By John Collins, Irish World (22 April 2005).

Sean Treacys 1-10 Kilburn Gaels 1-07

Had Kilburn Gaels decided to take an attacking part in this game in the first twenty minutes, then they may well have won it, but as it was, they waited nineteen minutes before they got their first score of the game and by the break they had only two points.

That opening half looked very much like boys against men and the Kilburn players looked completely out of their depth. They do have an annoying habit of falling asleep, or as in this case, failing to wake up in matches and certainly in this fixture they paid a high price.

Their task was made even more difficult when an unfortunate mistake by the otherwise immaculate JJ Burke, allowed Adrian McGrath to score the most fortuitous of goals for the Treacys, when his speculative drive from forty yards slipped through the keeper’s fingers.

Burke though more than made amends for that mistake as the game progressed with a series of top class saves, including one in the second half when he sprinted from his line to make a quite fantastic block on Sean Cormack, who was about to shoot from the 21m line and another late in the game when he stopped a Barry Shortall drive at point blank range.

That first half onslaught from the Treacys yielded 1-7 with Dave Bourke, who was so sorely missed last week against Fr Murphys, contributing 0-4 of those and he proved the value of a consistent free taker to this and any other team.

The second half started just as poorly as the first from the Kilburn point of view, with Treacys landing over the two opening scores through Bourke and Shortall, before veteran Kevin Leahy registered his first score since coming on as a half time sub.

Leahy is something of a lucky charm for Kilburn and so often he has jinked his way onto the pitch and upon his arrival the level of performance has lifted. Sunday was another such instance.

Leahy’s point was the first of five consecutive scores for Kilburn as they started to ask questions of a Treacys defence that had looked so average last week.

Mick Hayes burst into life and scored three points, one from 85 yards and another after a  brilliant 50 yard run and suddenly the Treacys didn’t look at ease with themselves.

With the scores at 1-9 to 0-7 in favour of the south Londoners, they were awarded a penalty after a foul on Cormack and in an attempt to ease the pressure Bourke opted for safety and struck it over the bar to increase the lead to six points.

Deep into injury time, Brian Malone swept a shot from Tom Fahy into the Treacy’s net to close the gap to 0-3 but at that stage there had already been four minutes of injury time played and time had quite literally run out on the Gaels.

However, they will take great heart from the way they came back into this game and certainly they have players who want to play for the jersey.

JJ Burke was unfortunate with the goal he conceded but aside from that he was superb. Shane Linnane had a real business like game at centre back, while Mick Hayes really sprung to life in the second half and proved to be a real dynamo.

As for the Treacys, as we expected last week’s non-performance against the Murphys was an aberration and there is a great deal more hurling in this team than they showed in that game.

Kevin Ivers, Paul Doyle, Eamon Phelan, Rory O’Connor, Dave Bourke and Barry Shortall are all familiar names to London GAA followers and all showed well on Sunday.

With an array of talent of that calibre available to them, then there is no reason why the level of performance they put on in the first twenty minutes of this game shouldn’t be a regular occurrence.