MAHONY RELIEVED TO GET OVER THE FINAL LINE
PHILIP MAHONY doesn’t pretend to hide how the pain of past disappointments has shaped his career with Ballygunner. ‘If we never won Munster, it would have stuck with me until the day I die,’ he said as his club bridged a gap of 17 years to their previous provincial triumph on Sunday. Mahony was part of an heroic rearguard effort that limited 2017 champions Na Piarsaigh’s vaunted attack to just 1-2 from play.
The over-riding emotion for the Waterford club as they collected their second title was obvious. ‘Relief. If you knew how much I thought about winning this for the last 10 years, you’d probably say I wasn’t normal. One thing we were always told when we were young is the easiest thing in life to do is give up. ‘In the last five years we came back every year and we worked harder and harder, even when we thought we couldn’t work any harder. We managed to try and eek out another one or two per cent, and we got over the line and it’s the best feeling I’ve ever had in my life anyway. It really is. Without a shadow of a doubt, it’s the best feeling ever.’ And Mahony insisted that past provincial final defeats had been difficult to shake from his memory. ‘Last year in the final, myself and Ian Kenny came out to it, the two of us hesitated and they got a goal from it. That’s been chewing away at us for the last 12 months. ‘It’s all gone now. It definitely makes it sweeter. I remember back in 2009, when I was 18 on the panel here against Newtownshandrum, we got into a position towards the end of the game where we could have won it. Again at the time, I thought we’d a very young team, a lot of success underage, and it might get a little bit easier. ‘I don’t think there has ever been a team that has had to work as hard to win a provincial championship as we have,’ he added.