Glory days beckon for Galway club
The half parishes of Abbeyknockmoy and Monivea – and all the townlands in between – have been smothered in a sea of red and blue. And still the tide rises, ebbing for now, but sure to swell into a tidal wave once its deep waters hits Jones Road this Sunday.
As Abbeyknockmoy – outsiders to win the Galway intermediate championship at its outset last year – gear up for an All-Ireland title tilt against overwhelming favourites, Bennettsbridge of Kilkenny, at Croke Park, they may wish to slip Van Morrison’s greatest hits into the bus’ CD player as they storm up the M6.
For ‘These Are the Days’ . . . ‘of the endless summer. These are the days, the time is now. There is no past, there’s only future. There’s only here, there’s only now’ . . . It’s a sentiment Abbeyknockmoy Chairman Tomás Boyle would certainly concur with.
“It really is a massive occasion,” says Tomás. “It is an historic event, once in a lifetime. I suppose we are in a place where we didn’t think we would be. Our goal at the start of the year was to get to a county final. We had lost two semi-finals previously, so we wanted to get to a county final.
“We won it – and won it well – and things haven’t stopped since and hopefully that will continue on through . . .” The Chairman has to check himself, hardly believing he was about to utter the words All-Ireland final in Croke Park. ‘These are the days’.
There is a sense locally that an opportunity to grace GAA’s biggest stage may have been lost previously, when, after winning the county senior title in 1988, they missed out on the great adventure after being overturned by Four Roads of Roscommon in the Connacht final.
That defeat, to some extent, tormented the soul of Abbeyknockmoy for some time but, since then, wrongs have been put right and Sunday’s All-Ireland final appearance is just reward for the toil, effort, blood, sweat and tears of the past 25 years.
See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune and full preview in Tribune Sport.