County Intermediate Champions 2011. I texted Barry Gray on Sunday evening and when he replied he tried to soften the blow of missing it by inserting ‘probably’, when telling me it was one of the best days. When you haven’t won an adult title since 1932, there’s no need to understate anything.
I made it back from Guernsey in time to tune in to the commentary and tweets online. I wasn’t alone in cyber world. Conor was in a McDonalds in Wellington. Paul Hurley was tuned in from Thailand whilst Leary and others were in on it too.
From the moment Jeremy broke his leg early in the first half, the lads never looked back and they controlled the game. Wardy, who didn’t even make the panel for the semi, came on and kicked two points. David Coughlan had the game of his life. But the crucial score, a second half goal, came from the boot of Barry Gray - goal poacher extraordinaire. Twelve years on from his goal scoring debut against Courcies, he raised the green flag again on the club’s biggest day.
The victory is an incredible achievement. The team has mixed two generations of players. Both were talented but neither were what you would call a ‘golden generation’. Plenty of work needed to be done to bring this team together to achieve what they did last Sunday.
Gearoid gets a bulk of the credit. The papers were full of praise for the team’s style of play and their usage of the panel. ‘Modern management’ came up more than once. Part of that management was getting Brian Murphy more involved and getting Ollie Cahill and Tony Griffen fully on board. He’d say himself that their input gave fresh impetus to the whole thing.
They won a county with what may be considered by some as ‘unfashionable’ players. Throughout the year, the team was doubted and even afterwards some people unbelievably tried to play down the achievement.
Still, the majority drowned out the minority and the town was buzzing all week by the sound of it. The Primary Schools were visited on Monday and the session looked like it continued all week.
I’d be in touch with Gearoid on practically a daily basis and you can’t imagine the amount of work and thinking that goes in behind the scenes. Getting a group of players fully focused in a town like Kinsale is a very difficult task. There were times when I’d say he was ready to walk but he stuck with them and he showed unreal resilience to keep believing in his ways, in the face of some fairly persistent criticism.
Bolster was home from the States and saw the team play for the first time since last summer. He said the transformation was incredible. He commented about how composed and confident they were, especially in defence. He said the work rate was incredible. The work in progress became the finished product.
There is no doubt that it’s a killer to miss out on last Sunday but such is life. If I was only here a year or two, the pain would be greater. The longer you are away the more you can accept that you’ve just become an interested spectator. Well, I say that but I barely mean it.
It will be some Dinner Dance when you considered the amount of All-Irelands, Munster Championships and Sigersons that came back to the club this year. To put the final bit of icing on the cake, Brian Coughlan finished a memorable year by winning a Senior Football Championship medal with UCC today. 2011 will live long in the memory. Hopefully it won’t remain a reference point the way in which 1932 did. At least not for so long.
No comments:
Post a Comment