Castlebar Celtic react to historic tenth Connacht Junior Cup

THERE was very little left for Ioseph O’Reilly to say after he hoisted a Connacht Junior Cup title for the first time in his career.

Indeed, there was no escaping the palpable anger in an extraordinary post-match acceptance speech that gave the Connacht FA both barrels straight between the temples.

But even if the Connacht Junior Cup campaign had run smoothly, this old warrior was never going to be short of motivation.

“This is it,” he told The Mayo News when asked to compare this success with the many great days and nights he has enjoyed in the green and white jersey.

“We won an FAI Youth Cup at U-18 and that has always been the biggest memory. I captained the team to a Super League in 2019 and obviously last year. Now I’ve captained them to a Connacht Cup it means everything. I’ve set my heart to win this cup, since I started playing really.

“Myself and Dougie [Neil Douglas], really, we’ve won a Connacht Cup medal from U-12, U-14, U-16 and U-18, and now senior to cap it off. We’ve done that.”

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Sunday’s victory wasn’t forged the day, the week or even the year before.

For behind every great team, is a great club with great people. O’Reilly even went as far as to acknowledge the Secretary and the Chairman of the club before anyone else when he began his post-match remarks.

“The work that goes in behind the scenes, the first team, as I said there, it's not far off a professional

setup,” said O’Reilly.

“That goes down to Stevie Gav’, Dec’ Flynn, Daffy, all the boys and the work they've done with the

committee. We’ve so much stuff at our disposal there, whether it be yoga, we've recovery sessions in the pool, beach-wise, ice baths done after Thursday games going into games on Sunday, it's crazy what's available to us.”

Even leaving aside their nearly two-year-long unbeaten streak in their domestic league, it was easy to see why, in the words of ‘Celtic manager Stevie Gavin, it was ‘going to take something special to stand in our way today’.

Not even a bumpy, uneven Roscommon playing pitch in Lecarrow.

“The pitch wasn’t good for a marquee final. It wasn’t good,” Gavin told The Mayo News.

“To be honest, it wasn’t a great pitch, but we didn’t use that as an excuse,” added ‘Celtic full-back, Mark Cunningham.

“We were going out to win that game, even if we were playing on f**king tarmac. We said that during the week. We’d do anything to win today after everything that’s happened, especially last year so it wasn’t the best, but we won.”

Celtic’s trials and tribulations of the past year are dealt with in a separate column in these pages.

But after all they’ve been through, and with another Super League title looking more certain with each passing weekend, the only limit for Castlebar Celtic is the sky above them.

“This is our time,” said Gavin. “The lads put their stamp on it. We want to see these lads winning Connacht Cup after Connacht Cup after Connacht Cup. There is no reason why they can’t.”

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