Hard work in training pays off

AGB’S Damien Redmond and Eugene Bentley were visibly stunned after the dramatic finale to the IFC final in Aughrim last Sunday.

They had just watched their charges go two points down with time seemingly up. Surely the championship was dead and buried. They must have had that horrible, nasty sinking feeling in their stomachs when you realise that everything is lost.

But Mervyn kicks the ball to Tom. He’s fouled. He kicks the free to Hurley, he darts forward, stops, passes, the ball is worked to Chris O’Brien and who better to make a run across the middle and send a dainty little ball forward to Ross Hynes.

Hynes gathers, slips it to Cormac Hyland and up she goes, sailing through the cloudy Autumn sky over the county grounds and down she comes like a bomb on the Ballinacor square.

Bodies jump, the ball spills and skids off the back of Philip Gleeson and here he comes, oh yes, here he comes, light the fires and kick the tyres here’s Cal Kelly, charging like a demented bull. He gathers and flashes the ball home to the bottom corner of the net. BOOM!

“Ballinacor didn’t stop,” said Damien Redmond. “We went four points up and Joe Murphy’s team dug it out and dug it out and then got within a point and then the goal and we thought it was gone.

We worked the ball from the corner-back and got the goal.

“We’ve been working in every training session for the last 10 minutes of games. We’d put in an hour at training and then do 10 minutes of hard physical work and that’s what did it for us in the end,” he said.

Eugene Bentley said he had never seen so many Arklow supporters at a GAA game before in his life when he was asked what this win meant for the club.

“You can see from the amount of Arklow supporters here.

“I’ve never seen that number of Arklow supporters at a GAA match. And then at halftime you had the young lads playing on the pitch and that brings belief into the whole thing,” he said.

Boht men paid a massive tribute to Ballinacor and to Joe Murphy and said that the Carnew man had instilled huge heart into the Glenmalure side but that thanks to the endeavour of Cal Kelly, who once again stood up when required, it was their team who had sneaked victory at the death.