Tourmakeady stars reflect on a day to remember

Homework pays off for champions


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Daniel Carey

HOMEWORK may be of little benefit to primary school children, but it’s still fairly useful for football teams. The Irish Primary Principals Network reckon the role of homework in the education system requires serious analysis. Tourmakeady might have something to say about that.
The Gaeltacht men were very well prepared for Sunday’s intermediate final.Successfully blotting out some of Burrishoole’s key men, they became the first team to beat the Newport men in competitive action during 2010. They hassled and harried, had some huge performances, and were well organised.
“We knew that Burrishoole’s hot spot was the full-forward line,” said John Heneghan, who was deployed deeper to great effect on Sunday. “In fairness, we have good, tight defenders in our club too, but … my game today was to fall back and try and win every break off them. We have worked on that and we tried our damndest, and it paid off in the end.”
Heneghan put in a huge display, and one massive catch under his own crossbar reminded us of the kind of thing you usually see in a cartoon.
“It’s a great feeling,” the veteran told The Mayo News. “We knew it wouldn’t be easy, but we were well drilled up for the occasion. After losing last year, we said we wanted to be back in a final. And boy, did we want it today! We were hungry, and we got it.”
Jack Grimes was entitled to be content with his day’s work. Captain Kevin Dolan noted that the manager “took a bit of persuading” to come back for another cut at the Sweeney Cup.
“It was well worth your while, wasn’t it Jack?” he said in his speech, his voice rising to a crescendo. Reflecting on “a difficult two weeks”, Dolan recalled the “tragic loss” in a road accident of Edmund Heneghan. “But,” said the captain, “I’d like to think he’s looking down on us”.

Tourmakeady is “a really close-knit community,” said Brendan Prendergast, who’s one-half of one of the seven sets of brothers in the set-up. “We’re proud of where we’re from and we’re proud of our club.” Those sentiments were echoed by John Heneghan, who explained: “It’s a small parish, and very often when you have it small and tight, it’s very easy keep it under control and get everyone pulling well together. There’s no-one cribbing or crying and things run well.”
Getting back to the senior grade has taken a “huge” effort, Prendergast confirmed – “Lads have put a lot of things on hold for this, whether it’s their family or building houses or whatever. Management put in a huge effort – Jack, Colm and the two Tommys. Everyone has to work hard if you want to win titles.”
The centre half-back pinpointed the last 20 minutes of the second half as pivotal, a stage when Tourmakeady “took control around the middle, got all the breaks and hit a few nice scores on the run”. Admitting that they sat back on that lead in the second half, he concluded with a smile: “But I suppose we won, so you can’t be too harsh”.
Reflecting on “a huge day” for the club by “a marvellous bunch of players”, Prendergast said there was no secret ingredient: “We just go out there to work as hard as we can. If we lose the ball in the corner forward position, everyone works back. Today, we didn’t give them [Burrishoole] any goal chances really and that really stood to us. Everyone worked their socks off. It’s a massive achievement for the club.”