O’Kane pays tribute to his winning squad

By Brendan McTaggart

Dunloy manager Gregory O’Kane was probably the proudest man on the Ballycastle pitch on Sunday afternoon.  I’ve spoken with him after the recent defeats at the hands of the McQuillan’s during his previous two years at the helm and for a man who had a winning mentality throughout his playing day, defeat always hit him hard.  No-one could begrudge him his moment on Sunday.  The Dunloy faithful were queueing up to offer their congratulatory handshakes and we tried to have a word with him amongst the celebrations: “We had a training session last Sunday morning and when I left there I just didn’t see us getting beat to be honest.

“In the first half I felt like we played well, we just didn’t get the reward our efforts deserved.  A couple of decisions went against us and Cushendall capitalised.  It was a bit like the St John’s match where we played the game well but we needed a response.  I told the boys at half time that we needed to get back to type.  We needed to really open the game.  We’re all about pace and movement.  We needed to move the ball quicker out of the rucks.  Once we did that and got the runners going at them then the scores started to come.”

O’Kane told us that he felt his side were playing the game on Cushendall’s terms in the first half.  It was something they were wary off in the build-up and something they addressed again at half time: “We spoke about that coming into the game.  If Cushendall create the rucks, we had to move the ball quick.  They are so physical, they’ll batter you and wear you down and that’s what we spoke about at half time.  Find the spare man and release the ball at speed.  Thank God we did that.”

With so much talk about the youth coming through, O’Kane held special praise for the older hands in the Cuchullains team and squad: “We’ve been building for this for the last four years but there’s warriors in this team.  The James McKeague’s, the Woody’s (Conor McKinley), the Bunga’s (Kevin Molloy) and Paul Shiels – to get him fully fit this year was massive for us.

“We’ve the likes of Mickey McClements and that there who are good lads, they’ve held the fort and kept the structures there.  In training they kept setting the standards and when we got that minor group up from last year, it gelled everything so seamlessly.  The team became a unit from front to back and the boys just want to go out and play hurling.”

O’Kane told us that the celebrations will continue in the village for a few more days before they look at the Ulster series: “We’ll take today, tonight and tomorrow and celebrate this.  We’ll worry about who we have in the Ulster championship after that, I genuinely have no idea who it is as we hadn’t looked beyond our next match all year.  This has been a long time coming so we’re going to enjoy this one.”

 

Ruairi’s manager laments ‘Dall collapse, but generous in his praise of Dunloy

Cushendall manager Philip Campbell was devastated on the Ballycastle pitch on Sunday but still found time to have a word with us.  As always, the Ruairi’s manager gave a refreshingly honest assessment of the 60 minutes of hurling while praising the efforts of the Cuchullains: “We’re totally devastated as you would expect.

“There was nothing to suggest at half time what was about to happen.  We just totally collapsed for the first ten minutes of the second half and when we did it was too late.

“Today’s about to the victor the spoils and Dunloy put in a serious performance in the second half.  You can’t take it away from them.  The danger came from their wee young forwards and we held them in the first half not a problem, we were three points up and I thought we would kick on.  But we just totally collapsed.

“There’s no excuses, we were ready and we were fit, we played good games in the build up to the final but we just weren’t good enough on the day and that’s hard to take but it doesn’t make it any less true.”

The Ruairi’s were well placed at the interval and were worthy of their three point lead, Campbell told us that despite the build-up, they remained confident of keeping the talented Dunloy forward line at bay: “We were definitely happy at half time.  There was a lot of talk in the build-up about how our backs would cope and on their day our backs are the best defensive unit in Ulster, we had no fears coming into today from that respect.

“It just goes to show that when you’re playing a young hungry team in the championship, you can’t take your eyes off them for one minute.  We did for 10 at the start of the second half and they took the game away from us, the damage was done.

“It’s not about what we done wrong today, it’s about what Dunloy done right and it’s a great credit to them.  They were absolutely super and I can see them kicking on from here.  It will take a good team to beat them and I wish them all the best.”