stephen Goldrick before Longford’s Mullane fired over the final point of the match from a free.
Leitrim: Cunniffe (0-01,1f), Lenahan, McLoughlin, Clerkin, Feeney (0-02), Fitzgibbon, McGovern (0-01), Moreton (0-01), O’Hagan (0-06, 4f), Goldrick (0-01), Joe Murray (2-01), O’Riordain, Brannigan (0-01), Beirne, Delaney (0-01).
Substitutes: McNabola (0-01) for Delaney (half-time), Markem for Brannigan (58 minutes), Dervan for O’Riordan (66 minutes).
Longford: Burke, Casey, Karl Murray, Iarlaith Dolan, Quinn, Buckley, Allen, Flynn, Lynam (0-03, 1f), Reuben Murray (0-02), Mullane (0-06, 5f), Maher, Sheahan, Tully (0-01), Hawes.
Longford goal was an own goal by Cunniffe
Substitutes: Regan for Buckley (35 minutes plus two), Crossan for Maher (half-time).
Photo: Willie Donnellan