Tullamore manager lauds “coming of age” performance by his team

TULLAMORE manager Niall Stack lauded the performance of his young side as they captured their 29th county senior football title on Sunday.

“I think it was a coming of age performance from this group because they are so young and that was a massively physical affair and thankfully we got over the line. There were two points in it at the end, Corey White made a great save towards the end and we battled it out. I think that pain from last year was the extra factor in the win to be honest.”

In a tight affair the game went 20 minutes without a score in the second half before John Furlong kicked a point for Tullamore and he said it was probably most crucial score of the game.

“Yeah, I think so. We moved the ball well on that one. I thought we moved the ball well out of defence three or four times but we didn't punish Ferbane and on that one in particular he got his gallop up and I just knew he was going to score from there.”

He also agreed that their subs made an important contribution as well. “Again we had four subs today, 19 players, which just goes to show the depth of our squad. I never got to put in Dylan Hensey, he is big physical defender in our squad, but every game this year we have played a minimum of 19 players, which is a sign of our depth.”

Niall has intimated that this will probably be his last year as Tullamore manager after a four year stint which saw them reach four finals in a row, winning two and losing two, and he agreed that if he is to leave it is a good way to bow out.

“Yeah I think so. I can be proud of what I have put into it. We have won three leagues as well which I would like to mention, but it is a good achievement and puts the club on 29 championships. I know when I played in 2000 we won our first championship in 23 years and I told the lads that if we managed to win today we would have six championships in that time period of 23 years, so we are correcting a lot of our history with this group. I think there are championships in them but we beat Edenderry in the semi-final and I think they are a top team, Rhode are a top team and Ferbane are a top team so there will be nothing easy next year again.”

He agreed that if told beforehand that they would only get six scores they wouldn't have expected to win. “No, I wouldn't but just happy to win. As soon as you saw the conditions today you knew it wasn't going to be high scoring. I think the goal was the difference. We dispossessed them a lot but probably didn't punish them enough after dispossessions. If you go back over our scores they probably came off dispossessions but we just didn't do it enough. Both sides missed chances but that was down to conditions.”

Tullamore now go on to the Leinster Club championship and Niall said he hadn't given it any thought prior to this but he said “we'll give it a go. We'll go back and train Wednesday and we'll definitely give it a go.”

He said the defeat to Rhode is last year's final hurt Tullamore and was a driving force this year. “Absolutely, that was the driving factor, the pain from last year was really a driving factor.”

The manager said that is was great to win as well with a lot of young players. “There are a good few young lads and isn't it great to have young lads winning at that age and keep it going,” he said.