Ballinderry take tenth title
Thursday, 9 October 2008
The Shamrocks of Ballinderry celebrate their 10th Senior Football triumph.
BALLINDERRY collected the Derry Senior Football Championship for the tenth time due to a strong second half performance in the weekend's match against against Slaughtneil, who were seeking their second victory in the competition.
In the opening 23 minutes Slaughtneil looked like the team who would come out on top but as Ballinderry the 2006 champions upped the ante Slaughtneil were pushed back more and for the most part lost their earlier fluency.
It had been a hard season going into this game for the losers who had two championship replays in just over a month and in the closing stages their play became more fragmented as their earlier endeavours caught up with them.
In an at times scrappy encounter Ballinderry showed their resilience to recover from a three point Slaughtneil scoring burst between the 21st and 25th minutes of the first half to cut the then 0-06 to 0-03 deficit to the minimum, 0-06 to 0-05, at half time, and then add a brace of points in the five minutes after the break to take a 0-07 to 0-06 advantage.
There was little to choose between the sides in terms of possession and opportunities from that to the end, the game delicately balanced at 0-08 each going into the final quarter. With Enda Muldoon becoming more dominant in the middle third of the pitch, and Raymond Wilkinson giving huge assistance in this sector, Ballinderry took the lead in the 47th minute and steadfastly resisted, and limited, Slaughtneil's options to the minimum for the remainder of the game.
The loss of a free deep in their own defence, and then the dismissal of Francis McEldowney, followed by the concession of a free at the 'throw in', and an ensuing point from the placed ball, copperfastened Ballinderry's grip on the game and they held on to win 0-10 to 0-8.
