Darren a reluctant Man of the Match in Smith Monumentals IFC Final

They always say the greatest expectations placed upon a sports person come from within themselves and it certainly seems that way for Smith Monumentals Intermediate Championship Final man of the match Darren Cox who claimed the honour for the second time!

The Annaduff talisman landed two spectacular goals that turned the game decisively in his team’s favour as they went on to claim a 3-11 to 1-9 victory over a dogged St Patrick’s Dromahair last Sunday in Heartland Credit Union Pairc Sean Mac Diarmada, goals that had anyone else scored them would have seen them an unanimous choice as MVP.

Not, however, in Darren’s mind was he deserving of the Player of Match gong, pointing instead to Conor Reynolds and Eoin Gill, feeling that he hadn’t performed to the level he wanted and he actually downplayed his two wonder goals: “It's just being in the right place at the right time, I suppose, I'm just happy that I seem to always be in the right place - probably a bit of laziness, too!” On a serious note, Darren admitted that Annaduff can sometimes struggle when tagged as favourites going into a big game: “

Coming into this game, we were probably heavy favourites. Not in my mind, but we just had to stay sort of focused and we're just happy that we got over the line, really, to be honest.”

Admitting that it is difficult to keep such talk away from the camp, Darren added “Definitely with us, because any pressure that comes on us, you've seen it there in the first half, we were very poor and even in the second half, we weren't great. But that bit of quality that we do have, Kyle and Sean Mac and Frank Mac coming off the bench there.

“They definitely added a lot to it. Jack Hughes had a great game in the corner, providing a lot of passes and Kenny was excellent, they're all very good. Conor Reynolds there at full-back was unbelievable. Luke Fitz was, debut man Ross O'Shea there coming up.”

With Annaduff appearing in a third County Final in the space of eight days, Darren agreed that the club needed a win after losses for the club’s women's and minor boys teams: “We got to three finals this year, and it was great for the club but coming into this with pressure on us, even being so-called favourites. But we came into this with two from three losses, and we needed to win it.”

The Leitrim star admitted that even attending those games added to the nerves ahead of Sunday’s Intermediate Final, mainly because he himself wasn’t out on the pitch! “Personally, I don't like coming to stuff because it gets you sucked into something that definitely takes away the focus.

“It puts me off because I’d like to be involved in something like that but hopefully, next year now, we can stay up. It's great to have all these young lads coming through and we have another good bunch of lads coming up, so we're just happy to win the game.”