2016 and 2017 ended in heartbreak. 2018 was different.
Donegal Boston didn’t even make it to the Boston Senior Football Championship finals in the last couple of years. Several of their squad would have headed along to ‘Field A’ in Canton and watched on from the stands.
Last year it was Shannon Blues beating Aidan McAnespies. The year before was Wolfe Tones seeing off Galway in style.
Midway through this summer’s championship campaign, it looked as though Donegal were in danger of missing out on the final again. They lost games to Wolfe Tones and Blues in the league section of the championship but, buoyed by the capture of Diarmuid Connolly, they clicked into gear.
Ciaran McFaul and Shane Carthy had fine seasons and Hugh Boyle was a class act in goal. Connolly stepped up on many occasions, though, and did do again in Sunday’s final against Tones. The two-time All Star contributed 12 points as Donegal Boston claimed the title with a 0-17 to 1-12 victory.
Following the game, and perhaps summing up the all-in nature of GAA, there was praise from players No.1 to No.27 (that’s how many had featured over the course of the championship) but not special mention for Connolly. That, we suspect, is just as he would have preferred it.
Donegal captain Jason Noctor, who had a fine game in the final, gave a great speech after the game and it really summed up where the club came from to win the championship. He said:
“Both teams went for it, score for score, in the second half and it could have went either way. We had that two point gap [at half-time] and I think that is what stood to us at the end…
“The work that goes into this club, to get this squad of players out here – and the squad of juniors – is phenomenal. A lot of people don’t get the credit and we do a bit of giving out, and all that, but they start their work in October to have everything ready for us.
“Paddy McDevitt, Eamon Kelly, Paul Martin MacDaid, it goes all the way and I’m going to leave a few names out, but we all know who they are… and our management, we got Barney [Friel] out to coach us all year and I think everyone knows that has been a key to what we’ve done. Declan Scott and Colm McCarron and, to the main man, Padraig [McLaughlin] the boss!
“When the AGM happened at the start of the year, I heard all the whispers and laughing about Padraig being our manager but it gave me nothing but motivation to drive this team forward and lift this f***ing cup for him!”
The former Killybegs clubman moved on, as his speech wound up, to pay credit to his teammates and thank them for all their hard work over the past few months. He finished by declaring, “Now it’s time to GO PARTY!!”
Boston Senior Football champions for the fifth time and a sweet return to the top.
