‘To get over the line is magic’
Gerry Buckley
A relative unknown in Westmeath this time last year, Laois man Lar Wall was the toast of The Downs last Sunday after guiding the club to its first Flanagan Cup success since 2005.
Spirit and heart in abundance have always been given traits of the men wearing the famous black and amber jerseys, and it was no surprise that the winning manager honed in on these areas after last Sunday’s deserved dethroning of St Loman’s, Mullingar in dreadful weather at TEG Cusack Park.
“It was all about heart and all about grit,” he opined, “and at the end of the day, that’s the most important commodity in a sportsman. When the chips are down and it’s not looking likely, you just dig in.”
He continued: “As a spectacle, it probably wasn’t great. The conditions kind of destroyed it, because it had the makings of a good open game. Both teams have good forwards. They like to run at teams, but it just didn’t happen that way.”
Wall lauded the major contributions of his large cohort of Clonkill hurlers, all of whom dusted themselves down and produced outstanding displays just seven days after the heartbreak of losing a Westmeath SHC final to Castletown-Geoghegan.
“It was a big ask for them to come out and lift themselves. They were tremendous, every single one of them – Niall (Mitchell), Luke (Loughlin), and Darragh Egerton, all of them. They are huge leaders,” he reflected.
Wall conceded that “a lot of people wouldn’t have backed us at half-time", and he reckoned that his charges turned St Loman’s over 20 times in the second half.
“The turnovers, I think, were unbelievable,” he stressed. “We didn’t foul. We could have fouled a few times. We just stayed on them and eventually turned over the ball. That gave us huge energy in the second half. The age profile of the teams is very, very young. But the character they showed in the second half was unreal.”
“Listen, it’s just fairytale stuff. It’s unbelievable – just to see the joy in the players. To get over the line is magic,” he concluded.