‘Our young team has shown serious character’ – Heslin

After last Sunday’s county final replay in TEG Cusack Park, it was put to John Heslin, the winning captain from St Loman’s, Mullingar, that it had been ‘a hard-won medal’, and he responded: “None of them are easily won! Garrycastle will tell you that themselves. They’ve won a lot of them, but they’ll never tell you they’ve won enough of them. They gave us a battle and they pushed us all the way. That’s why they [medals] are so enjoyable to win, because they are very tough to win.”

He continued: “We could have won it in normal time, but credit to Garrycastle for bringing it to extra-time. We never expected them to go away. But we lifted it again. We kept playing and doing what we were trained to do. We got over the line and it’s just a great day for the club. Our young team has shown serious character – both the starting 15 and the lads who came on – in every game since the quarter-final. And we showed it again today.

“It was brilliant,” he concluded, before being dragged away by colleagues to join in his side’s post-match celebrations.