O’Grady: Crokes deserved it

GAVIN O’GRADY must hate the sight of a Dr Crokes jersey.

For the second time injust five weeks, the Glenbeigh/Glencar club-man has been denied a championship winner’s medal by the Kingdom powerhouses at Fitzgerald Stadium, Killarney — firstly when his Mid Kerry team lost the county final to Crokes, followed by yesterday’s provincial decider defeat in services of UCC.

But O’Grady admits Colm Cooper and company are worthy champions.

He reasoned: “They have match-winners all over the field. When you talk about the Crokes, everyone goes on about their forwards but they have very good backs as well, and their midfield was awesome. You associate Crokes with skill and they have plenty of that but the amount of dirty ball that they won was incredible. They contested everything.

“We tried to match them but we just had no answers.

“In the second half they brought their main men out around the middle and it seemed to calm things down. They played the Crokes way, they stroked the ball around and then took their chances when the openings were there.”

While Crokes were worthy winners, UCC enjoyed thebetter start and led by five points after Stephen O’Brien’s 19th minute goal. But then came a defining spell, as Kieran O’Leary and Daithi Casey both hit the UCC net.

O’Grady said: “After we got the goal in the first half maybe we lost a bit of focus, and you just can’t afford to take your eyes off the Crokes for a second. They got in for two handy goals before half-time and that deflated us.

“We had no answer to them in the second half, they just outplayed us.”

UCC manager Paul O’Keeffe agreed that those two strikes were game-changers.

“We did a lot of work in the first 15 minutes and I thought that we were on top. After we got our goal we were five points up and were exactly where we wanted to be but then we conceded a goal straightaway. We lost our focus a little bit, and then conceded another goal shortly after that. That was the turning point. We were on the back foot after that for the rest of the game.”

Despite such setbacks, the Cork College were within a point at the break (2-4 to 1-6) and O’Keeffe felt his side were still in with a chance: “At half-time I thought we were rightly in it, the game was in the melting pot but then we came out and conceded three points in a row and it just took the steam out of us.”