BY SEÁN HOLLAND
TIM Buckley feels his all-conquering Newcestown football team saved their best performance for the biggest game of the year.
The winning manager was beaming with pride after his side defeated Dohenys to win the Bon Secours Senior A Football Championship that also earned Newcestown promotion back to the premier senior ranks for 2024. It also completed the double for the club with Charlie Wilson’s hurlers having sparked huge celebrations with their senior A success two weeks earlier.
‘Look, we did not think we would pick up two cups at the start of the year,’ Buckley told The Southern Star.
‘Even coming here against Dohenys we knew it was going to be a tough battle. The first day out they gave us a lesson on how to close out a game so we probably learned from that. Today we started poorly, going down by four points early was far from ideal, but soon after we got to grips with them and started to take over the game.
‘It was probably our best footballing performance of the year today. Just a great, great all-round performance.’
Having come up against their county final opponents in the round-robin stage, a game Dohenys won 0-9 to 0-8, Buckley explained how Newcestown learned lessons from that early-season setback.
‘The main thing was that we kept our shape today. The first day out, the half-forward line, I won't say lost the game for us, but they all pulled back too far and we couldn’t really transition as well because we lost our shape, so it was easy enough to rectify that,’ he explained.
‘As well the first day, Dohenys only scored nine points so we said if we can keep them to that again we’d have a great chance. We knew we had the backs to do that and we knew we had the forwards to get the scores to get us over the line.’
It’s celebration time in Newcestown, but what about 2024?
‘Well, you won’t be interviewing me anyway next year, that's for sure!’ Buckley laughed.
‘I’m two years now in charge of this team. I’ve brought them down and I’ve helped bring them back up again so I’ve made no progress but at least we have a cup to celebrate with at the end of it all.’
