‘They wore the jersey proudly’ - St Gerald’s manager

PRIDE and disappointment swirled through David Joyce’s mind following St Gerald’s Hogan Cup semi-final defeat.

Disappointment at the loss; pride in a remarkable journey that will be spoken about for many years to come.

They came from Castlebar, Breaffy, Ballintubber, Parke and Islandeady to unite under the pale blue of St Gerald’s a number of years ago.

They brought a Connacht senior ‘A’ title back to their school for the first time in four years before tussling with arguably the finest school team in the land.

The only part of the dream that never came true was a date in Croke Park.

“It’s very disappointing. We’d love to have gone a step further. It was a massive journey for us,” Joyce told The Mayo News.

“Winning a Connacht title, we can’t forget about that as well. That was a real big moment for this squad. We always felt we could have come in here and put a performance together, we knuckle down and we do what we do best. A couple of key moments in the game didn’t go our way and we left too big of a gap at the end.”

Was it there to be won before Ryan Gibbons nearly snapped the crossbar at the end of first half?

“Absolutely,” replied the St Gerald’s manager.

“We’re very good at reacting to setbacks as a team and they got the goal in the first half. Like we do, we reacted, and we worked the ball up and we got an opportunity to claw it back with another goal and it hit the crossbar and bounced out. If that goes in, yeah, we close the gap a little but a lot of things have to go your way.”

We then pivot from the particular to the general for our next question: What does he feel they could have done better as a team?

“The boys worked hard, and that’s kind of the foundation of everything. We tackled hard, we turned the ball over in good spots. Maybe we could have got a little on top of their kickouts. They got a few away early in the first and kind of put us on the back foot a little bit,” said Joyce.

_{The St Gerald's team that lined out in the Hogan Cup semi-final against Omagh CBS (Pic: David Farrell)}

Their full-time team huddle was a particularly poignant one.

For many of them, it was their last time locking arm-in-arm with a boy in a blue jersey, soon to revert from brothers-in-arms to sworn club rivals.

“We just reflected as a group on the whole journey we’ve had as a team, just acknowledged how far we’ve come,” said Joyce, summarising his remarks to the group.

“The boys are obviously bitterly disappointed, but it was mainly to the Sixth Year boys. It’s a special thing to wear your school jerseys for six years.

“You don’t get to do it again, once you leave. A lot of those boys will come against each other in clubs over the years and stuff, but they’ll be the best of enemies, I guess, as they go forward.

“It’s just really and I want to acknowledge that they represented this school really well and wore the jersey proudly over the last few years.”