Breheny brothers hail Sligo's long awaited success

Mark Breheny, Sligo's top scorer in today's historic Connacht final win over Galway, struggled to describe the emotions he was feeling in the aftermath at Hyde Park.

The St. Mary's clubman, who bagged four points, may have lined out with number 14 on his back but he was an integral part of the Sligo half-forward line throughout the afternoon.

"Words don't describe the feeling at the moment. We started out nine long months ago and we trained very hard over those months and thankfully it has all come together today," Mark told breakingnews.ie directly after the trophy presentation.

"I just have to pay a special tribute to all of the lads and my own brother (manager Tommy Breheny for the commitment that they gave.

"Tommy took on a poisoned chalice in a way - it was a job that no one wanted and 12 or 13 months later we are Connacht champions. We aren't going to stop here. There is an All-Ireland quarter-final for us to play now!"

Tommy Breheny was in no doubt beforehand that his side were well capable of breaking the Yeats county's 32-year title hoodoo.

"They had no doubt coming here against Roscommon the last day that they were going to win the game and it was the same today - we said that we would do nothing different," the victorious boss explained.

"We said that we would play with the aid of the breeze in the first half and give Galway no advantage at all. They always like to get ahead of teams so we took the breeze but unfortunately we were only a point up at half-time."

Breheny heaped praise on the wonderful display given by Sligo's defenders who only conceded three points - all from frees - during the second half.

"The players have been fantastic all year and I think this is the first game in 2007 that we haven't conceded a goal. We knew that we would have to do that if we were going to win the game and luckily enough that was the case. Our backs played fantastically well."

Galway manager Peter Ford was gracious in defeat as he congratulated his former charges on their historic victory.

"Sligo deserved to win because there was a period there in the second half when they missed a lot of chances and they were there for us but today we weren't able to do anything about it."

However Ford was unable to pinpoint exactly where it all went wrong for his Galway outfit.

"It's hard to explain because we prepared very well, we were really up for the game and we had no injuries so we had no excuses.

"We just didn't perform, Sligo wanted it more than we did and we had bad performances in defence in the first half and then they tightened up and we just couldn't get on top at midfield or get a breaking ball down in their back line," he conceded.

"It wasn't just in any one area which we lost it, we were just beaten by the better team on the day."