Chance to play with young talent encouraged James Gorman to continue with Kilcormac/Killoughey
THE chance to play with some of the young talent coming through the ranks at Kilcormac/Killoughey was among the reasons that enticed James Gorman to continue playing at senior level.
The full forward, who scored Kilcormac/Killoughey's first goal in Sunday's victory over Shinrone, hadn't featured much in recent years due to injury and being away for a year, so it was special to win another title in this game.
“Yeah, I'm struggling with injuries every so often, my back gives me a lot of trouble but it has held together well this year so far. It was great. I went abroad for a year, myself and my wife Joanne went abroad to Abu Dhabi for a year, and it was great to come back and get back into it. I think I even retired for a year as well, I did everything, but then I saw all these young lads coming through and I just said I needed to hurl at least one year with them, and the enjoyment they bring to it and the buzz that they brought back to the training sessions, it was a lot easier to come back to training,” James said.
He was delighted with the victory and the performance. “It's a brilliant result. You can't fault anyone. We came together on Wednesday and we had a meeting and said this is do or die. We put in a huge effort and thankfully everyone turned up today and put in the effort that we needed to win. We know Shinrone are a savage team, they are great champions, they showed the hunger last year and showed the hunger again this year to get back into a county final, it was a great achievement for them. We knew coming in that we just needed to turn up ourselves and put in a performance and thankfully we did.”
Kilcormac/Killoughey hit the ground running and were 0-8 to 0-1 up after just 12 minutes. “That was part what we were saying, that we needed to get a good start on them because if they started well, we knew they would grow in confidence and we couldn't let that happen so we had planned to get a head start on them and go from there and thankfully it worked out for us.”
From that good start Kilcormac/Killoughey pushed on took chances well. “It was good, it seemed that everything we hit went over the bar for us,” James said. “I think everyone just took the right options, there were lads in good postions and made themselves space and the ball was given to the person and it was an easier shot then, but I think as a team we decided we just had to get it in the right spot and the scores came then.”
James then scored Kilcormac/Killoughey's first goal as the first half went into injury time and quickly added four more points before the half time whistle.
“We had talked about that, about isolating myself. I had a small bit on height on Darren O'Meara, who is a savage hurler, and he held me well for a good bit of it, but thankfully one stuck for me and I was able to finish it off,” James recalled.
They then pushed on in the second half to cement their superiority. “We knew they were going to come out strong in the second half. They were champions, they were never going to die away, they were going to leave everything on the field and that's what they did again. The boys winning the Senior B two weeks ago, we have another 20 lads on the sideline who are well able to hurl Senior A hurling and we had five lads who came in who were able to finish off what we had started and it was just great to see,” he said.
Kilcormac/Killoughey now travel to Wexford in a few weeks for the quarter final of the Leinster Club championship.
“We'll enjoy the next few days and we'll sit down next week and assess where we are. I think we are down in Wexford which is always a tough place to go. I think we had Shelmaliers down there and had to go to extra time to beat them the last time we were down there but we know it's going to be tough. Leinster is always tough to win. We'll sit down at the end of the week and we'll assess where we are and look forward to the Leinster Championship,” James said.