Two of our school boys’ hockey teams finished the season today with victories in their league finals. Both the 1^st year boys and the junior boys’ teams came up against St. Columbas College in their respective finals.

The 1^st year team played their match at the neutral venue of Wesley College. The team, led by captain John Mullins, started the match attacking aggressively but a number of early chances went a begging.  The breakthrough came midway through the first half when Christian Bauer hit a shot which eluded the Columbas keeper and bounced into the goal. Columbas came back into the game and gained a goal of their own to make it 1 all in the lead up to half time. The forward line rotated just before half time and with their first touches of the game Adam O’Brien and Sean Lillefosse combined for an excellent goal. Mount Temple had most of the possession in the 2^nd half and got the third goal courtesy of Darragh O’Flaherty, his first goal for the school.  All the squad played their part in the final but left back Sean Jacob had an exceptional game picking up the man of the match.

The Junior team played at the same time in St. Andrews. Another Mullins, John’s older brother Kevin led the team to victory. It was a nervy start with Columbas peppering the Mount Temple goal, Claude and his defence defending for their lives. Temple weathered the storm and found the breakthrough goal from a corner routine, put away by Kevin Mullins. This kicked the team into turbo drive and they went on to score another five goals in a 15 minute spell, goals coming from Matthew Dawkins, Sean Cassidy,  Matthew Owen, Robert Duggan, and Andrew Jameison-Murphy . The second half was a tighter affair with the score at the final whistle 8 3 to Mount Temple, Andrew Lambe and Andrew Jameison-Murphy adding the goals.

The final boy’s hockey fixture of the season is this Friday, when the 2^nd Year boy’s team take on St. Killians at 2 o’clock in The High School, Rathgar in their league final. They will be hoping to make it a hat trick of league titles, in what is already Mount Temple Boys Hockey most successful year for the last couple of decades.  Pictures of today’s finals to follow.

Mount Temple Boys hockey is the strongest it has been in years. With four different age groups being represented by seven teams, we are moving from strength to strength every year. Mount Temple had its best results in years last year as we reached two semi finals and two quarter finals in the boys hockey cups. First year boys won their league and Minor B boys finished runners up. We fully intend to improve on last year in the year to come.
Training are held for each team at least once a week and matches are usually on Wednesdays.

Each team competes in their own league and every age group has a team in the top league. This consists of two pools where the top two play each other in the A semi finals and the third and fourth placed teams play each other in the B semi finals. Also there is a cup for each group where we hope to do well again this year. Boys hockey will only improve with the support of it’s players, coaches and parents. We hope to keep numbers up and keep us challenging at the current high level we are at. Hopefully more success will follow these improvements. Good luck to all teams in the year to come.