'Tomás Clancy is the same age as a lot of us but we all look up to him'

THE smile on the face of Fermoy captain, Darragh O’Carroll, said it all after their win over St Michael’s.

Even though relatively young in years, he has soldiered with the side now for some time and he was well aware of the pressure that they were under to get the club up to the senior ranks.

He made reference afterwards, in his speech, to the fact they haven’t been in the senior ranks since the 60s (1964) and how much that, and the loss two years ago, drove them on.

“What a day, to be honest, I don’t ever think we saw this one coming, especially after two years ago. But we regrouped and got ourselves together and you can see by the support we had out there what it means to everybody, some town, some club it’s unreal.

“I thought during the week that some people disrespected us and didn’t give us much of a chance. I know Michael’s have been in three or four finals, but I always thought we could get the better of them.

“I felt we were a better team and I think we proved it there today, especially in the first-half."

The second half was all about managing the game and they did that pretty well. Helped by their Cork senior driving forward.

“Tomás Clancy was outstanding today and he was really an inspiration to us.

“He is only the same age as a lot of us, but we look up to him and he was superb today.

“He will pull the club up on his shoulders and we will all follow him. We haven’t been up senior since 1964 and we played Michael’s in our first game down at intermediate level and ironically we played them in our last game at intermediate level.

“I suppose last year we had a bit of down year, maybe a bit of a hangover from the year before, but this year we said we are going to go at it again and I think that now we are up there we won’t struggle at all.

“We focused on our tackling and breaking teams down a bit more this year and it worked out there today and it’s great to have the cup coming back to Fermoy with us.

“We will celebrate this one for some time and then we have the senior championship to look forward to next year,” concluded Darragh.