Newmarket’s senior footballers travelled the short distance to Ballydesmond for their latest league encounter and emerged with a win by 0-11 to 0-5 from a rather mundane affair on Saturday evening against their fellow Duhallow counterparts.

Newmarket enjoyed early territorial advantage and pointed for the first time in the fifth minute from a well struck effort by T.J. Bodie. Two minutes later Kevin O’Sullivan was on hand to collect a pass from John Lane and he made no mistake on finding the target. Newmarket engineered an opening in the Ballydesmond defence in the eleventh minute as John Lane drew several opponents before punching to T.J. Bodie as he placed Nicky Flanagan in on goal but he had little time as his shot was well smothered by the home custodian. Newmarket did however record a score from the resultant forty five, as Kevin O’Sullivan drilled the placed ball between the posts.

T.J. Bodie stretched the lead to four points after initial link up play involving Kevin O’Sullivan and John Lane. Ballydesmond opened their account midway through the half as Newmarket’s mounting injury list added another casualty when the impressive Colin O’Sullivan had to depart the action. David O’Flynn added Newmarket’s fifth point on seventeen minutes as Kevin O’Sullivan and Timothy Murphy contributed to the build up. Nicky Flanagan added another point on converting a free, five minutes before the interval as the scoring rate dipped in the second quarter. Ballydesmond ended the half in the ascendancy and a second point left them trailing by 0-6 to 0-2 at the turnover.

It was again the fifth minute of the half before the first score was recorded and it came courtesy of John Lane who did well to find the target from a wide position on the right wing. T.J. Bodie then pointed a free as the sides traded points at either end within a minute. The attacking element of the game dropped in standard with Denys O’Brien a colossus in defence for Newmarket and Sean Doody also prominent throughout the hour. Ballydesmond made inroads into the margin as two points left the score at 0-8 to 0-5 with just over ten minutes remaining. Newmarket ended a fifteen minute spell without a score as Barry O’Leary seized on loose possession and found T.J. Bodie who did superbly to point a much needed score for his side.

Newmarket’s top scorer on the night T.J. Bodie recorded his fifth point on pointing a free as Newmarket finished strongly. The final moments saw John Lane adding an insurance point from a free as Newmarket returned home with the win.

The Newmarket team and scorers…

T.J. Bodie (0-5), Kevin O’Sullivan (0-2), John Lane (0-2), David O’Flynn (0-1), Nicky Flanagan (0-1)

David Quinlan
Brian O’Riordan		Denys O'Brien		John Ryan
Paudie Allen		Barry O'Leary		Sean Doody
	Colin O'Sullivan		Timothy Murphy
David O’Flynn		Kevin O'Sullivan		Seanie Francis O Connor
T.J. Bodie		Nicky Flanagan		John Lane
Subs: Daniel Culloty, Eddie Allen, Michael O’Leary, Gavin Forde