A few regrets but no complaints as Reape tips his hat to winners

“Sometimes you forget what’s got you here, but we’re not going to.” 

So said Cormac Reape in the wake of Sunday’s Connacht LGFA senior club final, where Kilkerrin-Clonberne lifted the trophy for a sixth season running.

Reape recognised that his Knockmore team had just encountered an exceptional Galway outfit so felt it important that everything his players had achieved this year would not be lost amidst the disappointment of an eleven points defeat against the back-to-back All-Ireland champions.

“We were unbeaten since April up until today; when you look back we dominated what we had done up until this.

“When you come into a provincial championship and when you’re beaten, sometimes you forget what’s got you here but we’re not going to. To do a league and championship double in Mayo is something to be immensely proud of and there’s a lot more county titles in them I’m sure,” Reape told Midwest Radio, pointing out that the average age of the Knockmore squad is 22.5 years.

“Sometimes you can put your hands up and say you were beaten by the better team. They are a phenomenal outfit,” he said of Kilkerrin-Clonberne. 

But that’s not to say the manager wasn’t also disappointed with the outcome.

“We were not coming here just to compete or just to stick with them, we genuinely felt we had a chance. And I think we can make the argument that we did. [But] you have to be near perfect to beat them and we just weren’t on the day.

“Before half-time we gave them a few things to think about but we just didn’t come out for those initial ten minutes of the second-half.

“We had talked all week about keeping ourselves in the game until half-time and for those next five or ten minutes doing a Kilkerrin-Clonberne on Kilkerrin-Clonberne. I did feel that if we could get a couple of scores in that period, that we might have caused them a bit more bother but look, we’ve no complaints, you just have to take your hat off to them.

“There was five points in it at half-time, their goal was really the difference, and we missed a couple of chances. You look at what they have… they’ve no Ailish Morrissey at the minute, probably one of the best forwards in the country on her day, but they’ve weapons everywhere.

“It takes a lot of concentration to tie them down and for spells I thought we did it, but sometimes the class just shines through,” said Reape, adding that Knockmore weren’t able to play as high up the field as they had planned.

“Amy O’Connor got dragged back [the pitch], Shauna Howley got dragged back a couple of times. We didn’t plan that, because we wanted to play with a high line and try and suck them back the field, but it just didn’t really work. We were killing ourselves too much going back the way and trying to get back up the pitch again, and we just had to be a bit more patient. But they have experience and they have class and they’ve seen it all, they’ve done the lot. You have to be near perfect and we just fell short of that,” he concluded.