So near and yet so far for Ferbane but manager promises they will be back

FERBANE were within touching distance of bridging the six year gap to their last Dowling Cup success as Sunday's county final headed into the closing minutes but for the third year running, they came up just short against Tullamore.

It was another gut wrenching defeat for the West Offaly side but once again they contributed enormously to a great contest and couldn't have done much more on the day.

Manager Ger Rafferty was naturally extremely disappointed afterwards but said “I'm fiercely proud of our lads there coming down the home straight - ourselves in a good enough position but just couldn't push through. Probably the kick out after we got our goal, we didn't win it and hardly got the ball up the field and next thing we were two points down, so yeah really disappointed.”

Three points down midway through the second half they showed great fighting spirit to hit back and lead by three points with four minutes to to.

“Just mighty fighting, they'll never let you down, they just keep fighting, keep fighting. It's just, I suppose, with two or three minutes to go, Tullamore kicked on. Tullamore are a fine team. We've said it the last couple of years, they're improving every year. I think our lads are as well. They've showed good character there to be tested like that and come out with the win.
“One thing I'll say about our lads, they'll be back. There's massive resilience in there and they will be back next year,” Ger said.

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Ferbane brought in some fresh blood with some younger players involved this year.

“Yeah, they've acquitted themselves quite well, we freshened up the whole thing. We'd six lads starting today, it's their first county final but they didn't show a whole lot of nerves to be fair to them. Probably didn't score enough when we had the breeze in the first half. Three points probably wasn't enough. Three points wasn't enough at half time.”

Some of that was down to staunch Tullamore defending. “They're fairly tough in the tackle. We knew what to expect. We had our game plan and very nearly carried it off to be fair but yeah not to be.”

Ferbane's substitutes made a contribution to their second half comeback. “Yeah they did and obviously Michael Wren was injured during the week there. He was a loss to us you know so anyway we'll take great learnings out of this and we'll be back,” the manager concluded.

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