THE BALTO BOYS ARE
at Aughrim forget the effort that a management team and a squad of players put in when you sit down to pen a report on a match. Last year was a bad year for Baltinglass. It wasn’t anyone’s fault as such. It was a bad year. It was flat despite the best efforts.
This year’s captain Jason Kennedy said they were very well prepared ahead of that game.
But Baltinglass don’t become a poor team overnight. There’s far too much football in those lads for that. Far too much work has gone in to underage in the club for a conveyor belt of talent not to be coming through and perhaps last year was just a year too soon for those young stars. In 2016, 12 months on, those young lads are now young men, fully capable of mixing it with the best of Wicklow football. And mix it they did. From the very first whistle it was abundantly clear that Baltinglass were extremely well up for this match. And not stupidly so. Not breathlessly pent up like a coiled spring. They were relaxed, composed, ready and able. At the end of the parade they immediately returned to passing balls around. Nice and easy. Everything orchestrated. Everything organised or should we say ‘Garriganised’.
What Paul Garrigan has brought to this young team in 2016 is impossible to measure. Jason Kennedy said that his approach to training where the ball is king was a massive ingredient in the success of the team. The Baltinglass captain said that not only did they get physically fit early in the year but they also got mentally fit because everything was done with the ball.
It’s not just Paul Garrigan of course. There’s a backroom team there. Ciaran Walshe is there. Paddy Dowling is there. Paul Fleming is there. Paudge Doody is there. There’s a fine collection of footballing brains if ever I saw one.
What impressed this writer the most was the renewed team ethic in the Baltinglass camp. Pat’s are an exceptional group of players but on Sunday afternoon there was only one true team on the field in Aughrim. Where St Pat’s became slightly disjointed and weak at key junctions, Baltinglass became stronger. They hunted in numbers. They were relentless. Far too much was expected of Paudge McWalter and far too little was delivered by key men and it will take a monumental effort, in psychological terms, to bring this Pat’s team back to the summit again. They are physically capable but three defeats in a row in the county final will require drastic action in the landscape of the sporting brain.
Reliance on key men was something expelled from the Baltinglass mindset by Paul Garrigan and his management team. Gone was the need for John McGrath to star in every game and the Wicklow stalwart is so much the better for that release. The talented link man got through a mountain of work on Sunday. He was vital to the cause yet you didn’t get the impression that he was carrying that awful weight of expectation on his shoulders. Far too often when John McGrath or the likes of Joey Kelly didn’t shine or when they were singled out for close attention the Baltinglass cause was damaged beyond repair.
Not this year. If John McGrath or Joey Kelly or Henry Sinnott or Sean O’Brien or whoever hadn’t performed, someone else would have replaced them. This is a team. There is unity.
Mark Jackson was immense. His kick outs were of a high standard and he looked secure and sound at all times. Tommy Murphy worked his socks off. Mark Staines