Indy Hurling travels to Akron

Thanks to Jason for writing it up! And thanks to Akron for hosting!

We were the honored guests at the Akron Hibernians club on Saturday night. AQ few Akron players came out to greet us. We had good pints and free pizza. It was a very nice club and the host Paddy Taylor, was a great guy.

The match was awesome. We ended up losing 2-4 to 2-8, but we had a great showing. Kyle Griffiths played exceptional for a newbie, especially on defense. And our help from Bloomington , Robbie and Brianna played their asses off, running circles around their marks. Akron had some youth and some real speed up front, but both of their goals were cheap deflections made after great aggressive saves out of the box by me. Brian Mathes, Matt Davis and Eric Raderstorf picked it up in the second half and played very aggressive scoring some hard fought goals and points. Richard Connolly played strong all day and proved he could hit the long point hitting two just inside the half line in the second half.

We got a ton of compliments from the Akron players and fans. That was the toughest match they had been given at home all year. Although we did not win the Al O’Leary trophy, we took home some good consolations. According to an 8” X 10” photograph hanging in the Hibernian’s club room, the last Al O’Leary invitational ended up in an Akron manslaughter of Milwaukee , 43 to 17. So our 14 to 10 defeat was the best showing in tournament history. Something that the Indy Hurling Club should be proud of. They can’t wait to come to Indy next year and may just invite us back for another shot at the trophy.