By Fergal Maguire

The 10th Annual Peter Walsh Memorial Tournament

Bryansford - Winners of the Peter Walsh Memorial Tournament

A feast of excellent football was enjoyed by all those that attended the 10th Annual Peter Walsh Memorial Tournament on Saturday July 28th. The weather was much improved on the year before and contributed to the quality of football on show. Seven teams participated this year and included the hosts Bryansford, Castlewellan, Kilcoo, Rostrevor, Carryduff, and two teams from outside the county, namely Dromore (Tyrone) and All Saints (Antrim).

All Saints (Antrim)

Play started at 10:30am with two groups, Group A and B. The top two teams in each group would then progress through to the semi-final stage. With one group containing four teams, and the other group only containing three teams, it was decided that each game in the smaller group would last half an hour, while the games in the larger group would last 20 minutes. This way each team would have played the same amount of football at the end of the group stages.

Castlewellan

Bryansford opened their tournament with a closely fought win over Carryduff before going on to beat Rostrevor. This meant that Bryansford were through the group stages, but the game between Carryduff and Rostrevor would determine who would join them in the semi-finals. In another tight game, Rostrevor edged out Carryduff by 5 points.

Carryduff

In the other group Kilcoo and Dromore made it through convincingly. All Saints and Castlewellan fought it out for third and fourth place in this group, with All Saints winning on a scoreline of 1.03 to 0.04. Kilcoo and Dromore’s match saw some of the best football of the tournament as the two sides went hard at it, but Kilcoo edged it to take top spot by beating Dromore by two points.

The first of the semi-finals saw Kilcoo –v- Rostrevor kick off at 2:30pm. Kilcoo rushed into an early lead and maintained it throughout. The Magpies scored five goals in this game and looked set to go on and win the competition after a powerful display.

Rostrevor

Kilcoo

Bryansford then squared up against Dromore. The Ford began to produce some of their best football and ran into a six point lead with two early goals. There appeared to be no way back for Dromore, and despite a spirited comeback from the Tyrone side, Bryansford were just too strong and secured their place in the final.

Dromore (Tyrone)

The final pairing of Bryansford and Kilcoo was the one that everyone had been hoping for. The game itself saw Bryansford score another two goals in the opening half, and saw Kilcoo struggling to cope with the pace of the Ford’s forwards, in particular Danny Savage and Chris Clarke. Kilcoo had a strong forward line with the likes of Cillian Laverty and Jerome Johnston.

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Chris Clarke in action for Bryansford

However, Bryansford proved too strong for the challenge of Kilcoo and ran out worthy winners of the Peter Walsh Memorial Trophy for the second year in a row. As captain of Bryansford, Chris Clarke collected the Trophy and then went on to win the Player of the Tournament too!

The club would like to thank the participating teams including their players and management, the referees namely Martin Rawlinson, Denis Cotter and Gavin Corrigan, the ladies who worked tirelessly in serving all the teams with food and drink, Joe Travers for providing the food, the Ground Committee for getting the pitch set-up from early morning and in particular the family of Peter Walsh.