News

Heavy Defeat for Minors

November 8, 2018

Edenderry……1-05
Rhode………..9-13

An extremely under strength Edenderry team were destroyed by Rhode on Friday night last Sept 4th in Edenderry. The makeshift team which featured only 4 SENIOR minors, Dan Moloney, Mark Young, Shane Forde, Conor Brereton and a few u15 players were easily second best to a very strong, well prepared Rhode team. This year has been a struggle for the 2 in a row finalists after anything up to 9 players walked out on the team for various reasons, some still unknown to the management. In fact only one player actually notified the management that he was didn’t want to play anymore the rest just refused to answer their phones.

Rhode started the game with the aid of the breeze and at a high tempo and after 15 minutes led 4-2 to no score. Edenderry were simply out muscled and outplayed and were never going to recover. Mark young scored the only point of the first half for Edenderry but the half time score read a very grim 7-8 to 0-01.

In the second half Edenderry battled very hard and all their players really stood up to be counted. Edenderry got a goal through Shane Forde and he later tagged on a couple of points. All in all this was a very sad day for Edenderry GAA that they could barely field a team against their fiercest rivals and had to rely heavily on the u15’s and u16’s to make up the team. With County Minor Derek Kelly unavailable this year through illness the management knew the players were going to have to work extra hard but most of them were unwilling to do so. Despite the lack of effort in training from some players they had a great start to the season winning their opening two games. However a defeat in their third game saw a mass exodus from the squad as some lads were not prepared to put in the work. And more alarmingly DURING the Clara game another crop of lads walked out. Next up was Ballycumber and again for some it would be the last time they were seen after another defeat. Rhode provided the next test for the minors and they had just 16 players, three of which are only 14. The fact that the minors struggled to field a team in some games is disgraceful enough, but against your near neighbours it’s totally unacceptable.

This bizarre type of behaviour will strongly have to be addressed by the club and surely it can’t be allowed it to continue. Another worrying factor for the clubs future is that some of these players who have walked out on their team have been allowed to continue playing adult Hurling and Football.

It’s time these people got the message that the coaxing days are over.

The management would like to thank the 16 players who played, and despite being well beaten they gave it their all and did the Club proud.

Team: Ciaran Cummins; Shane Steel, Shane Cronin, Gary Blong; Cian Lawton, James Mackey, Andrew Forde; Daniel Moloney, Daniel Nolan; Shane Forde, Conor Brereton, Peter O’Neill; Aaron O’Connell, Mark Young, Daniel Ryan.

Substitute: Sean Moriarty.

Referee: Con Costello.