This article is from page 75 of the 2007-10-23 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 75 JPG
A STRANGE, tough day for Stephen Cunningham and he says as much as he wheels away from a small knot of Crusheen men as Tulla captain Michael Murphy is about to put his paws all over the Canon Hamilton.
Cunningham turns his back to the stand and runs his mind over the past 60 minutes of hurling. Still hard to stomach. Still impossible to explain.
“You’d have thought the experience of the past couple of years would have drove us over the line at the end,” he says. “Because we were hungry for it. Nobody knows how hungry we were. I just can’t put my finger on why we lost today. There’s something else missing and that’s what we’ve got to find out.”
Straight, honest answers. It’s just over five minutes since the final whis- tle shrilled across the park and the game is still fresh in Cunningham’s head, still waiting to be digested.
“You can look at it any way you
like, but today just wasn’t our day. It belonged to Tulla and we’re the ones who’ll have to live with that. Get- ting to a final is all fine, but today isn’t about losers. A final isn’t good enough for Crusheen any more. We
need to win one. We’ve got to win one. Ah, we’ve been knocking on the door, putting in the hard work, coming close and other management teams have done as well. But this is heartbreak. The lads put in a great
effort and everything but today is about winners. Nothing else.”
High up on the stand, Murphy is holding the cup over his head now and Cunningham allows himself a gaze towards the podium.
“In fairness to Tulla you have to hand it to them. They were a hungry team. We missed some frees – some of them weren’t easy – but we did have a few wides and they cost us. You need to get those. Most other days they were going over for us but today, they just didn’t.”
And at the break, when the game looked like it was moulded for Crusheen, did his team believe they could create history?
“Of course. During half-time we reckoned we were in good shape and wed come back out and try to push forward. It didn’t work out. We knew wed be up against it, but we believed wed do it. The early goal, the wides. They all add up.”
He turns and walks back to the gathering of Crusheen men. A small waterhole of understanding among an ocean of Tulla delight.