‘This means everything’

Tough days makes win special

BRAY EMMETS manager John Butler was a delighted man after the final whistle of the Wicklow LGFA Intermediate football final in Baltinglass last Saturday. He had just watched his charges repeatedly fight off the challenge of the excellent Clara women and he was quick to heap praise of them for their efforts.

‘Two teams really going for it. We thought we had done in the first half with the wind but we just didn’t use it.

‘In fairness to them they came back. It was a good time a point at the very death to bring us to extra-time.

‘I thought Clara were fantastic to be honest. They were dangerous. When we gave them an inch, they took the inch and they ran off with the mile. They were fantastic.

‘I’d say for the partisan it was an absolutely fantastic game to watch. The only sad thing is that there wasn’t a crowd to see this today,’ he said.

Bray clocked up a serious amount of wides over the course of the 80 minutes but the introduction of Laura Butler and her performance in extra-time where she bombed over four points was key to Bray’s victory.

‘Laura had a knee scope done about seven weeks ago, so she’s just back training two weeks ago. We needed someone to score. We were having problems with scoring,’ he said.

‘They’re a great bunch. Great mix of youth and maturity in the team and it’s fantastic. I’m very proud. ‘It was a tough year last year. We came down from senior. We took some big defeats, big hits. We had to come down and get some younger players playing and get competitive, and it’s worked. But we’re back up and we’re hoping we’re going to keep ourselves back up there now,’ he added.

Bray Emmets captain Úna O’Grady delivered one of the finest speeches after a final ever delivered in Wicklow. She spoke at length about the bravery and talent in the Clara ranks and declined to offer three cheers as she described it as probably the worst thing to hear after a defeat like the one they had just suffered.

‘I think we went out pumped and we didn’t expect them to be anywhere near as up for it as we were. It was like getting hit by a bus, those first five minutes seeing how ready for it they were. The intensity they brought to it, the passion they brought to it was savage,’ said Úna after the game.

‘We thought it had gotten away from us with about five minutes to go and then when we got into extra-time, we just knew we had the legs. We’ve been training since January, in the gym, doing gym sessions. We’ve been putting in long sessions. When we got to extra-time we knew the fitness would carry us through.

‘But they wouldn’t give up. We hoped that they would but they didn’t. It’s just feels brilliant (to win).

‘It’s well up there (in terms of sporting achievements). We’ve had five probably star players out with ACLs in the last two or three years. It actually just happened with Covid that so many girls came home from training who were teaching abroad or off travelling and they found themselves at home, and we kind of looked around and said, ‘Jesus, we have one of the best teams in the county, how did this happened?’ So, Covid probably won it for us.

‘It means everything to us. We’ve had some really rough defeats; almost triple figures being put up against us. It’s so demoralising, it’s slaughter, lambs to the slaughter, so to win today just meant everything,’ she said.

Again, the introduction of Laura Butler helped to turn the tide, as did the goals from Emily Cahill and Saoirse Canavan.

But Butler’s threat in front of the Clara goal really put Bray on the front foot at a key juncture of this game.

‘She’s been out injured, she probably shouldn’t have played at all, but we knew we needed some firepower up the front, very out of character for us to be putting so many wides on the board, we haven’t done it at all this season. She just said ‘put me on’. And this is going from nothing for three months (in terms of training) to going on to the pitch and she really pulled it out of the bag for us,’ said the proud captain.

The Bray midfielder had said she wanted the headlines to read, ‘Bray were relentless’. She was certainly going to get her wish after that performance.

‘It was just our motto for the whole season. We said we were going to be relentless from start to finish,’ she said.