Manager couldn't be prouder of players after Cashel Community School's Harty Cup final victory

With plans being hatched for the team to return in triumph to the Cashel Community School later that evening, and taking time out from the endless stream of backslaps, hugs and handshakes that were coming in all directions from well wishers, an emotional manager Brendan Ryan summed up the feeling of his team’s narrow, landmark victory in Sunday’s TUS Dr Harty Cup final.

“It’s unbelievable. It’s hard to believe that Cashel Community School are Harty Cup champions. We dreamed of just playing in it and now we’ve won it”!

When it was put to him that it was a tough battle, he said “It was an incredible game. We knew it would be. Thurles are an absolutely class outfit. They brought on two guys there, James Doyle and Eamonn Flanagan, and they’ve All-Ireland minor medals in their pocket from last year.

“We knew that they have quality. I couldn’t say enough about our boys, they’ve just come through three unbelievable games. People said the Stadium, where we wouldn’t be able for the class, the skill and the movement of Thurles and they are class. 

“But our boys just upped it again. They’re just warriors and I’m so proud of them, and so proud of everyone, the clubs that have got behind this for the last seven years, the parents and the players over the last seven years.

“The group seven years ago that lost the B quarter-final after extra-time, they trained more over Christmas than this group did this year. They set the bar, they came in and started to train before school. And it just took seven years of unbelievable work from so many people.

“Our coaches, the lads who are with me, this is nothing to do with me, it’s to do with all those lads behind the scenes. Robie Costigan, Eoin Fitzpatrick and Anthony Roche, who has been with me for five, six or seven years. They just have been outstanding, and they have a quiet word here and there for chaps, to cool them down. These are young lads and these are pressure situations.

“Those coaches and all our backroom team, our teachers and different past pupils and present pupils helping out. It's incredible and I’m just so glad for everyone. 

“I think we went three up with ten minutes left. We just gave them a little bit of room to get back into it and they got level. But look, character again, when Ardscoil Rís got level against us every time two weeks ago (in the semi-final) these boys showed something unbelievable.

“There’s no training that, there’s no Brendan Ryan or anybody who has put that into these young lads.That’s just in them. There’s men in there, and that’s down to their parents, the houses they’ve come out of and the clubs that have brought them to this stage. 

“They went again, and another team when they missed those few chances, they might not have had the stomach to win that puckout. They might have just lashed out and given away a free, and next thing (Thurles’) Tommy Maher would nail it again.

“But our boys didn’t, they just went again and went again.

“Look, we had to be so good to get over the line by one point. And that’s a credit to Thurles, because they’re just  class. We have nothing but admiration for Thurles. We’ve beaten Thurles today. Our journey to catch up with the Thurleses is going to take years and years, we can only admire what they do.

"It’s just incredible, they’re winning Rice Cups, Munster and Tipp Under 15s, in the Dean Ryan Cup this year we went out and in two consecutive years we’ve gone out at Under 16 B in the first round. We went out to a good Abbey CBS team Under 15 B in the Munster first round. 

“So our boys aren’t coming from where Thurles are, so they just have to work so hard and they’ve done it. I couldn’t be prouder of them”.

“Someone said to me there on the field that Cashel are the first-ever community school to win a Harty Cup. 

“These are special days and they have to be enjoyed”.