Bathshack Senior Hurling Championship Qualifier
O’Donoavan Rossa v McQuillan’s at Rossa Park
The Bathshack Antrim Senior Hurling Championship gets underway this evening at Rossa Park, Shaw’s Road when Rossa host Ballycastle in the first leg of the two-leg qualifier to decide who takes their place in round-robin section of the competition.
Just last week the two met in the league in Ballycastle with Rossa winning convincingly by 1-15 to 0-8 in cold and damp conditions. However it has to be said Ballycastle fielded badly understrength as eight of the team were on holiday and didn’t arrive home until the following day. Overall it was a good weekend for Rossa as two days later they travelled down the road to St Gall’s and beat their neighbours to take another vital step towards survival in Division 1.
Ballycastle were also in action on Sunday and with their holidaymakers back in harness they also had a good victory, beating Ballycran in a hard fought battle to all but secure their Division 1 status for next season.
Ciaran Clarke was the hero of the hour in that game and his return is a big factor going into tonight’s game at Rossa Park. Clarke came in to the forward line along with Dairmuid McShane, Ciaran Butler and Oisin McAuley to join Owen Kinney and Saul McCaughan and tonight’s line-up should be pretty similar.
Rossa were short a few players themselves in that game last week with Stephen Beattie and James Connolly among those absent. Connolly has been out for a few months now and is a big loss for the Shaw’s Road men. He is getting near a return but is unlikely to take any part in these two qualifying rounds. Their forward line will be very similar to the sides that brought them the double victory last weekend with Tiernan Murphy, Callum McVeigh, Seaghan Shannon, Declan Murphy, Thomas Morgan and Aidan Orchin likely to line up, and with the Gerard Walsh and Cricky McGuinness forming the spine of the defence they will be hard to beat.
Ballycastle will be looking to Matty Donnelly, TT Butler and Conor Boyd at the back and having Ryan McGarry back in goal is a major boost.
Rossa’s win in Ballycastle last week will probably make them favourites with the bookies, but it will be a lot tighter this time around. Get yourself along to Rossa Park for 7-30 and see the action.