40x20 Junior doubles county semi-final
A very entertaining 40x20 junior doubles county semi-final in St. Coman's last Wednesday saw Curraboy's Philip O'Connor and Paul Kelly overcome St. Coman's pair Oisin Naughton and Darren Beatty.
The first was a ding-dong affair as the ageless Naughton covered every inch of the court in an effort to thwart the aggressive Curraghboy lads.
Beatty chipped in with his usual spectacular kills but the better teamwork was always appeared from the south Roscommon pair. The biggest gap in scores came as Oisin served for the game at 20-16, but could only watch as the Curragboy team took them out immediately and ruthlessly finished the game off in one hand.
The second contained a lot of good handball similar to the first, but buoyed by their narrow first game win Philip and Paul always looked the more likely winners and so it proved as they finished up victorious in a tough encounter on a scoreline of 21-20, 21-12.
40x20 masters 'B' doubles county final
The Coggeran brothers John and David from Kilglass are the new 40x20 Masters 'B' doubles champions. That’s after beating St. Coman's Darragh 'Techno' O'Gara and Shane Naughton last Sunday.
Surprisingly, the Coggerans had never played together in competition before, but they looked like a well-oiled partnership throughout.
The two town lads play much more 60x30 than small court, but they gave a whole-hearted effort before going down to the more clinical Kilglass lads 21-10, 21-8.
40x20 junior 'C' doubles county final
St. Coman's Tom Killion and Sean Rafferty are the new 40x20 junior 'C' doubles county champions after defeating club mates Enda Kelly and Adrian Greally.
Both Enda and Adrian fared better in the singles event than their opposition, so probably would have been slight favourites going in and the first game seemed to bear that out as they won 21-15.
However, Tom and Sean dug deep in the second and turned things around to take the match to a tie-breaker by winning 21-12.
In the new format championship the tie-breaker is only up to 11, so a good start is half the battle and Tom and Sean started fast and ended up the right side of an 11-4 score-line.
