Last Saturday, seen the start of the Ulster U16 Football competition – The Buncrana Cup. The format of the competition sees the 9 Ulster counties divided into 3 groups, with the top team in each group qualifying for the Finals weekend, which takes place in August. This year Monaghan were drawn against Derry and Cavan. Monaghan were lucky enough to have home advantage for their group this year which seen both the Derry and Cavan teams arrive bright and early on Saturday morning to the Monaghan Training Grounds in Cloghan for the first day of the Buncrana Cup.
As defending champions, Monaghan had high hopes that they could continue to the set the standard at this level in Ulster. In preparation for the blitz, the team completed a number of challenge matches and trained hard leading up to the blitz and things were looking good that they could go on and qualify directly for the Buncrana Cup finals weekend. Monaghan were dealt a blow before the competition even got up and going with a number of their players picking up injuries in the week leading up the game. First up was a game against Derry. Conditions for the day, were not the greatest with a strong wind and rain on the menu. In the first half Monaghan had to play into the strong wind. Monaghan got off to a good start by registering the first score of the game but Derry proceeded to dominate the next seven/ eight minutes scoring a goal and a number of points. To add to Monaghan’s problems, two key players in the Monaghan defence Craig Callan and Ryan O’Toole had to leave the field of play due to two head injuries. It took Monaghan a while to get themselves re-organised and Derry took full advantage of this scoring a further two goals and a number of points. Monaghan battled hard towards the end of the first half to try and claw back some of the Derry lead and ended up going into the half time break 5 points down. A further ankle injury to Monaghan’s full forward Andrew Woods, just before half time, added to Monaghan’s problems but with the wind on their backs for the second half, there was still a good belief, Monaghan could get back into the game.
In the second half, you couldn’t question Monaghan commitment, attitude and work rate to get back into the game but a few mistakes, poor decision making and shot selection meant that Monaghan were not able to get the scores on the board that would ultimately get them back into the game. As Monaghan pushed on, Derry caught them on the counter attack and began to stretch their lead. In the end Derry ran out worthy winners on a score line of 3-08 to 1-06. Aaron McGee (full back), James McCahey (half back) had good performances, while up front Kieran Marron and Tiernan Duffy worked hard.
In the second game, Monaghan came up against a weak Cavan team, who have their eyes on other competitions but Monaghan still had to produce a good performance to get the win. The players learnt from their mistakes in the first game, cutting out their mistakes, playing a nice brand of football, with their support play off the shoulder particularly good on the eye. Monaghan dominated for beginning to end running out comfortable winners on a score line of 2-14 to 1-04. Tiernan McSkean had a strong performance in the defence, while Ryan O’Neill has solid around the middle of the field, with Pauric O’Brien leading to the line to good effect up front. On top of the that it was good to see Darren Geoghegan back playing in the white and blue of Monaghan after a long term injury.
Monaghan have a second shot of qualifying for the Buncrana Cup finals weekend, when they will be playing against the other counties who didn’t qualify for the finals weekend already. This will take place in July, so if the players continue to progress and develop their skills, there is no doubt they will stand a good chance of qualifying for the Buncrana Cup finals weekend. Finally, we wish a speedy recovery to the three lads who picked up the injuries over the weekend and it will be no time at all until we see you back out playing with your clubs over the coming weeks.
