Colleges players a credit to the game

I KNOW it is one of the great cliches that managers always peddle when they want to pay tribute to players who have emptied themselves in the cause, but the following rings absolutely true.

This weekend our Tralee CBS team got it on with Cork’s Coláiste Chríost Rí for the third time in as many weeks in the Munster Colleges semi-final and I can say with hand on heart that it has been an absolute privilege to manage them.

At this stage, the result will not change how I feel and I am pretty sure my old Cork adversary, Paul Kerrigan (below), who is managing Chriost Ri feels the same.

We have been through two epic games, both of which went to extratime, in the past fortnight and we still could not be separated. Now the whole thing has taken a life of its own.

The college game is football at its purest; I remember an All-Ireland semi-final between Coláiste na Sceilge, Cahirciveen and Tuam’s St Jarlath’s which was hailed as ‘the best game that was ever played’ by one commentator with Declan O’Sullivan and Micheal Meehan playing starring roles. I feel I am living through that right now and it is humbling to see how much some of our players and their families have invested in this tie. Four of our players had been due to go on a ski trip with their class mates this week. It cost them €800 and some of them had purchased equipment that probably cost another couple of hundred.

Yet when faced with the holiday of a lifetime or a game of ball, they did not have to think twice about their decision.

Paul told me that several of his team also shelved similar plans for a mid-term holiday but, like our own, they refused to give up on this engrossing rivalry.

Like I say, I have been around some dressing rooms in my time, but I have never felt so humbled to be in this one.