Blistering first half and goal from Oisin O'Hare sees Carrickcruppen book their place in the last four

A dominant first half display set Carrickcruppen on their way to victory over Grange and a spot in the last four of the Armagh IFC.

The Camlough men were electric in attack, and with Eoin Woods, Eoin Kane and Cathal O’Grady causing a world of problems for Grange, they raced out into an early 1-8 to 0-3 lead.

Grange kept battling – and brought Justin Kieran off the bench upon his return home from the United States – but they never cut more than four points into Carrickcruppen’s lead, and Barry Flynn’s side ran out deserving winners.

‘We’ll keep on knuckling down’

Team captain Jack Cunningham was one of his side’s stand-out performers, and he agreed that it was a hard fought win.

“Definitely, Grange are a good side,” he said.

“We knew that we were coming down here for a tough match and we weren’t taking it for granted. We had to keep our eye on the ball during the week and luckily enough, we scraped through.”

Cruppen’s rhythm going forward was outstanding in the opening period, and they cut through the Grange defence time and time again, benefitting from the midfield getting early kick-passes inside.

“We have been working on that in training,” said Cunningham.

“Boys have been working hard, tonight things were clicking and we were happy with that. We’re taking things week by week, and not only are we working hard in training, but boys are doing extra work outside of training too.

“You can’t ask for much more. We’re in a decent spot now, but we can’t take our eye off the ball after a win. We’ll keep on knuckling down and hopefully we can push on from here.”

Grange were always going to need a goal to pull themselves back into the game, but Carrickcruppen held firm, even under some late pressure, and Cunningham says that the team were happy to ‘see it out’.

“Obviously the end goal was to not lose the game; especially after having the lead for so long.

“We knew that they were going to lump high balls in, so we were happy to see it out. We scraped through despite an average enough second half performance.

“Whenever you get to this stage of the year, it is always going to be a good team who you are looking at, so we’ll see who we get and take it from there.”

Electric first half

The sides traded early scores, with two for Odhran Rafferty cancelled out by Cathal O’Grady and Ben Matthews. Cruppen then reeled off further scores through Tiarnan O’Hare, Matthews again and a Woods free, before Ethan Rafferty converted from a free for Grange – their first of a remarkable 10 points from dead balls.

However, then came the only goal of the game on 11 minutes when Cruppen worked the ball out to the left, where marauding defender Oisin O’Hare had made a run. He received possession and made no mistake, slotting the ball low into the bottom corner.

Cruppen continued their dominance and Grange couldn’t live with them at this phase of the game, and scores from Kane, Woods and Aaron Anderson had them a comfortable eight points ahead.

Grange finished the half by scoring four of the final six points to stay in touching distance, with Daire Mallon converting two frees, Ethan Rafferty converting one, and substitute Kieran finding the target, whilst Kane and O’Grady closed out the half’s scoring for Carrickcruppen.

Cruppen see it out

In the second half it was a case of ‘you score, I score’, as seemingly every time Grange found the target, the Camlough men had a response.

An Ethan Rafferty free was answered by O’Grady, and a Daire Mallon free was answered by Woods and Tiarnan O’Hare. Grange converted two more frees in quick succession, with one for Rafferty and one for Mallon but again Cruppen had response – this time via Woods.

In the dying stages, Grange pulled it back to a four-point game with two more frees, again one for Mallon and one for Rafferty, but Kane scored the most crucial point of the day – and certainly the best – as he steadied the ship with an outrageous outside-of-the-boot score from his right foot from the left side-line.

Grange’s Neil Fox closed out the scoring but it proved to be no more than a consolation.

Elsewhere in the Intermediate Championship, Wolfe Tones defeated Annaghmore 1-7 to 0-7.

MATCH STATS

Carrickcruppen: Miceal Browne; Ultan Quigley, Conall O’Callaghan, Ross Magee; Ross Flynn, Oisin O’Hare (1-0), Tiarnan O’Hare (0-2); Michael Hughes, Jack Cunningham; Adam Matthews, Cathal O’Grady (0-3), Eoin Woods (0-4, 2f, 1m); Eoin Kane (0-3, 1m), Aaron Anderson (0-1), Ben Matthews (0-2).

Subs: Conor Sloan for Anderson, David Kelly for O’Grady, Brian Watters for B Matthews, Christian Cunningham for Kane, Stephen Loughran for Magee.

Grange: David O’Hagan, Sean Doherty, Mark Toal, Neil Fox (0-1), Ronan Mallon, Shaun Toal, Eoin Hughes, Jake Toal, Odhran Rafferty (0-2), Brendan Rafferty, Miceal McKenna, Daire Mallon (0-5, 5f), Steven McArdle, Ben Toal, Ethan Rafferty (0-5, 5f).

Subs: Justin Kieran (0-1) for R Mallon, Conor Donnelly for McArdle, Oisin Campbell for B Rafferty, Colm Rafferty for B Toal.

Referee: Conor McGahan.