By Brendan McTaggart
Dunloy manager Gregory O’Kane stood at the entrance to the changing rooms at Páirc Mac Uílín as the cheers from Cushendall could be heard in the background. It can’t have been easy for him to listen to those cheers. His side came close to recapturing the Volunteer Cup after 60 minutes of championship hurling against the Ruairi’s played into the teeth of Storm Ashley.
The conditions were bordering ridiculous and it was the hot topic for discussion amongst the patrons in Ballycastle. O’Kane said: “The wind was so bad, it was hard to know if it was an advantage considering how we played in the second half.”
Leading by six at half time, it took Dunloy 18 minutes to register another score in the second half. They did have goal chances in that time though and the Dunloy manager said they felt like they could work with the conditions: “You look at the goal chances. It’s a funny one. Once you got past the breeze and in behind, there was goals on. We hit a few wides in the first half, maybe four of them from placed ball. It came down to millimeters and it was a lottery at the end of the day.
“You’re probably thinking now should the game of been played. There’s savage amount of county finals called off throughout the country. It’s just a pity. You don’t get both teams able to express themselves and the way the ball was going, it became a lottery.
“I know we create inside and that would happen even into the breeze. We had goal chances and a goal at that stage probably wins that game.”
Despite the defeat O’Kane stressed on how proud he was of his team and rued the loss of Conal Cunning down to a serious knee injury: “Coby is a hell of a player, what team in Ireland would he not get on. To loss a player of that stature, you really feel it but listen, every Dunloy man on that pitch died with his boots on and you can’t ask for more than that. They gave absolutely everything on a horrendous day.”
After winning four in a row, Dunloy had set the standard in Antrim. Sunday was the first time in 9 years the Ruairi’s had won back to back county titles and with talk of Cushendall now setting the standard, O’Kane said: “We take our chances we win that game. You can talk about levels but at the end of the day we had the chances to win that game. Over the course of the game we probably had more chances and that’s what it comes down to.
“Fair play to Cushendall, they had the same elements and won the game.”