A couple of nights on from their trip to a sun-drenched Croke Park this under 12 side found themselves back on the road again – this time however it was nothing so salubrious. Instead it was driving wind and rain, and extremely heavy ground conditions in Ballinhassig!
This bunch of players made light of the conditions however and produced an impressive 5-5 to 3-3 victory. All 15 members of the panel contributed on the night and whilst it would be difficult to pick out individual performances Ciaran Aitken in goal, Ruairi Quinlan & Ethan Ryan in defence, Rob Doherty & Eddie Coughlan in midfield & Patrick Harrington & Brendan Quain deserve mention while Daniel O Keeffe, Seamus Hennessy, Luke Kelleher & Charlie Brown worked tirelessly all night.
Fast forward a week or so and these lads made their first hurling appearance of the season against St Colmans at Cloyne. Both teams made a sluggish start before St Colmans opened the scoring in the 14th minute with a point. They followed this with a goal before White’s Cross opened their account with a point courtesy of a long range Eddie Coughlan free. St Colmans dominated matters to half time and led 4-2 to 0-2 at the short whistle.
White’s Cross responded magnificently in the second half with inspired performances all around the pitch, restricting their opponents to 1-2 whilst scoring 2-5 themselves. The challenge for their coaches going forward is to get this fine side to hit the ground running from the initial throw in.
All in all it was a decent start to the season, against opposition of decent pedigree (an amalgamation of Cloyne and Russell Rovers) and with more regular training there is no doubt this side can go places. Those to catch the eye on the night were Seamus Hennessy, Ruairi Quinlan, Ethan Ryan, Eddie Coughlan whilst Ciaran Aitken, Daniel O Keeffe, Luke Murphy, Rob Docherty, Luke Kelleher, Sean O Mahony, Patrick Harrington & Brendan Quain never let the side down. Final score St Colmans 5-4 White’s Cross 2-7