{"id":686,"date":"2014-11-26T11:55:59","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T11:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.munstersquash.com\/?p=686"},"modified":"2014-11-26T17:02:45","modified_gmt":"2014-11-26T17:02:45","slug":"division-1-sundays-well-v-celtic-november-25th-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.munstersquash.com\/index.php\/division-1-sundays-well-v-celtic-november-25th-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"Division 1: Sunday\u2019s Well V Celtic, November 25th 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday November 25th 2014,<\/strong>
\nIN CORK, on a brisk cold evening outdoors, Sunday’s Well played host to Celtic, where the winner would take the 1st Division team league title for the season 2014\/15.
\nCredit to Sunday’s Well as the courts were well warmed up before the games got going and looked well for the playoff showdown.<\/p>\n

The Waterford side were unfortunate to be missing their number 1 player, so the rest of the team all moved up 1 position on the night.
\nThat aside, the Waterford side were still capable of an upset.<\/p>\n

With Sunday’s Well holding the trump cards of the Munster Champion and the current Munster no. 2 in the top two positions, and Celtic playing without their no. 1, the odds were in favour of Sunday’s Well taking those two matches, so the pressure was firmly on\u00a0nos. 3, 4 and 5 to win it for either\u00a0team.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The first match to get underway was between the no. 5 players, David and Conor, on the court to the left. David started well and took the first two games by playing many low kills just over the timber, sending the ball flying hard and low to the back of the court. After two games it was requested to change the ball as it\u00a0didn’t seem to be bouncing upwards and was skidding a bit. The change of\u00a0ball at the interval seemed to make the difference as Conor fought back well to take the\u00a0next game\u00a0and take the 4th game to 10-all.
\nWith the\u00a0game\u00a0in the balance, David managed to\u00a0hold his nerve in the tie-breaker and eked out the win to give Sunday’s Well the first match of the evening.<\/p>\n

The no. 4 players, Ken (McCarthy) and Eoin, played at the same time on the court to the right, and thrilled the spectators with some tight rallies. The first two games were on a knife-edge, but Ken claimed the spoils from both games and found another gear in the 3rd to win 3 love.<\/p>\n

At that point, with 2 matches up, Sunday’s Well were in a commanding position needing only 1 more match to win the league.<\/p>\n

The next turn to play was for the no. 3 players, Ken (O’Keeffe) and Francis. It turned out to be the match of the evening going to a “5-setter”.
\nKen came out of the blocks a bit better and, though the early exchanges were a bit scrappy, he took full advantage and won the first game with points to spare.
\nThe 2nd game was a different story, as the game got into full flow, both players were clearly warmed up at this stage and with the added spice of having the league title hanging in the balance the lads pushed each other to the limit.
\nFrancis took the second game, and put doubts into the minds of the Cork-men. The come-back was still possible.
\nKen took the 3rd and Francis went up 10-8 in the 4th. Ken made a dramatic come-back, under great pressure two fantastic lengthy rallies ensued, one of which ended with\u00a0a peach of a cross-court lob from Ken out of the front right which climbed high up to the rafters to\u00a0finish precisely\u00a0in the back corner so tight that nobody could have dug it out. However Francis kicked on\u00a0and pulled it level to 2 games all and\u00a0set the match up to go to a 5th for a decider.
\nUnfortunately for Francis the valiant efforts in the previous games seemed to take their toll, and Ken pulled away in the end to win the 5th\u00a0and thus wrapped up the league for the Cork side.<\/p>\n

With the pressure now off, John was able to play a very controlled style to beat Mark 3 love, though Mark proved he is getting closer to the top players by getting up to 9-all in the first two games, and just a few unforced errors costing him in the end.<\/p>\n

Jaime and Ray were last on, and despite Ray claiming one\u00a0game by a big margin, the Munster Champion\u00a0looked in very good form in the other games and won the match to give Sunday’s Well a clean sweep.<\/p>\n

Sunday’s Well are this season’s Division 1 team league champions.
\nPictured below are the teams, and many thanks go to Greg O’Gorman and the Kilkenny Group for supplying the prizes.
\nAlso, many thanks to Sunday’s Well for hosting the presentation and laying on some very tasty finger food.<\/p>\n

The results from the matches were:<\/p>\n

Sunday’s Well 20\u00a0– 4\u00a0Celtic<\/strong>
\nJohn Hurley 3\u00a0– 0\u00a0Mark Furlong
\nJaime Balbuena 3 – 1\u00a0Ray Crowley
\nKen O’Keeffe\u00a03\u00a0– 2\u00a0Francis Power
\nKen McCarthy\u00a03\u00a0– 0\u00a0Eoin Fanning
\nDavid Ronayne 3\u00a0– 1\u00a0Conor O’Neill<\/p>\n

Mens League Table<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Team-photo<\/a>
Team-photo of Div 1 winning team for 2014\/15. Team from Left to Right: Greg O’Gorman, David Ronayne, Ken McCarthy, Jaime Balbuena, Ken O’Keeffe, James Doherty, John Hurley.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Team-photo<\/a>
Team-photo of Div 1 runners-up team for 2014\/15. Team from Left to Right: Conor O’Neill, Mark Furlong, Ray Crowley, Francis Power, Eoin Fanning (missing from photo: David Knox and Mark O’Regan).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday November 25th 2014, IN CORK, on a brisk cold evening outdoors, Sunday’s Well played host to Celtic, where the winner would take the 1st Division team league title for the season 2014\/15. Credit to Sunday’s Well as the courts …<\/p>\n

Division 1: Sunday\u2019s Well V Celtic, November 25th 2014<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":690,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,8,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-league","category-news","category-senior"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munstersquash.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munstersquash.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munstersquash.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munstersquash.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munstersquash.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=686"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.munstersquash.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":709,"href":"https:\/\/www.munstersquash.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/686\/revisions\/709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munstersquash.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.munstersquash.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munstersquash.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.munstersquash.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}