Ciarán Morrissey has had a year to remember collecting his first senior championship medal and yesterday leading Kilmurry Ibrickane to glory in the U21 A football championship.
Defeats suffered coming up along the ranks meant Ciarán and his teammates were determined to make the most of the opportunity of picking up a county medal.
“It’s difficult to sum up, I can only compare it to earlier on this year we won Jack Daly and for the lads on this panel that were involved it was a long hard year of training but this goes back as far as U14s, we lost a final to Éire Óg, minor final three years ago we lost and that really made this sweeter to come back and win it after those circumstances”.
They defeated Lissycasey by two points to win their thirteenth U21 title. Lissycasey led at the break but coming back into games is something Kilmurry Ibrickane have been well used to as Ciarán told The Clare Herald.
“It’s nothing new to us, a lot of times in games we’ve periods when we slack off and we leave ourselves a lot to do, in fairness to the lads there well willing to do it they’ll work their socks off every day and I can’t even put it into the words the character that’s in this team, it’s amazing”.
To have experienced players on the sideline in management roles was a big asset in the eyes of Morrissey. “Since those lads have left U21s we’d the five in a row, we didn’t have the same winning mentality that they would have, they won everything up along and I think they really instil belief into us and we knew ourselves that we were well able to match this Lissycasey team and it was just a matter of proving it and I think we’ve done more than that”.