Club Championships: Kilcoo and Cargin retain Down and Antrim Football titles

The Down decider was anything but a classic but Kilcoo won’t mind as they built a first-half lead and kept Burren at arms’ length all afternoon to win a 12th Mourne County title in 13 years.

Remarkably, the first score from play wasn’t kicked until the 29th minute of the game. In that time, there were six frees scored, one mark and four yellow cards dished out.

In the opening minutes it was a free-taking competition between Burren’s Donal O’Hare and Kilcoo’s Paul Devlin, with each player converting twice apiece.

However, little did Burren know that when O’Hare split the posts in the eighth minute that would be their next point wouldn’t come until the 52nd minute

From that moment on it was all Kilcoo in the opening half and they pushed their lead out to 0-7 to 0-2 at the break.Burren brought more energy into early exchanges after the restart but couldn’t find the mark. Instead, it was Kilcoo who opened the second half’s account via a Ryan McEvoy free.

Burren almost had a goal when an O’Hare shot dropped short and was punched goalwards, but Niall Kane made the save.

Kilcoo went into an offensive lull of their own, and Burren finally showed some signs of life with Liam Kerr scoring a free and one from play.

However, there was to be no miraculous comeback with Paul Devlin and Anthony Morgan chipping over late scores.

Burren finished with 13 men after Danny Magill was shown a red card for late hit on his Down team-mate McEvoy and Kerr was dismissed for wrestling with Shealan Johnston.

Kilcoo weren’t satisfied there and in the fifth minute of stoppage time they added a late goal with Daryl Branagan driving the ball into the top corner from close range.