🏆 SENIOR A SEMI FINAL 

🥎 Oranmore Maree v St. Thomas's 

🕒 15.00 (3pm)
📍 Clarinbridge Pitch

📅 Saturday, 12th October 2024

Get you tickets HERE.
Athenry v Sarsfields at 13.00 (1pm)
Oranmore Maree v St. Thomas's 15.00 (3pm)

This Saturday at 3pm in Clarinbridge pitch, the Oranmore Maree Senior Camogie team take on St. Thomas’s in the Senior A County semi-final.

While it has been a rollercoaster of a campaign with a mixed bag of results in the group stages, the team has been bolstered by a combination of youth with minor players really stepping up to the mark, while the more experienced girls have shown brilliant leadership on the field. Captained by Christina Brennan with her co-captains Aisling Finn and Roisin Black, we have secured our 4th consecutive county semi-final spot.

Following Galway’s heart breaking loss in the All Ireland Final in August, the return of our four county players infused another level at training for the team, who were delighted for their teammates Rachael Hanniffy and Roisin Black on their All Star Nominations. Training for this panel started back in the cold, dark evenings in March so the hard work has been put in for several months under the watchful eye of the management team with Barry Leenane at the helm.

The championship kicked off on August 25th with round 1 against Davitts and a 4 point victory to get us up and running. The following week, in round 2 we were paired against our old rivals Sarsfields, having played the Galway champions in the last 3 county finals, so there is plenty of history between the two sides. On a lovely Saturday evening in Kilbeacanty pitch, we played extremely well and the former All Ireland champions scraped a two point victory with the final tally Sarsfields 1-13 Oranmore Maree 1-11.

The girls had a well earned weekend off  from matches before travelling to Killimor pitch to play Athenry on September 15th. Having picked up a few injuries the previous week, the Oranmore Maree girls knew Athenry were going to come out all guns blazing, and they ran out comfortable winners 2-13 to 0-07. With only a week to regroup and refocus, the Oranmore Maree team headed to Gort to meet Ardrahan in the final group game on September 21st. A great battle was had in a very competitive and lively fixture and when the full time whistle went and the scoreboard read 11 points each, the draw was enough to secure our quarter final spot.

So this leads us up nicely to last Friday night and a road trip to Clann na nGael pitch for our quarter final match v Mullagh. The panel as a whole showed great resolve with fantastic work rate of well-seasoned camogie players, with Ailish O’Reilly causing her usual amount of havoc for the Mullagh defence. A brilliant team effort  with top class performances by all the players on the pitch and those coming off the bench meant when the full time whistle was blown, the girls had secured their semi-final place with a victorious  score line of 0-14 to 0-09.

We haven’t met St. Thomas’s in a semi-final in recent years so this is an interesting pairing for our team. St Thomas's  topped Group 1 and qualified directly for the Semi final. In the group stages they had victories over Davitts and Ardrahan, only losing to Athenry by a point  in round 2 having struggled against Sarsfields in the opening round with a 1-19 to 1-07 loss, showing that they are not to be taken lightly in the knockout stages.

With momentum building ahead of this semi-final double header in Clarinbridge, Sarsfields and Athenry throw in at 1pm in the other semi-final,  we hope to see a good crowd in Clarinbridge to cheer on our Senior team.

We wish Barry, his backroom team and the players the very best of luck in their county semi-final.