Road trips were a bit harder to come by this season as clubs were more focussed on the u16 age group. however, we still managed a couple of trips to drogheda (one via portarlington), a sat in kerry, a pre-superleague game on a friday night in the national arena, an interesting night at kubs and a first trip to bray combined with a visit to bray head. The kestrel's/drogheda trip at the start of the season was a real eye opener as the summer lay-off showed its true effect. the impressive kestrels u16's were physically and athletically way too strong for our guys while drogheda showed that the more competitive dublin league had aided their progression greatly as they appeared to have widened the gap on the moycullen team who, in fairness were missing injured international, connor curran. next up was a much more positive trip to the kingdom to face two more u16 teams. with connor still out, moycullen lacked physicality but, after a slow start in castleisland, played some great basketball, pushing castleisland for three quarters and taking a strong st bridgets side to overtime. progress. next up were two dublin superleague trips either side of christmas. first up was a hammering from a very atheltic tolka team in the national basketball arena. again, there were mitigating factors in defeat with, once again, key players unavailable ... this time, it was max brennan and daniel lydon. next, was another defeat in drogheda but a much improved performance as the team finally began to pull together. their reward was a visit to the site of the battle of the boyne and the hill of tara. the trip to bray saw some more sight seeing (on a very mucky climb of bray head) and an excellent performance against dublin raiders. full strength for possibly the first time, they blew out their opponents, pressing to good effect, scoring 69 points and seeing out the full 40 mins.... kubs was almost a disaster as mis-communication saw no kubs team there when we arrived. however, fortunately, kubs had just won the u16 and u14 dublin cups and were celebrating with pizza in the carroll arena. eoin chubb and david greene were a great help in getting a combination of u14's and u16's together and the team got a good workout. phew........ the last friendly came against a calasnactius second year team preparing for the all ireland final. moycullen hadn't played for a month since the galway league final but were due to go to the tolka tournament the next day. once again, coach cunningham was reminded of how far the team can fall when not playing regularly as, against a calasanctius team that is arguably weaker than the maree team they faced in the galway final, they got blown out. the only comfort was that they shook off the cobwebs and did put in a solid performance at the tolka tournament. all in all, the friendlies were a mixed bag from a number of points of view but they were always against quality opposition and they bring players on in a way that training never can. we cerainly won't be parking the cars for the seasons to come.....