O'Dempseys march on to their first Laois Senior Final in four years
The first of the senior semi-finals was battled out between Courtwood and O’Dempseys. O’Dempseys came into the game after a strong quarter final performance against League champions St Joesph’s. Cout=rtwood caused somewhat of a shock in the quarter finals when knocking out Graiguecullen. It promised to be a tasty affair.
After passing around for the opening two minutes, O Dempseys drew first blood. A well worked score that was finished off by centre back Robbie Kehoe. Courtwood hit back with a well worked score of their own courtesy of Sean O Flynn.
O’Dempseys 1-16
Courtwood 0-11
O Dempseys then kicked on with scores from Mark Barry and Matthew Finlay. Courtwoods defence were struggling to stop the creative play on show from the Dempsey forwards and after 10 minutes they found themselves 4 points behind the Killinard men.
Courtwood marksman Danny Luttrell got his first of the day on the fifteen-minute marker to reduce the deficit back to three. O Flynn then got his second score of the afternoon and was looking particularly dangerous when carrying the ball.
Two Barry points put four between the teams again. The county man was looking a real handful for the Courtwood full back line. Barry would also get the last score of the half. An inswinger with the left boot curled over lovely to give O’Dempseys a 6-point lead at halftime.
Dempseys 6 point lead was largely down to how ell the spine of their team was playing. Robbie Kehoe and Brian Nugent were working ferociously to keep things tidy around the half back line. Matthew Finlay was his usual energetic self and was causing hassle further up the pitch.
Mark Barry was having a glorious game though. He was a huge issue for the Courtwood defence and they were really struggling to contain him. In fairness to Courtwood went they did break forward they looked dangerous but O’Dempseys were coming out on top of most battles in that first half.
The opening score of the second half came under peculiar circumstances. A miss kicked pass by corner back Johnny Kelly drifted over Dempeys own goal posts. An own point ! This seemed to swing the early momentum in courtwoods favour and points from Cian Doyle and Niall Dunne brought the gap back to two points.
Matthew Finlay got O Dempseys first score of the second half after 10 minutes. Finlay then immediately backed it up with another score to increase the gap back to four points.
On the 50th minute marker Robbie Kehoe and Barry Donnelly clashed and both players hit the deck. The ref adjudicated that the larger part of the blame was on the courtwood corner forward Donnelly as he was showing red, Kehoe was shown a black for his part.
O Dempseys immediately got a bounce from this as Daithi Howlin broke through the Courtwood defence to score the games opening goal to give O Dempseys a 7 point lead. Matt “hatch” Finlay then extended the lead further with his 7th point of the game. The situation was looking quite ominous.
Courtwood lost their discipline and were putting in some bad off the ball hits that were rightly penalised. In the end O Dempseys ran out easy enough winners in the end with a scoreline of 1-16 to 0-9. The Killenard men march on to their first final since been defeated by Portlaoise in 2018. It wasn’t Courtwoods best performance of the year and their unexpected run in the championship comes to an end.