‘It’s a huge step for a club like us’ insists Collins

IT was, as they say, a day of days for Kilmoyley and their talisman Daniel Collins.

The heartache of Sixmilebridge twelve months ago was expunged with a performance of verve, of vim and vigour from both him and his team. It was a statement that needed to be made.

“It’s a huge step for a club like us,” Collins said straight up.

“I’m kinda caught for words now at the moment, but to get to a Munster final [is huge]. Ballyduff did it a couple of years ago and we always wanted to do what they did and now we’re there. I think we’ve the Shanahans coming from Lismore on the other side so we’ll be prepared for that. We can’t wait, we just can’t wait.

“It was the time [to do it]. We’ve probably had better teams down through the years, but this team you won’t find a more united bunch. There’s no individuals. We lost Shane [Brick] there, Luke [Fitzell] and Seán Nolan from the county final and three other fellas came in and you see the job that they did and it was absolutely fantastic. It’s all about the team, it’s not about anybody else.”

Ballyduff, of course, reached two Munster finals, coming up short in both. The objective now for Kilmoyley has to be to go one better.

“That’s obviously going to be the aim, but we’ll take it one step at a time and we’re looking forward to Lismore anyway. They only way it can get better is to win the Munster final and that’s what we’re going to try to do!”

One interesting thing to consider about last Sunday was the long gap between it and their County Final victory over Ballyduff.

“Six weeks was a long break,” Collins acknowledged.

“We really didn’t start back training until about four weeks ago. We probably had a week off and then two handy weeks, but in the last three weeks especially it’s been hell for leather above in that small half an acre up in the field, literally running, running, running.

“It’s great it all paid off, to be fair to the management, all the calls they made were absolutely fantastic and it’s just a great day for the club.”