For Tommy McCaffrey nothing seemed real until the Derrygonnelly players started to celebrate at the final whistle. The flying Erne Gaels forward hadn’t contemplated defeat and when it came it was a jolt to the system.
“We had prepared well and we really believed in ourselves so in a way it wasn’t until I saw the Derrygonnelly players celebrating that it actually hit home that we had lost the county final. Up to that point I was sure we were going to get the win or at least the draw and when it was over and we had lost it was just a horrible feeling,” he explained.
McCaffrey has been one of the star turns in this year’s championship and on Sunday he showed valiantly, picked up plenty of ball and drew crucial frees but as he readily admitted himself he found it difficult to extricate the same room from this Derrygonnelly Harps defence.
“They were so well set up that as soon as you got the ball there were three or four men around you. Fair play to them, they are very good defensively and were very hard to get through.”
McCaffrey believes that there is still plenty of fight in this Erne Gaels team and he looked back at last year’s defeat as evidence of this fact;
“We felt so bad after losing to Roslea last year. The drawn game we were so far ahead that it almost felt like a loss and then we lost the replay but we were determined this year to get back and prove ourselves again,” the Belleek sharpshooter explained.
And this year they exorcised that Roslea ghost with a clinical performance against the once kingpins of Fermanagh football to reach the final. There is no reason why Erne Gaels cannot dust them off and come back bigger and better;
“We came back last year after a really hard to take defeat and we are still a pretty young squad. From a personal point of view I’m only 22 so I have a lot of football ahead of me so I think it might take a while to get over this but we have to come back again next year and try to improve and go one better.”
Those sentiments will be music to the ears of the Erne Gaels faithful who realise that they have a team capable of bridging what will be a 36 year wait for county championship silverware in 2017.
Derrygonnelly of course have won five titles in 21 years and four in the last 12 years and they also lost one final in that time and McCaffrey pointed to this experience when referring to his own team;
“A few people have said to me that this will stand to us over time and that maybe we have to lose a final before we win one. Derrygonnelly have so much experience and they showed that on Sunday. We have to go away and come back better and hopefully when we do we will be more prepared for it.”