Westport 21

Creggs 19

Kevin Egan at the Sportsground

SOMEWHERE around the West of Ireland right now, there’s probably a newspaper report that would describe the dramatic scenes at the end of last Sunday’s Connacht Junior Cup final as bearing resemblance to the plot of a Hollywood movie.

If you travelled to the Sportsground to support Westport in their bid to win a first Junior Cup since 2015, that description might feel apt this week. However if you travelled in hope of watching Creggs end their 30-year drought in this famous  competition, the manner in which the Galway-Roscommon border club had their double dreams shattered felt almost Shakespearean; like a cruel tragedy where it wasn’t enough to simply plunge the knife into the tragic hero, but there also had to be a considerable element of irony, and of expectations being flipped on their head.

As newly-crowned league champions, Creggs went into this game as favourites, and that weight of expectation was only encumbered further by the firm astroturf surface and the relatively benign conditions (notwithstanding a first-half downpour, but 80 minutes of good weather in Galway is too much to expect in July, never mind March).

Their skill and craft, particularly in the back division, was expected to slice open the West Mayo side, who many expected to struggle in the latter stages of the contest. Instead, it fell to a hugely promising young back from Westport, 18-year-old full back Cormac Lyons, to strike in the fifth minute of stoppage time and cancel out what looked like a match-winning try and conversion from Shane Purcell just six minutes earlier.

That Creggs would have trouble coping with the sheer power of the Westport pack was no surprise, and for the opening 15 minutes, the club that has recently become known as “The Bulls” did everything they could to live up to that name.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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