Trumera v Rathdowney-Errill
2020 Intermediate Hurling Championship Final in O’Moore Park at 7.30pm
Almost nine months after these sides qualified for the Laois intermediate hurling final, they will finally play the decider in O’Moore Park this evening.
This is Trumera’s first team against Rathdowney-Errill’s second team and a competition that the former have won twice in recent years.
But Trumera are not happy that this game is taking place tonight.
They say that two of their players are set to take exams in Accounting on June 23 and Design and Communication Graphics on June 24.
When Trumera became aware of their fixture date, they appealed to Laois GAA to change.
They wished to see the game put back to late July or early August and played around the same time as the senior and premier intermediate finals.
The matter came before Laois GAA’s Competitions Controls Committee recently but they rejected the request.
Looking back to last year, these two actually clashed on August 29 in the group stage.
Before that, Trumera won the first game that was played in Laois following the first Covid shutdown last year as they defeated Ballypickas 3-16 to 0-14.
Rathdowney-Errill enjoyed a 1-17 to 1-12 win over Clonad a few nights later and then defeated Trumera 2-22 to 2-15.
That meant that in order to reach the semi finals, Trumera needed to defeat Clonad in their final group game – which they did by 2-20 to 0-9.
The semi finals pitted Rathdowney-Errill against the second string of Borris-Kilcotton and they came out the right side of an eight goal thriller – 5-13 to 3-8.
Trumera faced Clough-Ballacolla’s second team in the other semi final where a Canice Coonan red card before hard time proved crucial as Trumera won 0-19 to 0-15.
Both sides have a mix of youth and experience in their ranks. Paddy Hosey, Geroid O’Neill, Adam Kirwan and Bryan Bredin are among their youngsters who played well last year.
Niall Sinnott, Dylan Lalor and captain Conor Madden, who previously played for Rathdowney-Errill, have all shone alongside the evergreen Cathal Brophy, Joey Coogan, Ronan Kavanagh and Paul McSpadden.
Rathdowney-Errill will definitely be without Enda Meagher who has gone travelling but they should have Liam ‘Fonzie’ O’Connell available to them.
Brian Campion gives considerable experience to the full back line while Ray Bowe, Eoin Bourke, and Paddy Hassett are all fine players.
A tight game is anticipated and we’ll have all the action as it happens on our Live Blog.
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