This article is from page 54 of the 2008-10-28 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 54 JPG
CLONLARA and Jim Gully have shared some great days down the past 12 months, but nothing like Sunday.
The roar at the full time whis- tle. The goodwill pouring from the stands. The fireworks. The sound- track to a remarkable day and a re- markable team. Jim Gully stood on Cusack Park wearing a look of al- most stunned disbelief as his team sang and the world got used to Clon- lara as county champions.
He always knew his team were good and honest and capable of great things. He never doubted their poten- EE
But still, even back in January, in the aftermath of their defeat in the semi-final of the All Ireland inter- mediate championship when Gully said he would swap a day in Croke Park for a County Final in Cusack Park, he surely couldn’t have fore- seen an achievement of such stun- ning magnitude. A first county title in 89 years. A day of history and celebration. Clonlara’s greatest day.
And Jim Gully in the middle of it. Hugged, pulled and congratulated.
The man who gets Clonlara fired up. The man who has become the most engaging character in Clare GAA. And now the man who has delivered a senior county champion- ship to Clonlara.
“Ah sure look, what can I say. Tis only a dream like”, said the Clonlara manager afterwards,
“A team coming from Intermedi- ate that hadn’t won in such a long time, it’s fantastic. They are a fantas- tic group of players. It took a lot of determination and heart, it’s all out there. To go out and play in those conditions, it was going to men to go out there. I knew damn well we had 15 or 16 of them going out there”
He’s asked to sum up the game. “You wouldn’t be able to print it”, says Gully before zeroing on the one characteristic that has defined so much Clonlara’s odyssey to the promised land, “Sure look, it was going to come down to the hungrier team. They came out at the start of the second half with a gale behind
them and banged over three or four points and we fell behind. I said, one more score and we’ll get going again and once we took the lead I knew by Jesus it was going to take some team to stop us. I’ve seen these guys in op- eration. Once we get the scent of vic- tory, its hard to bring us back”’.
It took a while for Clonlara to get their bearings as Newmarket blitzed them early in the second and first half. But Gully wasn’t panicking.
“Tt didn’t look great but all our team needed was one score, that’s all’’, he said, “I knew we’d get going. We hit over the next score into the wind and I said, by Jesus, if Newmarket want it now they’re going have to fight harder than us.
‘There isn’t 15 fellas that will fight harder than us”’.
There isn’t. There hasn’t been ei- ther for the past 12 months. But now its official. The fighters are the champions. The world now knows what Gully long suspected. Clonlara are the best team in Clare. And the future stretches out gloriously ahead Om tetoeee