Goal hero admits he ‘just hit it’
DUNDALK Young Irelands goalscorer Aidan Sheekey puts his exquisite finish from distance to become a Leinster final hero in the depths of injury time down to all the years refining his aim in an effort to beat his shot- stopping brother Fergal. ‘Definitely, that’s it,’ he nodded in agreement. ‘That was for him, because he saves everything in training and we hadn’t conceded a goal in 17 games or something. And then he conceded two today but it showed the character we have.’
That character was also backed up with a plan B in case the trusted Irelanders defence would be breached. It worked double-fold.
‘All week we were saying that if anyone scores a goal against us, it was up to the character of our team to show that a goal doesn’t matter. When they scored a goal we scored three points in a row to level it at half time.’
All that muscle memory down the years was needed because despite being guided otherwise once the chance came upon the impact midfielder he knew exactly what to do when he didn’t exactly know what went through his head at the time. Autopilot?
‘I don’t really know to be honest’ he admitted. ‘Derek (Maguire) just said point! point! point! and I just said hit it and I was lucky enough just to hit it,’ he continued.
‘Derek gave me a great pass in and I didn’t really have to move I took two steps. You just hit it and if it went in it went in. We were after missing a few, I thought handy enough scores and we got them wide but look that’s what I do come on, impact sub.’
Sheekey knows exactly why he does what he does despite not liking his new impact role. Family.
‘To be honest I’m not used to it (impact role), I’m a bit of a sulker,’ he acknowledged.
‘Look I played soccer throughout my whole career I wasn’t going to come back to Gaelic. And my granddad died and before he passed he said to me, ‘do me a favour, go back, go back and win something with the Irelanders’.
‘And first year I went back we got relegated so I said that didn’t go to plan so I said I’d stick at it and obviously this year has just taken off. But look, winning with my brother is just the best feeling in the world, we’re all brothers in there.’