Scoreline was tough on Drumreilly says Fresh Today Junior A Final Man of the Match Darren

Darren Shortt may be just starting out on his adult playing career but it is obvious Sunday’s Fresh Today Junior A FC Final Man of the Match has a wise head on young shoulders as the corner-forward talked of how the Final in Ballinamore was much tighter than the scoreline suggests!

Asked for his reaction after the game, Darren simply said “Delighted - that was the goal at the start of the year, to get out of junior football. We were just happy to get over the line there. It's a tougher game than the scoreline so just happy out now.”

Elaborating on that, Darren pointed to a few points just before halftime and a goal immediately after as crucial to Aughavas’ victory: “The first half was definitely hard to get a grip on but probably the last five minutes before halftime, we got that two, three points ahead to start playing comfortably and knock away the nerves. 

“The goal at the start of the second half was huge for us, to push that lead out to six and take it away from there, thankfully. Drumreilly got back in serious numbers and they’re hard in the tackle. So it's just trying to get the ball to move quickly, open up spaces and take on the shots and luckily enough, they all kept going over for us.”

Again the old head on young shoulders analogy comes to mind when Darren talks about what winning the Dick Ellis Memorial Cup means for Aughavas: “It's huge for us to keep pushing on there. Last year we were badly hurt by getting relegated so getting back up to Intermediate Football, Division 1 football, it's huge for the club. It's big for all of us, a young group to stay together now and outside that, it is huge for the people in the club as well.”

REACTION: GOAL LIFTED THE PRESSURE OFF AUGHAVAS - EANNA MCNAMARA

Winning man of the match seemed to have been a surprise for the game’s top scorer! “Happy out - I wasn't really thinking about it until after the final whistle and people were saying it to me. I thought Eanna there, Joey kicked some big scores, Conor Canning our captain the whole year, he was really led by example. There's loads of players there - Paul Bohan, Liam McIntyre was on Conor Gaffney and he did his job perfectly.”

Next up is a Connacht JFC Club clash with Galway’s Carna Caiseal but the celebrations will come first: “We'll look forward to that too but we won’t worry about it too much yet. Two weeks' time and it's nice to be able to play on a stage like that and hopefully we can get a good crowd to it and put down a good representation of Leitrim as well.”