Antrim hurlers win ninth consecutive Ulster title
Thursday, 1 July 2010
The Antrim team who beat Down in the Ulster Senior Hurling final at Casement Park on Sunday to clinch their ninth title on the trot.
ULSTER senior hurling championship medals have become two a penny for Antrim hurlers.
As they picked up the Liam Harvey cup for a ninth consecutive time some of their more experienced players must be wondering about storage space as their haul gets bigger and bigger.
For many of the players Ulster medals have become much easier to pick up than County championship ones and certainly the one they collected at Casement Park on Sunday was the easiest they will ever get.
They simply blew Down away and handed out one of the biggest drubbings any team has ever suffered at this level. It ended 4-22 to 1-12, a nineteen point annihilation.
There was only one side in it from start to finish. Manager Dinny Cahill certainly had his charges well tuned into this game and it must give the side an added boost as they prepare to take on Laois in this Sundays qualifier.
A Liam Watson goal after fourteen minutes, when he was well positioned to whack home a P.J.O'Connell effort which came off the crossbar, was a score which had a marked effect on the Down side although they already trailed by seven points. They simply could not get into the game as Antrim scored from here, there and everywhere.
Liam Watson got the show on the road with an opening minute point with Shane McNaughton repeating the process when he returned the puck out.
McNaughton was again in action in the third minute with Watson again on the mark in six. And so it continued, Ciaran Herron in action in seven, Neil McManus in nine and Watson a minute later as Down struggled big time. When Watson found the net and Johnny Campbell and Karl McKeegan added further points the Down men would have been relieved had Casement Park opened up and swallowed them. Yes, it was as bad as that.
Their first point came from a Paul Braniff free in the eighteenth minute and they managed just two more, from Johnny McCusker and Eoin Clarke before the break.
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