Ballinacourty and The Nire battle to see who plays Stradbally

There is likely to be huge interest in the second of this years County Senior Football Semi Final’s at Fraher Field on Saturday evening.

Ballinacourty and The Nire over the past number of years been in the top three when it comes to Gaelic Football in Waterford along with Stradbally and the prize for the winners of this game (that is if there is a winner) is a place in the county final against Stradbally.

The sides have clashed already this year in the championship and on that occasion victory went to Ballinacourty on a 1-15 to 0-12 score line.

To reach this stage of the competition, Ballinacourty have proven themselves to be very impressive.

They opened with a win over An Rinn and then followed it up with a win over Rathgormack before beating this weekend’s opponents.

In the remaining two games in the league section of the competition they had wins over Ballinameela and Brickeys.

In the quarter finals last time out they beat Saint Saviours at the WIT Campus in Carriganore. The Nire in recent years have proven themselves to be very impressive in the group stages of the championship, but at the end of the campaign they were to be left disappointed as Stradbally and Ballinacourty have taken home the Conway Cup at the end of the campaign.

This year, The Nire has not looked as impressive, but there could be a good reason for this, but none the less they have come through the group stages of the competition with flying colours, loosing just the once against Ballinacourty, but they also dropped points against An Rinn.

There is signs however, that while in the past The Nire peaked a little early in the year, this year they may be about to peak at the right time.

They have brought former Tipperary footballer Declan Browne into their set up and it will be interesting to see how he may influence the side.

They would appear to also be getting players back from injury. Shane Walsh and Jamie Barron did not start against Kilrossanty in their quarter final win but did come on near the end with Shane Walsh hitting the winner.

No doubt while they may have been working on a two week gap between the win over Kilrossanty and the semi final, the extra week that they got will have been used to the maximum by the likes of Declan Spellman to get the players ready for the challenge ahead.

It will be interesting to see how Ballinacourty will fair out after Abbeyside lost out in the semi finals of the hurling championship.

In the Hurney brothers, Mark Ferncombe, Sean O’Hare, Stephen Enright etc they have the ability to bounce back from that defeat as The Nire did last year when Fourmilewater lost their semi final against Dungarvan.

Injuries have not been kind to The Nire all year and it will be interesting to see how they will line out this weekend and if the players that start will last the hour.

A hesitant vote is given to Ballinacourty to advance, but some of my predictions have proven to be a bit erratic of late, so maybe the lads down the road from me might not be too worried about me giving Ballinacourty the nod in this game.