Recent Activity

At the end of May, the juniors had their second squad weekender, as led by Shimbo. This included some friendlies with Open Club Sandwich and Little Miss Sunshine. I wasn't there myself, so hopefully one of the lads can provide a write up sometime.

Last week saw the start of the Dublin club summer league. The juniors team has entered this, in order to get some more game time. Our first game, against Jabba, finished 17-12 in their favour. 

This week, we have a bye (there are an odd number of teams in the league). Next week, we'll line up against trinity college. Hopefully, given that the leaving cert will have finished by then, we'll have a few more players than we did last week, and we'll be able to improve. 

Finally, we're planning a trip to a warm up tournament at the beginning of July. The UK Ultimate Association have been kind enough to allow us to take part in the UK Junior Open Championships, in Birmingham (of course we can't be awarded the title of UK champion or anything!) Hopefully the tournament experience will stand to us at the world championships.

Seamus

Juniors first practice weekend

We kicked off training with a full squad weekend session in Limerick in April.

This was the perfect way for the team to get to know one another, start working on our play and discuss our goals for the year. And the Rockband social was good craic.

The highlight of the weekend was a friendly against the UL Ninjas on a sunny Sunday afternoon.

It started out close, as the teams traded to 2-2. UL then had a run that made it 5-2. After a quick timeout, the juniors came back - going up 6-5, with Finnian throwing quite a few goals. UL managed to take half 8-6, after a few miscommunication turnovers, and defensive mistakes.

The second half saw a few more hucks and the scores were soon tied up at 9-9.

Both teams raised their games from here.  Big defensive plays from Hugo and Lorcan got us the disc back a few times and 3 consecutive Pa to Tuffy scores kept the scoreboard ticking over for us, as we traded to 13-13. The result didn't go our way in the end, as UL got the final 2 points to take the game 15-13.

It was a great learning experience for the team, many thanks to the UL ninjas for providing the opposition.

Big thanks to Pa and Lorcan for hosting the rest of the team. And to Pa for sorting out the pitches and the saturday night entertainment. All in all, a great start to the season!

The team this season

The tryouts for the team were held back in February and March. Over 50 junior players tried out, but the final team would have only about 20 places which made selection very difficult.

Adding to this difficulty was the fact that this year there would only be 1 team, unlike at the European Youth Ultimate Championships 2009 where an 'Ireland 2' team were allowed to compete.

The team was announced in March, and it looks like this:

Robbie Brennan (#0), University College Dublin
Killian Carroll (#65), Dublin City University
Shaun Cullen (#13), Blackrock College
Philip Doyle (#9), Blackrock College
David Ferris (#15), St. Mary's College
Alan Fitzpatrick (#23), Gonzaga College
Hugo Fitzpatrick (#3), Dublin University
Finnian Flood (#64), St. Mary's College
Declan Grogan (#29), Dublin City University
Pat Hayden (#77), University of Limerick
Matthew Healy (#18), Blackrock College
Conor Hogan (#10), St. Mary's College
Keith Mernagh (#8), Institute of Technology, Tallaght
Ben Murray (#21), University College Dublin
Lorcan Murray (#16), University College Cork
Paul O Callaghan (#5), National College of Ireland
David Power (#66), University College Cork
Stephen Tubbert (#14), Dublin University
Cathal Tuffy (#1), St. Mary's College

Manager - Seamus Murray
Coach - Seamas 'Shimbo' Kinsella.

A big thanks to Dominick, Louis and Brian for help running tryouts and also to Marko and Podge for help with tryouts and team selection.