St. Enda’s 3-9 Dungannon 0-5
Another little bit of hurling history was created today by the club when for the first time in 33 years, our U14 hurlers captured the Tyrone Grade 1 Hurling League title following a victory over the recent kingpins of Tyrone hurling, Dungannon Eoghain Ruadh.
The St. Enda’s boys have had an impressive league season in 2024 and having already defeated the East Tyrone boys in the earlier stages of the league, they knew they would have a tough battle against the champions in today’s league playoff played at Killyclogher.
Despite dominating much of the outfield play, the St. Enda’s boys showed an abundance of nerves and struggled to make their dominance show on the scoreboard. In a low scoring first half, they failed to hit the mark and led by just 0-4 to 0-3 at half time.
Despite hitting the net early in the second half, the St. Enda’s boys sustained a blow when reduced to 14 players following a harsh red card, but eventually they regained their composure and managed to pick off some great scores.
Although they missed a considerable number of further opportunities, they eventually held out to score a deserving 2-9 to 0-5 victory to capture the league title first time since 1991.
On that occasion 33 years ago, current team mentor Kevin Cunningham was part of the winning panel who secured the League and Feile double that year. Congratulations to Kevin, Declan McGirr, Con Cunningham and Donagh O’Reilly who have done tremendous work in developing this team who are showing the signs of being the best in the club for many years.
The boys now have a another important test coming up when they play Naomh Colum Cille in the Championship decider in a the next few weeks. Let’s hope the very large support who came out to Ballinamullan today will get behind the boys again as they aim to capture the double.
For the record the last winning League team of 1991 was as follows – Paul Martin, Con Smith, Michael O’Neill, Simon Johnston, Stephen Taggart, Rory Mullan, Niall McLaren, Martin McCusker, Barry Loughran, Shane Loughran, Eamon Eanetta, Paul Butler, Malachy Caldwell, Ryan Broderick, David McKenna (c), Ciaran McDaid, Phillip Gallagher, Phillip Cunningham, Paul McAleer, Terry McGowan, Eunan Meyler, Conor McGirr, Paul McLaughlin, Kevin Cunningham.
