Sars shine on Feile stage

LUCAN SARSFIELDS’ Under-14 football and ladies football teams both produced hugely impressive displays on the national stages, going deep in their respective Feile competitions last weekend.
The footballers got all the way to the Division 3 cup final only to lose out to London South by two points with the score finishing 2-2 to 0-6.
They topped their Division 3A group after scoring an impressive 64 points and conceding just 17 over the three games.
They produced their best performance of the tournament when making a 1-8 to 1-3 second-half comeback against An Ghaeltacht in the quarter-final, before beating Roscommon’s Boyle convincingly 2-9 to 0-5 in the semi-finals.
Manager James Duffy was proud of his team’s performance and believed on another day they would have left victorious. “We were very unlucky not to win the final because we had plenty of chances to score but just didn’t convert them. It was a close run thing but London came back at us in the second-half and got two goals, and we didn’t really recover from that.
Sarsfields led their opponents from across the pond at half-time with the score at 0-3 to 0-1 but the margin could have been a lot bigger if they had capitalised on their possession.
The second-half became a tit-for-tat affair with London South getting themselves back into the game shortly after the restart with a goal. Sarsfields came back towards the end but it wasn’t enough.
Duffy was proud of his players and revealed they were disappointed not to make it over the final hurdle.
“The quarter-final was probably our best game, especially in the second half. We were down at half-time in that game.
“We won the semi-final convincingly in the end so we were fairly confident going into the final.
“But we knew the London crowd were all big lads and they had been scoring a lot of goals in their games.
“To be honest the lads were very disappointed. The next day when we reflect on how far we got in the championship we’ll be grand and happy but, on the day, the lads were very disappointed,” said Duffy.
The ladies were competing in Division 1A and put in an unbeaten run to make it through to the semi-finals but their journey came to an end after a two-point loss to the Southern Gaels, who went on to share the title with Westport.
They defeated Dunboyne with ease in the quarter-finals, before succumbing to an agonising 3-4 to 4-3 loss to Southern Gaels.