Doughan & co. enter the history books
By Shane Brophy
Players with two Harty Cup winners’ medals aren’t uncommon but to win two either side of an unsuccessful campaign are rare indeed and that is what Nenagh CBS captain Eoghan Doughan, along with Austin Duff, Joe O’Dwyer, Dara O’Dwyer, Diarmuid Fogarty, Emmett Jones, Billy O’Brien, Daniel McKelvey, and Darragh Hayes have now achieved.
“It’s unbelievable. To do it twice, you dream of winning one but to win two is beyond the wildest dreams,” admitted the Nenagh skipper following Saturday’s final victory.
“Once you win one you get that bit of belief.
“We knew we had a great panel of players that were good enough to come back and win another one. When you have that kind of a team you have to make use of it, and we did that.
“Billy (O’Brien) was a big loss for us but we knew straight away Hugo (Healy) would step in and give one hundred percent and was as good as anyone to step in.
“Every single person that came onto the field, and even the lads on the bench that didn’t come on contributed so much to the team. Without the 43 lads, we wouldn’t be in this position.
“We are all best friends with one another; we go to school with each other every day. We knew we had to comfort Billy. We knew he would be in a bad way over it.”
The win was achieved with a composed performance, recovering well from a slow start, including Doughan who wasn’t involved for much of the first twenty minutes but by half time he had three points from play to his name on route to a man of the match performance.
“It was always going to be a cagey affair starting off but once we settled into it seven or eight minutes before half time, we got a bit of a purple patch going into half time we were in a better spot,” Doughan continued.
“It was more so when you are at centre forward you can find pockets of space but when you have a lad on top of you, you are better off inside. That was the reason for the change.”
There was a nice family moment for the Doughan’s with Eoghan’s father John on a losing Nenagh CBS team in a Munster Final against St Flannan’s 36 years ago, with that little monkey silenced, the next target being an All-Ireland according to the Nenagh skipper.
“We know this isn’t our last day out,” he added.
“We will be looking to go on and make history again and win the Harty and the All-Ireland (in the same year) no one in the school has done that before so that is the way we are thinking.”