He may have been the only Galway man amidst a sea of Clare and Limerick on both sides of the divide, writes Eoin Brennan, but Aidan Harte was clearly every bit as proud of his side’s accomplishment as anyone else in the Gaelic Grounds on Saturday afternoon.
As joint-manager alongside Terence Fahy and Tomás Kelly, the 2017 All-Ireland senior winning player was most impressed by St Joseph’s Tulla’s ability to thrive on such a prestigious and often times dating stage, a sign of their true character and leadership abilities according to the Gort native.
“It’s unbelievable. I suppose the biggest challenge for young people or anyone involved in sport is to do when it counts most on the biggest stage.
“And for these guys this is the biggest stage for them in terms of their school and underage careers and they responded by being outstanding from start to finish, there’s no other way of putting it.
“They probably don’t realise how important this is, it might be a year’s time, it might be five years before they realise that they actually won a Harty Cup, something so competitive and against a team that have been through an excellent underage set-up in their school, clubs and county in Limerick as well as the Clare lads of course.
“Just to do it for their clubs and communities. I mean there’s been an outpouring of just goodwill towards us in the last two weeks that we didn’t have to go looking for and I think that showed on the pitch today. The players soaked all that in in the last few weeks but by God they gave back in that performance today.”
That started from the throw-in as despite opting to face into the gale, St Joseph’s admirably kept pace with Ardscoil Rís, with two points the biggest deficit at any stage.
“It still felt like we did all the hurling in the first half. We were a point down at half-time and had the elements to come but like going into any dressing room, we knew that the wind wasn’t going to win anything. But the lads dug so deep again and gave us another 33 or 34 minutes of pure desire and will to win.”
“They’re unbelievable but we’ve spoken as a management and the players are smart enough too to realise that this chance for us, who knows when or if it will come again. It came this time and by God did they take it.”
They certainly did and also have the opportunity to copperfasten an already momentous season with further silverware.
“While the rollercoaster’s flying, why put on the brakes? Look, they’ll enjoy their few days, some of the lads have to sit mocks on Tuesday or Wednesday so that will bring them crashing back down to earth.
“So we’ll let it sit for a few days but we are in an All-Ireland Semi-Final and we are representing Munster as champions so we have to honour that as well.
“And we will. The players know no different.”