‘I’m so proud of the boys’ Laffan questions late frees
GLENEALY manager Garry Laffan tried his best to take whatever scraps of positivity he could find from last Saturday’s gut-wrenching Leinster final defeat against Ballyragget but, as he said himself, nobody has any interest in moral victories, and certainly not a team like Glenealy.
The Wexford native felt his side were the better team on the day but that the breaks that always seem to go against the small counties and the small teams came back to haunt his gallant warriors.
“We’re devastated to be honest. I feel we were the better team on the day, not taking away from Ballyragget, they are a serious team, but on the performance from this game I felt we were the better team. Maybe their little bit of craftiness probably took it away from us in the end,” said Gary Laffan in Nowlan Park.
“I thought there were a few 50/50 chances when we were two or three points up that went against us and, you know unfortunately, the smaller teams and the smaller counties, these breaks always seem to go against them when these games are tight.
“I don’t know (why this always seems to happen), to be honest with you, I just don’t know. Look, we’re devastated. As I said, those little breaks near the end, another day I don’t think they would have got frees from them.
“Look, we can blame nobody. I’m so proud of the boys, they’ve put in such a serious effort all year, they have a serious way of going about themselves, serious pride in what they do, from that point of view we’re delighted, but look, we’re devastated, that’s the only thing I can say,” he added.
To a man, Glenealy were immense. Obviously, there were dips and troughs and tiredness involved across the board but for the most part the Wicklow champions left everything out on the field. Laffan declined to start picking out individuals because a key philosophy of his management style is that it’s about the panel, the panel, the panel.
“To be honest, I’m not going to start picking out individuals, we’re a collective team, we used four or five subs here today and we do that every day. I’m trying to drill that into the boys, 15 hurlers will win nothing, we need 30 lads that are fighting for 24 places, the places on the bench first and then the 15 places on the team.
“They’re buying into it slowly but surely. Look, the biggest thing for us was to get to that Senior final back in Wicklow because there’s something different about Glenealy when they get to a final, just the best comes out in them. So, really whether it is in Nowlan Park, Croke Park, Wexford Park, Arklow, Aughrim, I don’t think it matters to these lads, they just want to hurl and they give everything to the parish and they give everything for their families and they give everything for Glenealy hurling,” he said.
Glenealy were huge underdogs coming into the game, six to one earlier in the day in a two-horse race. But Glenealy stood tall and stood proud and matched them in every way they could.
“You’re playing Kilkenny, the aristocrats of hurling in Ireland, their technical ability was always going to be better than ours, which is fine, we were fine with that,” said Laffan.
“But things we could work on were that we were fitter than them, we could be hungrier than them, we could work for the breaking ball, we could challenge them harder. These were things we worked on. We had to work on our positives. To be fair to the lads, they done all that and the one thing that probably beat them was that bit of technical ability and craftiness.
“Look, it’s gut-wrenching. It might take a week to get over this, life has to go on I know, but..
“Even a draw, moral victories are not worth a damn to anybody, nobody wants a moral victory. We certainly don’t. We’ll take it on the chin but at the same time it is devastating,” he added.
His season is now over but in his first year Garry Laffan must admit that it has been an amazing season for the Glenealy men to return to the summit in Wicklow and come within a matter of moments to a Leinster crown.
“It has (been amazing), and even in the last five minutes it was still amazing, because it’s not that the lads gave up, it’s just that things went against them.
“Our season, there were highs and lows. At the end of the day you never get everything right in the first year. I’m sure there will be questions asked of different things but we have to try and do what’s right for Glenealy at the time. The boys bought into it. It took a while to change a few little things, little attitudes, but that’s fine as well, you don’t change anything overnight. But I think you see the sum total of it in Nowlan Park today. They (Glenealy) are a serious outfit, they’re willing to die for each other.
“But the only thing about it is that it took 60 years and 15 Wicklow championships to get a chance at a Leinster final and, you know, God knows how long it could take to get back here so that’s why it’s so devastating for us because it’s a long, long road back from the first round of the Wicklow championship next year again,”.
And from here?
“We’ll lick our wounds. It’s gone (the Leinster Intermediate title dream). We’ll just go home, take stock and see what happens after Christmas,” he said.