Kilmeena are the kings of Junior football

While those of us at Clones were focused first and foremost on the match being played out in front of our eyes at St Tiernach’s Park, there was plenty of interest too in what was happening down at Croke Park. Updates were being shouted over and back amongst us in the Mayo fraternity in the stand and plenty in the convivial Monaghan crowd were also brought up to speed about Kilmeena and their club exploits in recent months.

By the sounds of it, Kilmeena won the All-Ireland Junior club final twice over today. Well on top in normal time and leading by three with just seconds left, it looked like the job was done then. But then their Kerry opponents Gneeveguilla struck for a last second goal to force extra-time.

It must have taken significant effort for Kilmeena to recover from that blow and then go on to claim the win – and the All-Ireland title – in extra-time. In doing so, though, they provided all the proof that was needed about their true calibre. They’re a team of champions and they showed that in spades today.

Although I wasn’t at Croke Park myself today it was great to be able to keep up with the action on Discord (where, incidentally, Mike kept up a live blog of the Monaghan game, messaging every significant development during the game) and it was from that source too that news came about the narrow loss suffered by Castlebar Mitchels in the LGFA All-Ireland Intermediate final – hard luck to them in that one, it’s clear they gave everything in today’s final but it just wasn’t to be – as well as the hurlers’ NHL Division 2B draw against Wicklow. I hope our club members who were on Discord today found the match-day chat as informative and useful as I did.

Because Rob was in Croke Park, along with Stephen Drake, we were able to spread our resources nicely and this will be reflected in our output on the podcast over the coming days. Our ‘Final Whistle’ bonus episode for club members is online already and this will be followed tomorrow by our match day review show from Clones. We’ll also have a special episode focusing on Kilmeena’s All-Ireland triumph. I think it’s safe to conclude that it’s going to be another wild week for us on the podcast.

Tonight has the making of a wild one out west. The Kilmeena team were due back at base at 9.30pm this evening so I’d say the festivities are warming up nicely at this stage. These celebrations are both overdue and well deserved following today’s historic win for the club at HQ. Enjoy the night, all, and huge congrats on doing the business on the big stage today. You did your club and county proud today. Fair play to you.

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