Ecstatic man of the match and captain Eoin Ward can't explain what Junior Final victory means for Carrigallen

You only had to look at the celebrations to know what winning the Corrib Oil Junior Championship meant to Carrigallen’s players but captain and Man of the Match Eoin Ward was the one man who had to try and find the words to describe exactly what it means.

In fairness to the former Leitrim and New York player, Eoin did a good job! “I can’t begin to even explain what it is like for our club, what it means to us to get to a final and win at this level.”

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Describing himself as “Ecstatic”, Eoin knew exactly how hard the final would be: “We’ve been building towards that all year. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy in this Junior Championship, we know a lot of the lads from Cloone and Glenfarne, they’d be mates of ours and they’ve emphasised how tough it is to get out of. 

“We knew we’d be challenging those teams and the likes of Carrick’s second team, a phenomenal outfit and you can see the work they’re doing with their team.”

Relegation last year from the Intermediate ranks hurt but when asked if that relegation was a shock, Eoin candidly admitted “It was and it wasn’t. We were dwindling around there for a couple of years. We had lads coming and going and we didn’t know where we were at for a while. 

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“We had some really hard talks at the start of the year and we really pulled together this year, everybody put their shoulder to the wheel and everybody bought into what we were doing. We showed it in that game that even when we were down, we came back.”

It didn’t look good for Carrigallen with ten minutes to go as they trailed by two points against a dominating St Mary’s but Eoin always believed his team could rally: “To be honest, we knew - we got word out on the field to settle. We’ve been in this position too many times at this stage but we’ve learned. 

“We went a point down against Glenfarne in the quarter-final and we steadied the ship and we knew we had it in us, we believed in the work we have done this year. That’s why we started driving again, started believing in ourselves and got back on top.”

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For Eoin himself, this campaign has been a challenge as he has been battling injury all year but he is looking forward to a rest now! “I’m still missing a ligament! We’ve fairly good physios there, I’ve touched base with a few of them over the last week so between tape and whatever other remedies are going, we made it. Thankfully we can rest up now and chill out for the week at least.”