A weekend of firsts for Ennistymon football

By Michael Moynihan

Brendan Rouine explains what a first Clare senior football championship final means to Ennistymon.

The chairman puts it simply: “We’re all our lives trying to get to the latter stages of the championship, to a county final, and now we made it we find we’re not really ready for it!

“Once we got over the semi-final we got into ordering gear and bunting and all that stuff, you find there are deadlines to meet and so on. It’s all new to us. But in fairness to the town and the parish, they’ve really rowed in behind us for the final.”

Their appointment with destiny — and Milltown in Cusack Park, Ennis tomorrow — has galvanised the area, he says.

“Over the years we might have been accused of not having massive support, but that works both ways. You have to be winning games and championships to get that support to row in behind you — to give people something to shout about and a reason to follow you.

“We’ve gotten the blend right this year and we’re in the county final, and the community are four square behind us, definitely.

“It’s been great for the locality.”

What changed to get them to the Promised Land?

“It’s difficult enough to nail down one reason, but it’s fair to say we’ve been coming for a while, winning titles at U14 level, U16, minor championships.

“We’ve lost plenty of finals at those levels as well, but we’ve kept plugging away, working hard with the schools in the area to get to where we are this weekend.

“There hasn’t been a huge difference in how we approached the season. The number one job for us always is to get the threat of relegation out of the way. Once that’s done you’re in bonus territory, but we had a good run which gelled the team and the club.

“The lads are enjoying their football and you can see it.”

Enjoyment can lead to freedom, and freedom can get you over difficult hurdles.

“The last few years we got to the quarter-final a few times and it seemed to be our bogey game, we came a cropper; there were plenty of sad stories and near-misses.

“This year once we got past that stage it seemed to be a relief to everyone. We got to the semi-final against Kilmurry-Ibrickane, a close game on a bad day and I suppose we made heavy weather of it, but a team getting to that stage for the first time won’t necessarily sail through it. We were delighted to come out of it with the win. For a few years we had a lot of young lads on the team and maybe the age profile wasn’t quite right, but I think the mix is good now.

“We have our former county men, Laurence Healy and Joe Dowling, who soldiered with Clare through the noughties — they’re 37 and 34 years old. We also have a few lads who won a minor county ten years ago, so they’re in their late twenties now, and a real injection of teenagers as well.

“A lot of the younger lads are students — in Galway and Limerick, mostly — and we have six lads based in Dublin as well: Laurence Healy, Sean O’Driscoll and another few. The Dublin lads have put in a huge shift this year — they got themselves together to train in a pitch in the Phoenix Park during the week, and when they came down on the weekend for matches, it really drove on the lads back at home.

“It was clear that the lads in Dublin were working hard from their displays with the club. You could see from their performances that they were training hard, and the lads at home knew they had to be at a high standard as well.”

It’s an occasion they have to manage tomorrow, particularly when opponents Milltown are warm favourites.

“It’s totally new territory for the players and supporters,” says Rouine.

“You can’t hide away from it, you must embrace it and hopefully it’ll spur them on to new heights.

“The players have been in plenty of (grade) 1A county finals at other levels, so hopefully we’ll get a performance from them. We’ll be happy with that, then we can see where that takes us. They’re trying to treat it as just another game, they won’t change their routine. They’ve had three or four games in Cusack Park already this year so hopefully that’ll stand to them too.

“Milltown won the championship three years ago, they have all the marquee names, particularly up front, a great manager, Donie Buckley is up from Kerry helping them — they’ve been there and done that, while our aim at the start of the year was to avoid relegation.

“But we’ll give it a good go tomorrow.”