Pride, delight and relief for Senans stalwarts who never lost the faith

BRENDAN Whelan has been a commanding and influential presence for his club and District for over two decades. An outstanding leader, this particular result was understandably a pretty special moment for one of St Senans most famous sporting sons.

“Hard to describe, to be honest with you. It’s a long time coming, very emotional scenes here I suppose. We are kind of in shock at the moment,” Whelan reflected at the final whistle. “Overall today I think we were the better team. I suppose we just dug in, got a good start. We were in the final two years ago, we didn’t do ourselves justice, and today we just put up a lead, which mattered. That was the difference today, fellows battled hard for every ball. We maybe missed a few chances in the first half but we kept battling away, that was the main thing, we tipped away on the scoreboard.

“I started the off in ’95 and you always had that bit of belief. Even today we knew we have a great bunch of young players coming up. We gave Beaufort enough of it in the Junior Championship, and we weren’t far off it. Fellows have developed and got stronger in the last couple of years, and we have just a nice blend at the moment.

“I know with this bunch that they are capable, so things went our way today, and we are just delighted. We had four, five players from the start of the year playing hurling and football. It’s very hard to be honest. This time of the year Kerry had finished with a couple of months, we had all the players for the last couple of months, which made a big difference, so we could work on team plays and stuff, which made a difference.

“The average age of the team is probably no more that twenty four, twenty five, hopefully they can build on this. This will bring a lot of confidence and a lift to the place going forward. There is great potential if they can just stick together, and if we can just blend the hurling and football a bit more and just keep driving it on.”

SUNDAY’S win was a special honour for the Sean T Dillon, who now joins such greats as Eamonn Fitzmaurice, Stephen Stack, Eoin Liston, Eamonn O’Donoghue and Eddie Dowling as North Kerry Championship winning captains.

“The first one means everything, words can’t describe it, just unreal. The (final defeat) from two years ago just drove us on this year. Fifteen minutes and the game was over, there was no coming back, but this year we were well set up, and we were after having a good year.

“It was tough on Ballydonoghue, in fairness, week in week out, but that’s the way it goes. We had one hundred and twenty-five sessions this year, and not many players missed a session. Everything we wanted they (man- agement team) gave it to us. We were narrowly defeated by Beaufort, and they won the Junior, and are Munster champions now, that will tell you we were very close, only they got two soft enough goals. We only lost two games in the league, and we lost by a point each time, so it was tough, so hopefully we can drive it on (to) Division Two next year.”

SUNDAY crowned a wonderful season for dual player Sean Weir, who already this year had been honoured with an All Star award for his performances with Kerry in the Joe McDonagh competition.

“Great, unbelievable, it’s a great feeling to win, getting over the line finally. We didn’t talk about that (2016 final defeat) at all this year. That was in the past, we didn’t talk about it once. This is a new team, new players, I don’t know how many played two years ago. I played very little football in the summer but come Christmas time it’s all football, three, four nights a week trying to get the football back into it. It’s great when the hurling is finished to come back over to Senans, play football with all your friends you grew up with.

“We played Beaufort down in Crotta, we lost by two, three points, we gave away two goals, and they went on and won Munster, so we know we are not far off it. They (Ballydonoghue) won it twice in a row, so we really wanted it this year, thank god we got over the line, just delighted for everybody.”