Smyth feels Knockbridge can dominate into future

VICTORIOUS skipper Andrew Smyth feels all the ingredients are in place to make Knockbridge the dominant force in Louth hurling once again - after what was by their standards a barren spell.

Having landed eight Paddy Kelly Cups in the Noughties, his club won only two of the next eight championships - the same number as St Fechin’s, Pearse Og and the holders Naomh Moninne - but having wrestled back the trophy in Dunleer on Sunday afternoon Knockbridge aren’t going to let it go without a fight.

‘This means everything,’ agreed Smyth, speaking moments after lifting the trophy. ‘We trained so hard this year in both the football and hurling, and we were disappointed in the football, but we came through in the end today.

‘I’m absolutely over the moon, not just for me but for the club because it’s been four years since the last one. It seems like a lifetime. It was my first year on the team when we won it in 2014 and I only came on as a sub, and since then I worked my a*** off to get back onto the team, and this year I was made captain which was absolutely brilliant.

‘We’re going to push on from here. We have youths within the team, a great sideline, management. We’ve young players coming through at 18 and the average age of the team must be 28 and it’s fantastic to see. Everyone put in a big effort and everything is going smoothly.’

The captain acknowledged that Knockbridge regained the silverware the hard way, having been slow out of the blocks in the first period, but he felt Shane Fennell’s goal on the stroke of half-time gave them the belief to go on and finish the job.

‘It took us a while to get going,’ he agreed. ‘We tried hard and it just wasn’t coming for us. The heads were down and then we got that goal [from Fennell]. We didn’t play any hurling at all in the first half and we went in thinking we haven’t played any hurling yet and we’re only one point down. Let’s go back out and just give it to them, and it worked.

‘We came out in the second half and everything seemed to fall our way. We got the goals and that might have put the Fechin’s heads down a little bit, but we just played on from there.’

Analysing what went wrong in those first 25 minutes, Smyth suggested the long break - the result of finishing top in the group stage, while St Fechin’s had to play a semi-final - had an impact, but he doesn’t feel Sunday’s absence of the two Kettles will have any lasting negative effect.

‘There was a bit of a break there and it’s hard to keep lads interested when you have a three or four-week break,’ Smyth continued.

‘We were a wee bit rusty and a few things weren’t working out - a few things in the dressing-room before the game - but we dug through the second half and came through in the end.

‘The two Kettles couldn’t play today and it was just a bit of a mess-up, but the two boys are really interested in hurling, we’ll sort it out and have them back training, and without a doubt they’ll play in Leinster.

‘It [their absence] did drive us on. The two Kettles are big, key players to this club and we had to go without them, but being two men down doesn’t mean the whole things crumbles.’