'It’s a clutch moment, he’s an incredible player' - Micheál Keohane on Conor Lehane's winning free

MASSIVE EFFORT: Midleton players Conor Lehane, Alex Quirke and Patrick White celebrate their win over Blackrock. Picture: Dan Linehan

Midleton manager Micheál Keohane was still trying to get his head around their extra-time Cork Premier SHC victory over Blackrock. A come-from-behind win that went all the way to the wire.

“If we could have used ten subs in extra time we’d have had to use them," he said. "There were fellas cramping all over the place. The amount of effort that they put into the game, the amount of intensity, the amount of tackles. It’s non-stop when they’re going. The level of fitness that they showed there it’s huge credit to Frank Flannery and Steve Casey and the lads for the ability to go that long. 

"They were absolutely out on their feet at the end. I’m gutted for Eoin (Moloney), it looks like he's after damaging his Achilles in some way. But he was awesome today, as good as you could nearly play. He was in the full back line, the half back line, he was everywhere. He was superb today. Hopefully it’s not too bad, we’ll see.” 

Conor Lehane was another player out on his feet. As he stepped up to take the winning free, he bent down to stretch his leg.

“The lads were saying is he able to take the free. I just said if he wants to take it, let him take it! Because there’s no one to stand up to the moment better. Just to make it as difficult as possible, we were right behind him and he just curled the ball over the bar so it was absolute heart in the mouth stuff altogether. It’s a clutch moment, he’s an incredible player.” 

Midleton were slow to settle, only drew the game four minutes from time.

“If you’re not tight on Blackrock, if you’re not really man-for-man in certain positions, they’re an incredible team to hurley pass the ball in triangles. They’re really good at working the ball up the field. There’s probably very few teams who are as good as them. We knew that they played a lot of games over the past few weeks. I don’t think that they would have been in any way rusty and we didn’t deal with it brilliantly at the start of the game. 

"It’s like the old thing, you’ve a plan until you're punched in the face, the old Mike Tyson one. We had a plan. It didn’t really work at the start and we had to change it a little bit. I think that the lads just settled into the game a small bit as well themselves.” 

Tragedy knocked on Midleton’s door this year. The manager said nothing he would say or do could help Blackrock.

“Nothing at all, nothing that’s going to help anyway. We got onto them during the week to say that if there was anything we could do to change the game. I just said in their dressing room there that you have to give immense credit to Blackrock, because it showed some character to come today and to put up that fight and to be able to commit to that match and do what they did today after having the removal yesterday and a funeral tomorrow is amazing. 

"Huge credit to them. I think I probably played against Trevor back in the day. By all accounts anyone who knew him said that he was a fantastic character. It’s obviously a very difficult time for them. We’ve had our own tragedy this year as well. Hopefully they’ll band together and mind each other over the next few days.”

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