O’Shea pays tribute to unfortunate Nire
They chanted the name of the Waterford club with as much pride and gusto as if they had won the AIB Munster club football title. And they would almost certainly succeeded but for being frustrated with two goal chances late in the game.
Winning manager Pat O’Shea — who had revealed his Kerry backroom team over the week-end — was both jubilant and genuinely sorry for The Nire players. And their manager Sean Guiry had no doubt that they did deserve to win.
“Definitely the goals were fortuitous and we were obviously on the back foot for all the second half,” said O’Shea.
“To be fair, they could have won. I said in their dressing room that they should have got more out of the game.”
Admitting to a sense of disappointment that his team lost its way after playing so well for the opening 15 minutes, he was prepared to concede that mistakes made later were related to the strength of the challenge from The Nire.
“I would have to say that defensively we played quite well in the second half. We often lost possession coming out of defence and normally that’s something we are quite good at. But it came back down to the way The Nire played. They turned the ball over quite a lot.
“I was comfortable once they didn’t get a goal. We were able to hold ourselves together enough. We didn’t give them enough chances to get a clear shot at goal.”
At the same time, he wondered if Crokes would have survived if they did concede a late goal.
“When they got it down to two points, you knew a goal could turn the game. If they had gone into the lead I’d question whether we would have been able to come back — because we had struggled so much in the second half.
Eoin Brosnan felt it was disappointing that they allowed the opposition to “come at them” in the second half: “They are a good side and with the conditions we should have been taking the game to them,” he said.
Interestingly, he felt he was “lucky” to get in a vital block near the end, commenting: “There wasn’t much going right for me, or for a lot of fellows. It’s at times like that you stick at it and thank God we got the result in the end. It’ll be nice having the cup going back over the county bounds.”
Team captain James Fleming was experiencing “the best feeling of his life” after receiving the cup. “It’s the highlight of my career to win a Munster club with fellows you grew up with. We dug deep. I’m just so proud of everyone.”
Former Waterford chairman Paddy Joe Ryan, whose son David played at centre-back for The Nire, was “absolutely thrilled” with the display.
“We came up to win and I genuinely thought we would. We’re disappointed we were beaten, which is something different for Waterford playing a Kerry team!”
Sean Guiry shared the sense of pride which had been expressed so forcibly in the reaction of their followers. “We put up a great, great show, but there are no prizes for second unfortunately,” he said. “It will be very hard to get back to another Munster final. We’ll have to start all over again next year and try and win a county championship in Waterford and that’s not easy.
Meanwhile, Pat O’Shea expressed his “delight” with his management team of Dr Dave Geaney, Sean Geaney and trainer John Sugrue. “Dave brings a lot of experience and geographically Sean covers that end of the county, and he has a lot of work done with the minors. John Sugrue has new ideas and new initiatives. We’re really looking forward to making a start with the players.”
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