‘This was one of the best feelings ever’
ON Thursday, June 23, St Pat’s Féile squad went on a bus down to Limerick and stayed there overnight and we had so much banter. I can’t describe it and we woke up the early hours of Friday to head down to Renard GAA club in Kerry to play our first two matches.
In our first match we played against De Le Salle and it was a close and good game both teams played some lovely football but St Pat’s were the winners in the end and then we went on to play Waterville/Dromid and we also beat them.
After all the matches were played that day all the teams had a barbecue and had deadly craic with the team. The best bit of that day was we were all flipping a bottle and trying to get it to land on the bottom and every time someone did it the whole team would go mental and start jumping up and down.
But then along came Dylan Kavanagh and flipped the bottle and it landed straight on the lid of the bottle and the excitement was crazy for about five minutes everyone was going mental.
Then we all went back to the host houses for the night and woke up the next morning and headed back down to the club to play the big match against the families we were staying with (Renard).
This was our toughest match so far and the standard of football was brilliant and in the end St Pat’s won by two points.
So St Pat’s won the group and went into the town to play their quarter-finals in St Mary’s. We played Skellig Rangers/Valentia Young Islanders.
St Pat’s won that match so they had won four out of four and were into the semi-finals. On the same night we had the disco and the parade all the teams marched thought the town with the team flags and team colours and when we got to the end Declan O’Sullivan gave a speech to all the players.
After the parade everyone went into the pub for the disco. Everyone had an unbelievable amount of craic. Whenever the song “Will Griggs on Fire” came on the place was electric everyone was dancing and screaming out the song it was such a great experience.
The final day came and we said goodbye to our host families and that we hope to meet them in the finals. So over to Killarney we went to play against Annaclone from Banbridge in the semi-finals and this was a very good and close match and in the end St Pat’s won and we were into the finals and we were all waiting to hear from the other semi-finals and we were hoping the team that hosted us won but unfortunately Thomastown came out on top so at two we had to play Thomastown in the finals.
Heading into the final match our team got into a huddle and our captain, Cian, started crying this made it a very inspirational team talk and made everyone want it more than ever.
So the match began and it was very tight after 10 minutes they were up by a point and they were against the wind.
But then our full forward Luke Kelly the tank stuck a few balls in the goals and so did Callum Kelly.
We were a point up at half-time. And the second half started and we were up by four points five minutes from the end and then just as Thomastown were about to score a goal our captain, Cian, put his body on the line and dislocated his knee. This was a not nice way to end the tournament but this made us want it more. Cian got taken off on a stretcher.
And at the end St Pat’s won the match by none points! As Cian was being taken off in the ambulance, we all sang “we love you, Ciano, we do, we love you, Ciano, we do, we love you, Ciano, we do, ohhh Ciano, we love you”.
Half of us were crying because if it wasn’t for Cian we probably wouldn’t have won.
Jack Fox gave the speech as our vice captain and even Luke Kelly was crying - that was something I would very rarely see - we all got medals and then ‘Foxy’ was given the trophy and the celebrations were crazy. It was a mixture of crying and chanting. This was one of the best feelings ever.
Some of us have been a team since we were five so it meant a lot to us that we had All-Ireland medals. We got on the bus and chanted all the way home.
When we got to Lidl car park, the one and only Cian Kelly was waiting for us and we cavalcaded up the town and we were welcomed to the club by the girls team. We had a lot of fun at the clubhouse and had the best week-