The girls finally got the result that their hard work and talent deserves. An early morning pitch inspection saw that the match went ahead in muddy but dry conditions. Noel Lavery did an excellent job, as usual, refereeing the game. He encouraged and helped the girls on both teams throughout.

The story of the first half was dominated by the Dobbyns; Hannah in goal and Ella up front. Hannah blocked everything that came her way and Ella scored an outstanding solo goal to give Mooncoin a deserved lead. Lucy Cuddihy was also outstanding up front and was unlucky not to get on the score sheet. The Cappoquin goalkeeper was very tall and almost had to duck to avoid hitting her head off the crossbar.

Our defense was resolute with Kayla showing why she is on the Waterford development squad, and Sadhbh and Grace clearing ball after ball. Grace managed to repeatedly win balls that weren’t even close to 50-50. Stephanie replaced Sadhbh after 20 minutes and Saoirse Drennan came on at half time; it is hard to belive that Stephanie and Saoirse played a camogie blitz before this game. Where do they get their energy?

Cappoquin pulled one back in the second half, but this seemed to spur Mooncoin on to even greater efforts. Saoirse Corcoran covered every blade of grass and Aoibhe Rees finally got the goal that she so richly deserved. On another day Aoibhe could have had 2 or 3 more. Aoibhinn O’Donnell replaced Hannah in goal and pulled off a number of great saves. Eventually though, Cappoquin pulled back a second goal and the worry was that we would not get the three points that we deserved.

In the end it was Saoirse Corcoran who popped up to put away an excellent pass from Aoibhe to give us the lead which we would not relinquish. Cappoquin had an excellent player in the middle of the field who, it turns out, plays inter-county camogie for the Waterford u14 team. Sophie Scahill tracked her from one end of the pitch. It really was a thing of beauty to see Sophie, Sadhbh, Saoirse Corcoran, Saoirse Drennan and others tackle this girl who was physically so much taller than them.

This was a great win for a great group of girls. Dee and Padraig.