The County Road season got underway today at Clonoulty Rossmore GAA Complex with the County Road relays. It was great to have a team on both events. The women’s relay team included two Junior athletes, making their debut in this event, Ciara O Neill and Courtney McGuire along with Nicola Maunsell and Yvonne O Connor and there were seven teams competing in this relay. Nicola Maunsell ran the first leg over 800m and the team was well placed at the changeover, then Ciara O Neill was our 1500m athletes and she ran a great race when moving the team into a close 3rd place before handing over to Courtney McGuire who manage to hold that spot before handing over to Yvonne O Connor for the 3k leg of the event. Here Yvonne ran very well when finishing a close 5th to win the Silver medals in the B Section in a combined time of 23 mins 57 secs for the 6.1km race, brilliant team effort and first Senior Championship medals for both Ciara and Courtney.
The Men’s team consisted of Billy Moloney and three athletes, Alan Carter, John Hynes and Anthony Bowen, making their debut in this event. Here we had John Hynes who was also making his Club debut setting the pace in the 800m and he handed over to Billy Moloney for the 1500m leg, at this stage the team was battling hard for 5th place and the Silver medals in the B Section. Billy ran very well, and he handed over to Alan Carter in 5th place in a close event. Alan managed to keep the team in 5th place before handing over to Anthony for the 3k leg. Anthony had a lot of ground to make up on the 4th place but he gave it everything and with 1600m to go he had moved into 4th place but the effort of closing that big gap began to tell and going out on the final lap he was 5th but he rallied over the final 400m to finish a clear 5th in a combined time of 19 mins 38 secs for the 6.1Km relay event. These were two great team efforts and racing over these short distances was a shock to the system, but the experience will stand to them as they can look forward to a great Road season, starting with the County Novice road on Sunday 18th February in Moyne