Pride after Glenullin reach first ever All-Ireland final

When he emerged from the Glenullin dressing room on Saturday in Ballyshannon, manager Michael O’Kane had mixed emotions.
Steering Glenullin to Croke Park and the pride was one part but he felt his side underperformed on the club’s biggest day in their history – a first All-Ireland game.
“I thought we played very poorly in transition and we probably kept them in it because of that,” he said.
“We kept giving the ball away. We give the ball away more today than we did in the whole of our Ulster campaign, which is mindless stuff from us. There was probably a bit of nerves in that, but we looked a bit nervous in the ball and a wee bit afraid of doing the wrong thing but we're just over the moon at the minute.”
It was a tale of goals, of key moments and how Glenullin’s goals came when they needed them.
Willie John Bradley’s goal broke the game with four minutes to go but it all started with a fourth minute goal from Ryan McNicholl, the first of two he bagged after scoring four in Ulster.
“We tell our players to back themselves,” O’Kane said. “We think we're a fairly good side.
“The best sides need people who can do a wee bit of extra, a bit of magic and Ryan McNicholl's magic.
“There's no getting away from that. We just tell him to do his thing and we're very, very proud of Ryan and the way he conducts himself.”

On the flipside, Glenullin’s defence did what nobody has been able to do and carved up Strokestown’s average scoring rate of 2-16.
“Every team at this level is doing homework on the other teams,” he said. “We just feel we have the players with the ball that he put fires out all over the place.
“We knew if we denied them first phase possession and they stopped the kicking game; we'd go a long way to win the game.
“Everybody backs us in our forwards; our inside defenders today were outstanding.
“Diarmuid (McNicholl), Eunan (O’Kane) getting hands in front and Daniel (O’Kane) not letting McGann go by him once.
“That's just unbelievable concentration, unbelievable analysis that Eoin McNicholl set up for us this week and showed us how to do it and how to break them down and what we had to do.
“Defensively, I thought we were awesome. They get two goals from balls dropping short. Other than that, we held them rightly.
“We kept them on the outside, didn't let them into the scoring zone and very, very happy.”