Historic win no shock to manager
AS the frost slowly set around the feet of Paul Malone on Thursday night, the Bush manager couldn’t hide the warmth he felt for his history-aking side.
Fully aware of what was at stake beforehand, Malone didn’t make possible success a burden but chose to embrace the energy into a match-winning performance.
‘We knew that statistic coming into the game,’ Malone said.
‘We kinda knew that a team performance would trump any individual talent. We were focused, we were underdogs and we knew that if came out and all played to a nine out of 10 that we would hopefully make history in our school and thankfully we did that.
‘We believed in the talent that we have, from Roche Emmets, Pats, Cooley, Cuchulainn Gaels and Young Irelands. We’ve a lot of talent in our school and we knew that if we could harness that talent the outcome would be a positive one.
‘Full credit to the full team who game an honest account of themselves tonight.’
The peninsula side didn’t start the way they would have liked, but once they got up and running they never went behind.
‘Nerves played a little part initially,’ Malone admitted.
‘But as the game wore on, the boys settled into the pace of the game and got to grips around the middle of the field and we started to run at them. We knew when we ran at them and the space is created inside, there is very few defenders in the county that can stop the boys.’
Asked abut the impact of the sendings-off, Malone agreed that his side capitalised fully on the numerically advantage.
‘In fairness the space opened up for us and we were able to capitalise on the extra space that was there and we made a few changes too that ensured we would be victorious.’
The barrier-breaking triumph is a culmination of years of dedicated work, according to Malone, who spread the plaudits and praise to his colleagues for all their work with Bush down the years.
‘We’ve been building,’ he said. ‘We’ve been building this team since Under-14 level. Mr Joe Corcoran, myself, Shane Brennan, William Carry, Michael Rogers. We’ve a great team of teachers in the school who have put a lot of hours into this team.
‘It’s a team effort. We all worked together and each one of those teachers would have played a part in bringing these boys from Under-14 to Under-16 to here today.
‘But it’s no surprise. We’ve won trophies at Under 14, Under-16, both at county and Leinster level.’