Barry buoyant as Rathnew get their hands on league trophy
JUBILANT Rathnew AFC manager Barry Mernagh spoke with the Wicklow People afterwards and we began by getting his thoughts on finally winning a league title.
“It’s brilliant to actually get a league, it’s my fifth season with them. It’s the only trophy that has eluded us. There’s been a lot of antics going on, referees not going to our games that are out of our control. It’s really, really special to show people that we’re not going anywhere.
“We have four or five youths, we’ve Christian Kearney, Sean Paul Dunne, Michael Anthony Doyle, Jack (Healy), they’re all in their early 20s. We’re here to stay. We have lads at the wrong side of 30 but we’re fighting and we’re not happy that we’re not in four trophies to be honest with you but that’s the way it goes.”
What has been the difference this year?
“If I’m honest with you, at the start of the season we had a meeting and we usually set out to win the Wicklow Cup, that’s no secret, but this season some of the older lads piped up and said let’s give this league a rattle and let’s go for the league 100 per cent.
“We’ve gone through the league and we’ve lost one game to Rialto and the Ashford game, we all know what happened there. But to go through the season, even against Rialto we were very unlucky, the referee after the game said we were the best junior team he had seen in a long time, so you go through a season like that, in my opinion the best team over the season wins the league. We set that at the start of the season.”
Is it difficult with lads playing Gaelic Football, missing at the start of the soccer season and the end of the season, perhaps playing with the county?
“It is, it is. Rathnew is always a GAA community to the backbone and GAA is number one. We don’t try to fight that, we try to mind that as best we can. We try to fight for trophies when lads come back from the GAA. Unfortunately this year Bray beat them early in the quarter-finals and so we had them from the first game which means we were at full strength.
“They’ve stuck with it. They’ve stuck with it, we’ve cut our training back to one night a week. There’s a few of them out four or five nights a week with Gaelic and soccer so you have to appreciate what they’re doing and it’s to them that’s owed today.”
We wondered whether Barry and Rathnew AFC are looking towards the future and trying to build on this year’s success, but he quickly let us know he’s not finished with this year.
“Well, we’re not finished this year! So we’ll aim to win the Jim McLaughlin Cup. Anyone who was here last week (Wicklow Cup semi-final against Ashford Rovers) would know, that while Ashford stayed in the game, we dominated that game just like we dominated that game today but we just didn’t get one bit of luck.
“Now Ashford stuck in it and I’m not taking anything away from them and it’s a great achievement, I think that’s their third Cup final in a row, but I think last week had we got a bit of luck that could have been the same score line as today. So we’ll be trying to win the Jim McLaughlin Cup and we’ll be regrouping at the end of the season and the committee will plan their way forward, whether it’s with me or without me, but Rathnew will go nowhere, we’ll always be here. We’ll always be strong and fighting.
“I just hope to God the league starts being run a bit better to be honest with you. There’s three or four lads trying to run the league on their own and it’s no disrespect to them. We’re after losing poor Tommy Heffernan, may he rest in peace, so I think there’s still three or four and we’re here giving out, social media is hopping giving out about the lads, but maybe a few people should step up and give them a hand. Try to make Wicklow league strong again. Dublin teams came in this year and I think the first four teams are Wicklow teams so it shows the standard here. We need to get behind the league instead of dragging them down and giving out about them all the time.”