‘We’ve been 15 years at this’
COOLERA/STRANDHILL manager Kieran Tobin described as ‘huge’ and ‘magic’, his club’s first ever Sligo Senior Hurling Championship title win.
This was the red and white’s fifth decider in eight years having lost out in 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2016.
“It feels tremendous”, Tobin beamed.
“It’s been a long time coming. “Our first final was in 2010 and to lose that and three others and then go on to win this one is a tremendous feeling. It took a lot of work and hard effort.”
This was Coolera’s third game in seven days after Easkey dragged them to last Wednesday’s semi-final replay. Tired, they were slow to start but a fiery second half showing aided by a stiffening breeze, was enough to earn them the cup.
“It wasn’t looking good in the first half ”, Kieran admitted. “We’d gone down a good few points but managed to pull it back. By halftime we’d nearly levelled it and thankfully pushed on second half.
“We weren’t sure whether to play with or without the breeze in the first half. We could see the distances we were getting on the puck outs so we knew we’d have an advantage with that breeze behind us.”
The Tipperary native, who moved to Sligo in 1989 said the win was all about the hard yards in the early days.
“For Coolera, this is huge”, he smiled. “We’ve been 15 years at this. Myself, Tom Brennan and a couple of the guys have kept it going over the years underage where we’ve been successful. But to win a first senior title is magic. We’re delighted and we’ll celebrate for a long time.”
With Coolera featuring a number of dual-players and their footballers making it all the way to the senior semi-final, loyalties were tested at times. But Tobin was quick to praise the support of the other code. “We have quite a lot of lads playing football too and it’s always difficult when both are going for the top title but we worked with John McPartland and his team and it worked well.”
When pressed on how good this Coolera side can go on to be and with Calry’s recent dominance in mind, Tobin says it was first of all imperative that the monopoly on the crown was first broken.
Already looking to 2019, he said: “We’d love to defend it. It will be hard because you’re going to lose players. But we’ve a good crop coming through.
“But it’s also opened up hurling in Sligo. Calry obviously won seven-in-a-row so to break that was important. But it would be very hard to emulate what Calry have done.”