Longford SFC: Matthew Carey thrilled on the incredible champions feeling
Clonguish captain Carey reflects on the semi-final replay win over Dromard as a key factor
Clonguish won their first Longford Senior Football Championship title since 2009 when they dispatched of the reigning champions Killoe Emmet Óg by a 14-point margin in the final at Glennon Brothers Pearse Park on Sunday.
After the match, the Clonguish captain Matthew Carey admitted that it was an incredible feeling to be part of a Connolly Cup winning team.
“Unbelievable is the only word to describe it, I was almost lost for words doing the speech, it’s just unbelievable and it means so much to the people of Clonguish.
“I keep going back to David Barden, as I said before he is the best Clonguish man I know and what a day for him today as he togged out in the Junior Final and was man-of-the-match and after winning that final, he was on the sideline as part of the management team for this senior final success, that’s what you are dealing with there, it’s just amazing for him and everyone else.”
The reigning champions Killoe got off to a blistering start and were 1-2 to 0-0 in front after just four minutes, but then Clonguish reeled off ten successive points to lead by five at the break, 0-10 to 1-02. Indeed, they held Killoe scoreless for half an hour and to just one point in thirty-seven minutes.
Reflecting on this, Matthew acknowledged that slow starts before coming back has been a theme of their matches during the campaign.
“That’s been happening with us especially in the games against Dromard as well, slow starts and then working our way back into the game, so it’s been a theme. But the way we just get back into games and stay in games is something that we pride ourselves on, and we have developed the experience to see out games too.
“Even when we were five points down early in the game, we did not doubt ourselves. Dom (Corrigan) has instilled a belief in us and it’s infectious. It’s just about the next ball always. We also look at games in quarters and once we got a foothold in the second quarter, we believed that we could go on and win it.”
Matthew then talked about how the short eight-day turnaround from the semi-final replay win over Dromard worked out to be an advantage to them.
“It was actually an advantage to us. We were going into the final after two tough games against Dromard, so we were battle ready and hardened. While we didn’t have a lot of time to process that replay game, we didn’t have a lot of time to overthink it either and that really was key and worked out in our favour in the end.
“Going back to the Dromard game, we let them back into both games in the third quarter, so today we said if we can get a foothold in the game after half-time, we were going to push on and win it.
“We eventually kept the scoreboard ticking over and Mike (Flynn) was the catalyst for that, and our inside line are livewires, and we took advantage of that.
“We can now look forward to playing the Westmeath champions (The Downs) in three weeks and we want to keep the lights on for as long as possible, so the more matches we win in the Leinster campaign, the longer we will keep those lights on.”