Winners re-live glory days as Ahearne bridges 60 year gap

STRADBALLY manager Sean Ahearne, who guided the club to its hat-trick of senior football championship titles for the first time since 1943, was overjoyed.

“This is the greatest day of my footballing life, the greatest of all days since I first became involved with this club all those years ago.”

Ahearne, himself a championship winner in his playing days, said they had won a very good county final against very good opposition in Tramore whom he described as “a coming team.”

“This”, said the Stradbally manager, “is our day, victory for the small parish in this urban/rural showdown.”

He said the winning of three senior titles on the trot is a “phenomenal achievement” for a parish with such a small population as theirs. “This is the best team I have ever been involved with and I honestly believe there’s even more to come,” he said.

Now that they had emulated the team of the 1940s by winning three on the trot, could they go on to equal the five-in-a-row achievement of that side of sixty years ago?

“We are more than happy with three-in-a-row, for the present at least,” Sean Ahearne said: “We’ll savour this one for days and perhaps weeks to come, and come the New Year we’ll regroup, sit down again, and see where we can go from here.”

“Yes, of course four and five-in-a-row would be fabulous, but right now that’s not on our minds,” he added.

In his victory speech, Stradbally captain Niall Curran conceded that six titles in a row would be a monumental achievement. However, he reminded the celebrating fans - lest they may have somehow overlooked it- that “we are already half way there.”

Tramore selector Patsy Flanagan said their disappointment was tempered by the fine all-round challenge the team had mounted to the champions.

“Perhaps Stradbally’s greater experience of the big stage was decisive, but our side, with an average age of 23, will have learned a lot from today.”