MARK Collins hailed Castlehaven’s ‘incredible’ spirit after one of the club’s greatest-ever triumphs.
Even though he says that Dingle had Haven beaten on three occasions during a chaotic Munster senior club final at a wet and mucky Gaelic Grounds, the county champions never gave up – and ultimately got their hands on the provincial cup after a memorable battle.
Collins points to Haven’s spirit and never-say-die attitude as one of the reasons the club is Munster champs, again, and are now looking forward to an All-Ireland semi-final in early January.
‘Incredible spirit,’ he told The Southern Star on Sunday evening, when asked what swung the game in their favour.
‘In the last few years what we have been through in the Cork championship has helped us get that spirit. We had been knocking at the door for three, four years without ever getting over the line. We won tight games in Cork this year and that helped us. We never gave up today. We didn’t do the right things at times but we kept trying and we got there in the end.’
The end result is that captain fantastic Collins has now lifted county and Munster cups in recent months, and the belief and confidence is coursing through this team. He is one of the few Castlehaven players who knows what it’s like to lose a Munster club senior football final, having played against Dr Crokes in 2012, and he was determined to not relive that feeling. In the dressing room after the county final win against Nemo, Collins addressed the group to emphasise the importance of the Munster series.
‘After we won the Cork championship we wanted to do ourselves justice in this. None of us in the panel had a Munster medal; it was something we really wanted to do. We felt we let ourselves down ten years ago,’ he said.
‘Look, there is no question that luck was on our side today. To be fair to Dingle, they had us beaten three times, but you can’t question the spirit of the group – and that helped us get over the line.
‘It’s an absolutely amazing feeling now.’
Collins was one of the Haven players who stepped up to take a penalty in the shoot-out. No surprise, he nailed it. He knows what it’s like in this lottery – he struck the winning sudden-death spot-kick against St Finbarr's in a 2020 county semi-final, but was on the losing side a year later to the same side in another shoot-out.
‘We know what it’s about, it’s our third one. No question there is a bit of luck in it, and we had that today. I just felt when they missed their fifth it was destiny, it was nearly in our pockets at the stage,’ Collins said.
‘We knew the county final could go to penalties, but we never practiced them. All of a sudden, at training last Thursday night we put an emphasis on it. Whatever it was, whether it was written in the stars, I don’t know, but we talked about putting Damo (Damien Cahalane) in goal. He won a national cup medal with John Egan playing in goal, he is a big man and it worked out.’
