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Mike O’Halloran saw Causeway scrape past Crotta O’Neills in a Kerry SHC quarter-final game played in appalling conditions at Austin Stack Park…
Causeway 0-14
Crotta 0-13
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How Crotta must regret their wasteful use of the long ball where they presented their inside forwards with little chance of winning the ball.
The dreadful conditions did little for quality hurling, but Crotta to their credit outworked the county champions and had a chance at the end to bring the game to extra time, but t was not to be as Shane Nolan’s free went to the left and wide.
How Crotta must rue the loss of Barry O’Mahony — if he was on last night I have no doubt that Crotta would be in the semi-final.
Continued below…
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Causeway led at half-time, eight points to five. The ball was like a bar of soap and at some stages the hurley flew out of players hands.
Shane Nolan with two points and Sean O’Donoghue increased Crotta’s total to eight, then came three points in a row for Causeway from Joe Diggins, Colum Harty and Billy Lyons.
The Causeway panel. Photo by Mike O’Halloran
It looked like Causeway might run out handy winners, but back came Crotta with three unanswered points from Cillian Trant, Darragh Kennelly and and James Sheehan to reduce the margin to one with 20 minutes gone in the second half.
Joe Diggins and Dan Goggin pushed to margin out to three points, 0-14 to 0-11.
Shane Nolan and Darragh Kennelly added a point each and with 30 minutes on the clock, Shane Nolan had a point chance from a free on his own sixty five to bring the game to extra time, but it wasn’t to be — he was wide on the left. So Causeway go on to the semi-final where they will meet Ballyduff.
The Crotta O’Neills panel. Photo by Mike O’Halloran
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