St Brendan’s manager reflects with pride on season
St Brendan's captain Fionn Ó'Donoghue in action against Rice College, Ennis. Picture: Michael Donnelly
As Rice College, Ennis celebrated joyously, all over the field St Brendan’s players sunk to the ground in despair after losing by the minimum.
Their storming comeback fell just short but, as teachers, parents and coaches moved between them, commiserating with them, a common theme was pride.
“I said after the Connacht final that these lads don’t know how to give up and they proved it again today,” St Brendan’s College manager Noel McLoughlin told the . “We’re extremely, extremely proud of them. I know in every game you have to have a loser but they went to the well so many times in that game. I said it before, the character these boys have, the team – we’re united. They’re unbelievable as a group of young lads. Erris and Erris schools should be so, so proud of them.”
Late drama has been part and parcel of their campaign and McLoughlin praises how much growth the campaign has given the players.
“Every game so far this year … We were down by a point to St Tiernan’s in the round robin stage against a gale and managed to get the equaliser. We were five points down to Ballygar in the quarter-final with eight minutes to go and we won by three and in the semi-final three days later the lads were level with three minutes to go and we won by four. These boys, the character … We’re always on about youth and resilience and that’s what the GAA and sport is about. It builds that. These boys are so disappointed now but they can know that they gave it their all in the second half. Our motto this year has been ‘if you are going to miss the bus this year, miss it running’ and they missed it running.”
While they missed chances late on, the game was arguably lost in the first half when they were on top with the wind but left their shooting boots behind, only scoring two points.
“Once you miss the first one, the second one, there is a domino effect. The lads tried their best, that’s all we can ask for them.
“What we are saying as a management group all week is the progress these lads have made from the first game of the season. We won the Flanagan D but the progress since that game has been unbelievable to a man, to a 30 man panel, every single one of them. The town has got behind them, sponsors got behind us. We’ve been so lucky as a school and I hope we represented the people of Erris well today,” he said.
