Causeway can overcome St. Peter’s to earn another tilt at All-Ireland title

CAUSEWAY Comprehensive School are back on the All-Ireland Vocational schools SFC glory trail following last year’s semi-final defeat by Clara.

Tomorrow they play newcomers St. Peter’s (Dunboyne) in the semi-final in Nenagh and, with last year’s champions Clara out of the title race, the Kerry school will be fancied to reach what would be only their second final in this grade.

Coach Willie Dowling reports no injury worries and took the added precaution over the weekend of asking the county minor selectors not to play Jersey Houlihan and Barry Galvin in the Munster championship against Limerick.

“I believe St. Peter’s are a very big physical team, a typical Meath side who play it hard,” said Dowling. “It’s going to be hard for us to get a result, but we have the football and it remains to be seen if that will be good enough.

“We’ve contested something like six All-Ireland finals in both hurling and football and have yet to win one. This present football team is certainly good enough, but we’ll have to be on top of our game to beat Peter’s.”

These are exciting times for the Dunboyne school, which is only eight years in existence and very new to vocational schools football.

Team mentor Alan Mongey said none of his players had won anything up through the grades, which, he feels, is probably a good thing in that they will appreciate it all the more when they do finally win a title. “We have very little experience at this level, but having beaten Lucan, Athlone who put out the champions Clara, Maynooth and Tullow in the Leinster campaign, we are confident in our own ability to maintain our winning sequence.

“Any football team coming out of Kerry has to be respected, but have a couple of excellent players in Sean McGarrell, David Watters, John O’Connor, all current county minors, Tomas Clarke, Stephen McKenna and the towering figure of Jerry Gallagher who stands at 6’ 7”, and won’t have any fear of Causeway.”

Gallagher plays at full-forward and is, obviously, the ideal target man. Causeway’s outfield players will, therefore, have to cut off the supply to Gallagher if they are to reach their second final in three years.

Likewise the Dunboyne defence will have to be at its very best to keep Jersey Houlihan, Thomas Kearney, Michael Bowler and PJ O’Gorman at bay.

Causeway won their third provincial title in-a-row recently with a comfortable victory over St. Brogan’s, and a repeat of that performance would go a long way towards keeping their All-Ireland title hopes alive.

Meanwhile, on the Munster front, St. Brogan’s and Coachford clash in the J‘A’FC semi-final at Timoleague this afternoon (1.30) and the Bandon side will be favourites to reach the final and atone for the defeat of their seniors recently at the hands of Causeway.