St Martins through to Leinster hurling semi-final with win over Naas

Wexford champions St Martins are through to the Leinster Club Senior Hurling semi-final….

St Martins travelled to St Conleth’s Park in Newbridge on Sunday afternoon to take on Kildare Senior hurling champions, Naas.

St Martins would run out victorious on the day by five points, with the score-board reading 1-15 to 0-13 at the full-time whistle.

The Wexford champions will be delighted with their win. For this current crop of St Martins players, Sunday’s win was their first win in the Leinster championship, having lost out in 2017 and 2019 respectively.

Some of their players, including corner-back Philip Dempsey, Joe Barret, David Codd, and Rory O’Connor all performed excellently.

At half-time, St Martins led by 0-10 to 0-06. St Martins’ ace, Rory O’Connor, had scored eight points all coming from frees. The last free that he scored was right on the side-line of the ’21 and he looked unstoppable from the frees in the first half, not missing any. The other two points came from Jack Devereux and wing-forward Darren Codd.

In the inside forward line, Rory O’Connor was being tightly marked by two Naas defenders for most of the game. It allowed St Martins to utilise the sweeper to their own advantage. One of St Martins’ key defenders, Conor Firman, was handed man-marking duties for Naas sharpshooter, Jack Sheridan, and Firman did an excellent job on him.

The game’s highly physical aspect continued into the second-half and nothing was easy. Naas had somewhat of a purple patch in the first-quarter of the second-half, but they failed to utilise that purple patch by putting scores over the bar. They did, however, manage to get the game back to two points – a moment in the game that annoyed the St Martins’ management team and supporters, incensing St Martins selector Willie Cleary who was handed a yellow card by the referee.

Darren Codd had placed a ball over the bar, but it was waved wide by the umpires before Naas went directly up the pitch to pop a point between the posts.

Rory’s pinpoint accuracy from frees would not continue in the second-half. He missed three scorable opportunities from placed balls in the second-half, encouraging the St Martins selectors to introduce Joe Coleman on the 55th minute mark.

On the 57th minute mark, the game completely turned into St Martins’ favour. Jack O’Connor caught a ball on the 14 yard line, before he put his head down and attacked the goal. The Wexford inter-county hurler was took down and he was awarded a penalty by the referee. The big St Martins forward stepped up to take the penalty himself, burying the ball into the top corner and not giving the Naas goalkeeper a chance whatsoever.

Although it wasn’t a high-scoring game, it was highly competitive, very physical, and an excellent game to watch for mid-November hurling.

The only minor worry from a St Martins perspective was the substitute of Joe O’Connor. O’Connor was named at centre-back and was doing quite well, but he was taken off just after the 40th minute mark. Whether this was a tactical substitution because he was on a yellow card, or whether the substitution was due to a recurring injury that kept him out of 62 minutes of the Wexford SHC final, remains to be seen.

The win for St Martins has now set up a semi-final clash against either the Dublin champions or the Laois champions. The Dublin champions are Na Fianna, while the Laois champions are Clough Ballacolla. At the time of writing, that game is currently underway. (Update: Na Fianna won).

The semi-finals will be played the following week on November 24th.

The last time a Wexford team won the Leinster Club championship was in 2015 when Oulart-The Ballagh were crowned champions when they defeated Dublin champions, Cuala.

This Leinster Championship is wide open. There are no Cuala, no Ballyhale, no O’Loughlin Gaels and on Saturday – Kilkenny champions Thomastown were defeated by the Westmeath champions, Castletown. All remaining teams will fancy their chances of getting their hands on silverware – and why not?

All the scorers

Scorers for St Martins: Rory O’Connor 0-11 (11 frees), Jack O’Connor 1-0 (penalty), Jack Devereux 0-1, Kyle Firman 0-1, Darren Codd 0-1, Joe Coleman 0-1 (free).

Scorers for Naas: Jack Sheridan 0-8 (8 frees), Cian Boran 0-2, Simon Leacy 0-1, Harry Carroll 0-1, Ferran O’Suillivan 0-1.