Longwood’s opening joust in this year’s intermediate football championship ended in defeat to Walterstown in a windswept Trim on Saturday evening. While 3-10 would've been enough to win the majority of championship games played at the weekend, it wasn't enough in the game that mattered most.

Club is family and this was never more evident than on Saturday; a quick scan of the Longwood team sheet showed that the starting fifteen contained no less than five sets of brothers. The youngest of the lot was Coyle O’Brien who made is championship debut and acquitted himself with great credit.

Despite having to deal with a strong wind blowing down towards the swimming pool end, both teams contributed to an entertaining game and the result was in the balance until the very end.

Playing with the elements in the opening half, Walterstown were quick to settle and understandably dominated the possession stakes in the opening half. That said, they were helped by the concession of two very soft goals. Both goals were the result of mistakes in the Longwood defence; very often such mistakes go unpunished but unfortunately for Longwood, on this occasion, the maximum penalty was extracted by Walterstown’s dynamic duo of Ruairí O’Dowd and Brian O’Connell.

To be fair to Longwood, they took both sucker punches, dusted themselves down and hit back with full force. First half goals from the Hogan brothers, Billy and Harry, and the seemingly ageless Mickey Burke kept them within touching distance.

Half time: Walterstown 2-11 Longwood 3-3

Longwood started the second half extremely well; a pair of Mickey Burke points in the opening couple of minutes reduced the deficit to a seemingly manageable three points.

To Walterstown’s credit, they remained calm and kicked the next three points, all excellent kicks against the prevailing wind. In hindsight, this was a crucial run of scores and asked further questions of Longwood. While the men in white gave their all, in particular the increasingly dominant Sean Coloe, who kicked four points, they could never bridge the gap. They needed a fourth goal and were denied that by an excellent save by the Walterstown goalkeeper, who stood firm to deny Thomas Coloe after a trademark powerful run.

When the referee blew the final whistle to end the contest, there were four points between the teams. Walterstown had done just enough but they will know they have been tested.

Longwood: Kevin Maguire, Coyle O’Brien, Bob Maguire (Capt.), Ross Kerrigan, Adam O’Brien, Niall Mulvey (0-1), Ciaran Sheridan, Billy Hogan (1-1), Sean Coloe (0-4), Harry Hogan (1-1), Mickey Burke (1-2), Gavin Griffith, Anthony Healy, Thomas Coloe, Sean Sheridan (0-1). Subs: Jacob Baldwin for Coyle O’Brien, Sam Dixon for Gavin Griffith, David Coloe, Mark Kennedy, Cathal Campbell, Adam Leacy, Louis Butler

A tough result for the boys but there is lots to build on. Next on the schedule for our Intermediate Footballers is a battle with Nobber. The teams clashed at the same stage of last year’s Championship with Nobber coming out on top.

But before that, our Senior Hurlers will square up to Clann Na nGael on Friday evening in Round 3 of the Hurling Championship.

Maigh Dearmhaí abú!