Creggs captain Brian Diffley says the newly-crowned Connacht Junior League champions won’t be getting carried away by talk of a possible double ahead of their cup semi-final showdown with Ballinrobe this Sunday.
“We enjoyed (the celebrations) Sunday night but said we’d be back to work this week. We trained Tuesday evening even though there were a few tired and bruised bodies from the weekend,” he said.
“Surreal” and “emotional” is how Diffley describes last Sunday’s long-awaited win over Connemara.
“It was definitely a little bit surreal really. It was a great feeling and great to see some of the older heads enjoying it too. We’ve been lucky to be in this position before but just never managed to get over the line,” he said.
“In fairness, I think we got over the stigma of beating Connemara earlier in the season. In previous years there might have been a bit of fear but we’re maybe a little older this year and we showed up completely switched on from the first whistle.
“Even the Connemara lads admitted that they were outplayed. In fairness, they have set the standard for the last few years but we didn’t leave any doubt last Sunday”.
The Creggs captain paid tribute to the management team of Tony Dolan, Kolo Kiripati and Mike Diffley for their input this year.
“Great credit has to go to our coaching team of Tony, Kolo and Mike. They instilled in us a belief that we could beat Connemara this year and they’ve filled us with confidence,” he said.
“We’ve also been training really hard and with the numbers we have we’ve been able to play against each other in match situations too which has been a great help”.
‘Taking it one game at a time’ is the oft-used cliché of a winning team, but Brian insists the Creggs lads won’t be looking beyond Ballinrobe.
“We’re not looking past this Sunday. We play Ballinrobe and we have to beat Ballinrobe and not look beyond that,” he says.
“We know exactly what we’re capable of but we don’t want to slip up by getting too far ahead of ourselves. Sunday is the focus now and we’ll see where we are after that”.
