“They’re an amazing bunch of players”
Rathgormack's Captain Willie Hahessy raise the Conway Cup high following the presentation by Sean Michael O’Regan, Chairman Co.GAA Board, much to the delight of his teammates. Photo: Sean Byrne
Rathgormack manager Kenny Hassett hailed the work ethic of his players as they recovered from three county final defeats in a row to achieve back to back titles.
“They’re an amazing bunch. It’s not just what you see here on the pitch and the effort on the training field, it’s their recovery, their gym work, they way they look after themselves and get themselves in a position to be in six county finals. It’s no coincidence. They’re a very mature group, some great leaders in it. All the younger lads are following these lads. Like Willie said in his speech, we’ve lads coming back from Limerick for training, we’ve lads coming back from Tralee. That’s the standards they’ve set and they want to maintain those standards.”
The Rathgormack players were back out early for the second half. The champions led by four but Hassett and his management team demanded more.
“We weren’t happy with our support play. We had the wind but we felt we weren’t getting up to support the man on the ball. It had to work in the second half against the wind. If we didn’t do it, we were going to find ourselves in trouble. We have the athleticism with Willie Hahessy, Glen Power, Sean Hahesy, the Currys, Billy and James Power. They have the legs to get up the field but we needed to do that more often and we did in the second half.”
James Power carried out those instructions to a tee as he ran and ran at the Ballinacourty backs throughout the second half.
“James has been phenomenal all year. This is our fifth championship match and he has been phenomenal in the five of them. The goal at the end was the icing on the cake for him. We knew we had to carry it, you can’t kick it in that wind. We always knew we would get a wind in Fraher Field but it’s as severe as I’ve seen it in a long time. We have players with the ability to carry it so we did. It worked out well for us.”
Cathal Crowch’s second half point was a significant one as it ended a 26 minute wait for a score. A couple of decisions went against Rathgormack just before that which left Hassett frustrated on the sideline. “I can get a bit emotional at times! Look, it’s an emotional game. That’s the way it is. Crowchy’s point settled us down. The crowd reacted. You could hear and feel the noise. That settled us down and we went from there. We scored 2-3 in the second half which is good scoring against that wind.”
