End of the road for brave St Ultan"s

THOSE looking to pinpoint when it all started to unravel for St Ultan"s in this Leinster IFC final at Abbeyleix on Sunday are not short of options. They can look at the goal Ballyroan Abbey"s Michael Tierney netted early on that gave his side a perfect start. They can highlight the red card shown to Cian Rennicks on the stroke of half-time or the dismissal of Declan Galligan midway through the second-half that turned a difficult assignment into mission impossible. St Ultan"s, as they have been doing all year, gave a good account of themselves, but ultimately fell short of what was required to add the provincial crown to the Meath IFC title they already bagged this year. The Meath side showed time and again, during a magical 2008, that when the chips were down they are well capable of grinding out a result. On this occasion little went their way and for the second time in two years they lost out to a Laois side in a provincial decider with this setback added to the defeat by Park Rathiniska in the Leinster JFC decider in 2007. At no stage in this game did St Ultan"s take the lead. They trailed by just one point, 0-4 to 1-2, at the interval and the dismissals of Rennicks and Galligan scuppered any hopes they had of pushing on to win. Rennicks saw red for a raised elbow while Galligan was sent packing after an incident that left a Ballyroan Abbey player sprawled on the ground. Ballyroan Abbey are a big, physical side and those qualities provided the platform for them to go on and clinch the title on Sunday. They also have the talented Tierney who the club brought back from Hong Kong twice this year for games. Lining out alongside Tierney in the full-forward line was Scott Conroy and between them the two players racked up 2-4 of their team"s total. Jason Bennett was the man who had the task of keeping a close watch on Tierney and he did a good job, restricting the pacy, skilful forward to just a goal. Not a bad day"s work considering the manner in which Tierney had ransacked defences in previous outings. There were concerns before the throw-in about the Abbeyleix pitch - if it was playable? The ground was very hard from the previous night"s frost, but the green light flashed and from the start the home side put their stamp on proceedings. Throughout the game Ballyroan Abbey were capable of striking at lightning speed and it was from one of those moves that Tierney took a pass from Conroy before blasting high to the net on 11 minutes to put the Laois side 1-1 to 0-0 in front. During a rocky opening quarter St Ultan"s appeared tentative in their overall play and lacking that cutting edge in front of the posts. An indication of how long it took for St Ultan"s to get into the game could be seen in the way they didn"t register their opening point until the 18th minute when Kevin Galligan passed to Rennicks who slotted between the posts. That score heralded the best spell of the game for St Ultan"s with Brian Galligan polishing off some adventurous play with one superb point from play and another from a well-directed free. Eugene Brady tagged on another point from play late in the opening half to give the St Ultan"s supporters in the crowd of 1,200 or so real reasons to be hopeful. Then Rennicks was sent off and that was a sign of worse to come. The tactics employed by St Ultan"s included the players massing back in front of the posts to shore up their defence when needed before pushing forward when the opportunity presented itself. It is a strategy that requires high energy levels from the players and St Ultan"s were not found wanting in this respect. Brian Galligan was one of those who ran miles on the sticky surface. He wore the number 15 jersey yet roamed all over. Brian Galligan was one of those who pointed for St Ultan"s in the second-half with Brady also twice splitting the posts from placed balls. The only score from play that St Ultan"s could muster after the break was a late effort from Daryl McLoughlin. Time and again St Ultan"s put together good passing moves that lacked a killer touch to expose any chink in the Ballyroan Abbey defence. A perfect example of this came on 26 minutes when Brian Mulroe, Kevin Galligan, Brian Galligan, Ciaran Rogers and Alan Martin were all involved in a fine passing move that ended when Niall Galligan, who picked up a yellow card for a high tackle, crossed into the square. Unfortunately for St Ultan"s, there was nobody there to take advantage and yet another move petered out. St Ultan"s Neil Burke was by far the busier of the two netminders and he made one fine save just after the interval to push away a goal-bound shot from Padraig McMahon. There was no doubt that Ballyroan Abbey deserved their win on the overall balance of play. Discipline cost St Ultan"s dearly, but other factors contributed to their defeat which brought to an end a great adventure - and a great year. Ballyroan Abbey - G Scully; N Wallace, E Kearns, E O"Brien; J Keegan, R McEvoy, P McMahon; A Burnell (0-1), D Phelan; J Madigan (0-2), D Donohue (0-1), M Tierney (1-0); T Bergin, S Conroy (1-4), E McDonald. Subs - C Lalor for Donohue A O"Bourke for McEvoy. St Ultan"s - N Burke; C Lynch, D Galligan, J Bennett; D Mallon, A Martin, T Coyne; B Mulroe, K Galligan; G Gorman, P Murray, K Rogers; E Brady (0-3), C Rennicks (0-1), B Galligan (0-3). Subs - N Galligan for Coyne, 30 minutes; G Rennicks for Rogers 39m; C Rogers for Mallon 55m. D McLoughlin (0-1) for Gorman 53m. Referee - Paul Finnegan (Louth).