This victory is extra sweet - Ryan

By Shane Brophy

Templederry Kenyons selector Alan Ryan has seen it all in the club over the years and he admitted his success is very sweet.

“They are very rare and very hard to come-by so maybe knocking on the door for the last couple of years has made it all the sweeter. It’s massive for a small parish like us,” he said.

Templederry have tended to be the bridesmaids in the O Riain Cup in but Ryan felt they were doing a lot right and it wasn’t going to need much change to get them over the line.

“You are doing something right by getting to semi-finals and quarter finals,” he said.

“Other teams played well those days; it wasn’t us that let it slip. You have to give credit to the likes of Holycross and Burgess when they did beat us.

“You’d be annoyed, depressed, disappointed but we never had any issue about getting lads back to the field in any year.”

So what was the difference this year?

“Having a full deck to pick from when the big days came,” he said.

“We did get hit with Christy, Brian and Darragh early on but we always had a full deck when we needed it.

“We used the league quite intelligently, in that we blooded lads and got good hard game exposure, coming through a semi-final against Cashel with fourteen men, and then a very intense final with Treacys.

“We deliberately stuck with the team that got us there and had options off the bench but coming into the championship you need lads with game time and winning something so blooding those extra five or six players meant when you looked around you had full faith in the number 29 to come in and do a job whereas other years the panel might have been a little bit light.

“I would think going into the under 21 championship, whenever it starts, a lot of those guys have put in a lot of training with us but genuinely it was a nightmare to pick a team.

“We had lads genuinely cross with us, had earned their position, and then maybe through no fault of their own, a slight knock here and there, didn’t get back in.

“You have to trust your starting fifteen, they got us to the final, Brian (Stapleton) was a little bit hampered for the quarter final, was a lot fitter for the semi-final and could have started today but what message does that send to the guys who got you to the final after putting up a huge score against Cashel.”