*Photograph: Burren Eye Photography
LEAVING CERTIFICATE student Ellie Hanrahan kicked off her Mid-Term break in memorable fashion by producing a player of the game performance to help Kilmurry Ibrickane win the Clare senior ladies football championship for the first time.
Corner forward Ellie stepped up with 2-2 with both of her goals coming in the space of nine minutes in the opening half.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Ellie insisted it was a panel effort which got Kilmurry Ibrickane to the promised land. “It was some game in fairness, everyone just give it one hundred thousand percent and that is all we needed to get the result. With training the last couple of weeks it was our fitness that really got us over the line to stay ahead by a point or two, to hold the ball and have the composure to get over the line by two points, it was a performance by everyone that did it for us really”.
Inside the first eight minutes the sides were level twice but Ellie’s first goal on thirteen minutes following excellent work from Ciara Hickey, Ciara McCarthy and Chloe Moloney gave the West Clare side a three point lead.
“In our first couple of games this year we had bad starts and it would take us fifteen or twenty minutes to get into the game then we would by down by six or seven points which is hard to come back from, we’ve been working on that at training and that is what we did by getting a goal early in the game to put us up and we kept the lead for the whole game,” Ellie said.
She felt they showed the greater composure when the game was in the melting pot. “It was our composure in the end, we held the ball for three or four minutes when we knew they were only up by a point, we waited for the gap and we held the ball until we got a chance to get a score”.
Hanrahan added, “We knew it was going to be a tight game, we were never expecting to win by seven points, we knew it would be tight all the way through and we knew that from playing them in the league final which went all the way to free kicks, we even lost the first round of the championship to them so we knew how strong a side they are but we knew we also had the talent to win it if we could hold our composure at the end”.
Eigtheen year old Ellie has been on the Kilmurry Ibrickane panel for three years but this was her second year in a starting jersey. A Leaving Certificate student at St Joseph’s Spanish Point, she confirmed, “I’ve no school this week, I’ll be celebrating for the week”.
There was always a belief that Kilmurry Ibrickane were capable of winning the senior championship, she admitted. “We always had the players, we just never put in the work or never had the management, we had the two boys Niall and Patrick with us this year and they’ve been unreal, the last two years the work they have put in with us, we always had the players and the talent, we just never put in the work and that is what got it for us this year”.
