Captain points the way from the front

“It was a great team performance from 1 to 15 the work rate was brilliant, we played with sensible heads out there today,” she said afterwards.

“We expected a physical battle to be honest, Slaughtneil are quite a physical team, they also have quite a few girls that are tall and good in the air along with their physicality.

“We knew they were going to come at us from the start and try to stop us but we were able to ride out that storm in the first half and get through it with a one point lead.

“We had whatever slight wind there was in our favour for the second half and we did get off to a really good start with three quick points that gave us a bit of breathing space and settled us down nicely.

“We really kicked on then in the final quarter and scored some good points most from open play.”

Eoghan Rua scored 19 points in total with just four coming from placed balls, a real feature of their second half performance as Grainne agreed.

“Yeah, lots of scores from play and as I said earlier it was a great team performance,” she said.

“It would be difficult to single out any one player on our side as everyone played their part.

“The defence, as a unit was brilliant, Aileen in goals was safe, her puck outs were super, our two midfielders, particularly in the second half were outstanding and the forward line were getting scores from all angles and distances.

“We have been doing a lot of work in training on our shooting, and shooting under pressure, all that work certainly paid off today,” concluded a delighted Eoghan Rua skipper after the game.