The Clonliffe men’s team were in excellent form in today’s Dublin intermediate cross country championships at Tymon Park in south county Dublin today adding the Dublin intermediate title to the Dublin novice title one at the same venue at the start of the season. It must be said that the course laid out by hosts Rathfarnham AC was very good indeed with plenty of good running and despite the horrendous weather of late underfoot conditions were a huge improvement on that endured at last weekends national seniors.
From the gun at the start of the intermediate men’s race, over 8000 m – a Clonliffe trio of Fintan Kerins, Ben Coughlan and Niall Carbery gathered at the front of proceedings where they were engaged in a race long battle with 2 athletes from Brothers Pearse. As the race wore on it was the yellow and green singlet of Bro Pearse’s Eddie O’Connor who took the race by the scruff of the neck opening up an unassailable lead, the Clonliffe lads who ever did not panic and settled in with that patients paying dividends as Fintan took silver and Niall bronze with Ben in 5th position. Sean Owens Heaslip also played a patient game and worked himself well up indeed at one stage was sitting in 6th position, his progress was hampered little over the final 2500 but he held on to 11th position and was the 4th scorer as the Clonliffe team took gold on 21 points well clear of Bros Pearse on 44 points with Liffey Valley 3rd on 76. There were excellent runs also by the rest of the Clonliffe pack – Oseias Alves, running his 1st ever cross country race, was 18th, Cian Murray ran a superb race to take 19th, another cross country debutant was Ronan Delaney in 22nd. Ryan Sheridan looked very strong in 31st, Mick McMahon 44th, Lee Duddy 50th, Garrett Loy 54th, Fergal O’Shea 67th and Niall Markey 78.
The women’s intermediate team fielded was somewhat weakened as many of the team were not competing following last weekend’s seniors. The team however all gave it everything they had, Aisling Killelea was 1st home in 16th, next in was Aoife Kinahan 39th, Inces Pinto 43rd, Pam Kavanagh 45th and Yvonne McDonagh 46th. The team finishing the day in 7th position.
A shout out also to 3 of Gerry Carr’s young junior team who competed in the U/17 Dublin juvenile league race, that preceded the intermediates, Harriet Kenny and to athletes making the cross country debuts Rebecca Finn and Aisling Faherty.
