Celtic players revel in Junior Cup victory

“This club is the best club in the f***ing world to me." The army of Green and White around Celtic Park will have agreed with every word of the sentence that Eoghan Hughes said in the wake of Castlebar Celtic's win over Westport United in the last 32 of the FAI Junior Cup.

Coming in for injured striker Jordan Loftus, the 21-year-old scored a second half brace that sent Celtic into the last 16 and Hughes paid tribute to club’s supporters on a memorable occasion.

“Look at the fans, what it means to everyone, the amount of people that showed up for us today to win the game, it's all that matters. We're going to get through to the next round. It made for a class game. This is what you want to be involved in. FAI Cup, last 32 of Ireland, look you can't beat it, but at the end of the day all we wanted to do was get through the game. All of that is just outside noise to us, it makes for a good atmosphere but the main thing is we're in the next round, that's all we care about.” 

While a chance for a hat trick went amiss after his thunderous strike came back off the crossbar, all he cared about was the win and he praised his ‘electric’ teammates in attack Dylan Edwards and Jason Hunt for their displays.

“It would have been nice to finish with it. For a personal tally it would have been nice but look, all I care about is getting through to the next round and we've done it so.

“You make the run for Dylan, he'll put it on your head or your foot every day of the week. He's unbelievable. And Jayo as well. Jayo has the wand of a left boot. He'll score anywhere on the pitch with that left foot if he wants to. They're class. They're both unbelievable players.” Club captain Ioseph O’Reilly has likely not played in front of a crowd since the late 2000s when they reached the FAI Youth Cup final as well as competing in the now-defunct League of Ireland A-League. But he feels this was bigger.

“I'm showing my age now!,” he quipped. "Possibly the big crowds back then, that magnitude, but I'd say that probably trumped it to be fair. Both sets of fans are unreal. I got an awful lot of abuse in the first half, but listen, I might be used to it anyway with my own team!” O’Reilly felt that Westport were the better side in the first half, and matters were not helped when playing back to goalkeeper Stefan Hester much due to the pitch. But he praised his teammates for ‘grinding it out again’, a feature of this side in big games over the past two years.

“We spoke at half-time, we went back to Stefan awful lot in the first half and you're putting him under severe pressure with the pitch, because even last week we played here and the pitch was perfect and it took five minutes to dig up. It's just unfortunate the snow came.

“I thought they were the better team in the first half, we kind of spoke about it, what we can do in the second half to improve and it obviously worked when we came out and got two in the first 10-15 minutes.” All eyes will be on the draw for the next round, and both Celtic and Ballyheane will want another home draw in the last 16. O’Reilly hopes the two sides avoid each other and Celtic get a home draw, btu does not fear a trip to one of Ireland’s junior soccer heavyweights either.

“The Aisling Annacotty game (in the last 64) gave boys a bit of confidence. They're Limerick champions which is a very, very good league. The following week they beat St Michael's in the Munster Junior Cup and the week after that they beat Pike 3-2. They're not a bad team and I thought we bossed them for large portions of that game up there.

“We'd be confident no matter who we get but I want a home draw. I really want a home draw and I want to avoid the Mayo team. I'd like to see two Mayo teams in a quarter-final. We’ll play them then!”