Kilkenny Camogie- Piltown make blistering start to senior campaign

The Iverk Show may have been on the previous day, but the Piltown show was on Sunday morning as the home side confidently dispatched the visiting side from Clara.

Championship first round can be a banana skin for favourites as they can sometimes be caught cold, but that never looked like being the case as Piltown started very strong and didn’t let up.

With nine different scorers on the day, the home side made good use of the strong breeze that was blowing in their favour towards the road goal with a slight tail towards the left corner.

Sophie Holden opened the scoring in the second minute, quickly followed by Kellyann Doyle, Heather Phelan and Aoife Doyle all scoring points.

Phelan then raised the first green flag after being put through by a great hand pass from Katie Power.

Piltown were running at Clara and the visitors struggled to match it and when Kellyann scored the second goal of the game after a great move involving Ellen O’Keeffe, Aoife Doyle and then Katie Power in the 13th minute, it was 2-07 to no score.

It was one way traffic until Rebecca Nolan scored Clara’s first score in the 25th minute and that was quickly followed up with one from play from the hurley of Emma Shortall.

Piltown weren’t letting up though as they continued to work the scoreboard, the best of them being Katie Power (right) scoring a monster of a point from the half way line after picking up a loose ball after a great block by Aoife Doyle. At half-time Piltown led by 2-16 to 0-2.

During the half time interval the under-10 camogs from Piltown and Clara played on the pitch, a nice treat for players and parents alike, as all surely saw senior players of the future from both clubs.

It was a massive lead that Piltown had, but it wasn’t through lack of effort that Clara were behind, Piltown were humming, and the Doyle sisters were the conductors.

Kellyann scored another point just after the restart, to continue the scoring, but then Clara grabbed a small lifeline as Niamh Byrne scored a goal from the right side into the net of Piltown keeper Aoife Norris.

That was just a brief flicker of hope though as the home side kicked on again, scoring freely from play and from placed ball to stay out of sight.

Clara were scoring more in the second half as Mary O’Connell put over three frees and Rebecca Nolan repeated her pointed free in the first half to score the sixth point of the game for Clara.

It was a great performance from the home side and a great start to the Kilkenny camogie senior championship.