Dream come through as St. ThomasÕ bask in title glory

Date Published: 20-Mar-2013

STEPHEN GLENNON

THE proverbial dust settles. St. Thomas’ captain Robert Murray draws his first breath and the significance of what his small, rural club has achieved begins to filter its way through his neural pathways. Beyond the creaks of the bones, Murray smiles.

For the previous two hours, life was a blur but now that the Tommy Moore Cup sits proudly in the St. Thomas’ dressing-room, Murray and his friends can allow the adrenalin and the damp, sodden shingle of the Croke Park swarth to wash away under the post-match showers. Clarity descends.

“I don’t know what to do with myself really,” muses Murray, who, like his team-mates, had been consumed for over two years with winning their first county and, later, All-Ireland senior hurling titles. For some of the St. Thomas’ faithful, that ambition had enveloped them even longer but, in any event, there’s a temporary void in Murray’s world.

“I never thought it would happen. I suppose, I was thinking about the All-Ireland alright for the last couple of weeks but when you think about it so much, you don’t know what is real and what is not real. I am in that kind of frame of mind now. It will take a while to sink in.”

Even as he deposits his gear on the team bus, he is still trying to make sense of it all – in a good way – of their 1-11 to 1-9 All-Ireland club final victory. However, all he can muster are surreal images of high balls, flashes of Thomas’ red and blue, Kilcormac/Killoughey’s green and yellow, and the elation and euphoria of lifting the Cup in the Hogan Stand.

“I was just saying to Cathal (Burke), our corner back. I felt I was watching it from outside of my body,” continues Murray. “It was a strange thing but that was the occasion I suppose. Once the ball came in [to the defence], and you had to deal with it every so often, you were happy and, thankfully, we were able to keep enough scores out.”

The 2013 hurling decider was by no means a classic and it’s rare the football showpiece – in which St. Brigid’s of Roscommon claimed a 2-11 to 2-10 victory over Ballymum Kickhams – will boast of more scores.

That said, St. Thomas’ won’t care. For them, the hurling final had its fair share of moments – the most important one being Murray raising the Cup aloft alongside Kenneth Burke and long-time club servant, Enda Tannian.

Yet, there were times when the Offaly champions threatened to abscond with the silverware – and the Kilchreest/Peterswell dream – no more so when their full-forward Trevor Fletcher pounced for his side’s goal on 17 minutes. What made it hurt all the more was that just minutes earlier St. Thomas’ had taken the lead for the first time.

“They got a great tonic there with a goal when we seemed to be getting a hold of the game,” agrees Murray. “I think we seemed to be more dangerous [going forward] really but then they gave us a real kick. They let us know that they were in the game too.

“In fairness, though, they are a tough team to break down and we found that there in that match. They were really dogged and really on top of us all the time, blocking and hooking. We weren’t getting scores easy and it looked as if we should have got them easy. We were making hard work of it but, thankfully, we got the rub of the green.”

Indeed, a goal from his older brother Richard on 24 minutes saw the Galway men enter the half-time break with a two-point advantage, 1-7 to 1-5, but their aspirations of pushing on in the third quarter proved to be just that and it was Kilcormac/Killoughey who held a 1-9 to 1-7 lead entering the closing stages.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.