Loughrea suffer as ‘blueprint’ gets torn apart

DURING times of crisis in the television series Blackadder, Baldrick could always be relied upon to come up with a cunning plan.

Loughrea needed one of Baldrick’s blueprints if they were to overcome the more skilful Ballyhale Shamrocks in Saturday’s club final. Loughrea needed to play a high-tempo game, to reduce the space and use disciplined, aggressive tackling, and to run at the Ballyhale defence from deep. They needed to plunder some scores through skilful creativity — or through frees by forcing the defence to foul.

This blueprint was in existence already to some extent — not in Badrick’s memoirs, but from Toomevara’s efforts in the semi-final game against Ballyhale.