Ratoath sweep aside Gaels with wide margin victory

Ratoath racked up a massive tally of 3-32 on the way to comfortably beating Blackhall Gaels in round 3 of the Meath SHC

Ratoath 3-32

Blackhall Gaels 0-14

Ratoath got another victory on the board in the Meath SHC at Kilmessan with an impressive wide-margin win over Blackhall Gaels. Two five-minute spells of dominance in the first 20 minutes set Ratoath on their way to a certain victory.

After only 20 minutes of play, the scores stood at 2-11 to 0-3 in favour of Ratoath. The Gaels did improve in the last 10 minutes of the opening 30 and outscored Ratoath 0-6 to 0-2 in that period. However, Ratoath still held a commanding lead at half-time. A Gavin McGowan goal with five minutes remaining stretched Ratoath’s lead to 22 points.

Ratoath on the night needed a wide margin victory to keep pace with Kildalkey on score difference, hence the urgency among the Ratoath players to keep their feet on the necks of the Gaels. Once again Podge O’Hanrahan finished off the night top scorer for last year’s finalists with a fantastic tally of 1-12.

For the Gaels, it’s another disappointing evening as they fall to their third successive defeat. The only positive for Blackhall to take away really is that they now have the two big guns in the group, Ratoath and Kildalkey out of the way.

It was actually Blackhall Gaels who started the quickest and they registered the first point from a Dermot Carty free. The Gaels relied heavily on Carty throughout and he did end up finishing with a tally of 0-10.

Ratoath, for the second week in a row, were quite sluggish out of the blocks, hitting five wides before even registering a score. Full forward Sean Corbett opened the scoring for Ratoath and that score lit a spark in Ratoath. They very quickly hit 1-3 without reply. Corbett set up Podge O’Hanrahan for the opening goal in which the county star struck the Blackhall Gaels net with an over-the-head swipe of the hurl.

A second Ratoath purple patch came moments later when a goal courtesy of Cian Rogers proceeded a brace of points from O’Hanrahan along with scores from Liam Kelly and the McGowan brothers, Daithi and Gavin. Two five-minute purple patches had given Ratoath a 14-point lead after only 20 minutes.

Three Carty points along with two from Blackhall captain Stephen Morris made the scoreboard look somewhat more respectable at this relatively early stage. With the last puck of the half, Corbett sealed his second point and Ratoath went into the break with a 2-13 to 0-8 lead.

Ratoath showed no mercy in the early exchanges of the second-half as they outscored their opponents 0-7 to 0-1 within 10 minutes of the restart. Those seven points were made up of four O’Hanrahan points dotted in between scores from Gavin McGowan, Cian Rogers and Niall McLarnon.

Damien Carty, individually, tried to put some sort of a dent in the lead as he rattled off two quick points from play. Those points were immediately cancelled out though by Dathi McGowan and McLarnon

O’Hanrahan kept chipping away at the scoreboard with three further points before Gavin McGowan secured Ratoath’s third goal with five minutes remaining. Even in the closing stages, Ratoath were keen to keep racking up the scores. Two points from the eldest McGowan, Jack, were followed by another two from Rogers and corner-back Cian Kelly even got in on the action with the final score before Mark Reilly blew the full-time whistle.

Ratoath - Colm O’Riordan; Domhnall Rogers, Cormac Butler, Cian Kelly (0-1); Liam Kelly (0-1), Jack Lanigan, Niall Murphy; Padraig O’Hanrahan (1-12) seven frees, Niall McLarnon (0-2); Daithi McGowan (0-2), Cian Rogers (1-5), Jack McGowan (0-2); Gavin McGowan (1-4), Sean Corbett (0-2), Padraic Byrne. Subs – Darragh Kelly for Murphy HT, Ciaran O’Hanrahan (0-1) for P Byrne HT, Ronan Byrne for Corbett 49m, Sam Coughlan for McLarnon 22m.

Blackhall Gaels – David Farrell; Jack Gallagher, Tom Delany, Colm Fitzgerald; Tom Murphy, Conor Delany, Colm Whitty; Stephen Morris (0-2), Shane Whitty (0-1); Paul Kelly (0-1), Mark Nicholson, David Sheerin; Dermot Carty 0-10 six frees, Niall Mangan, Conor Burke. Subs – Eanna Walsh for Mangan 39m, Niall Mangan for Morris 42m.