Killoran savouring Elphin’s journey

As Ireland braces for a cold snap with snow and ice promised for most of this week, there will be plenty of people who will dream of living in warmer climates.

Shane Killoran, who within the last year was making his living in Dubai, could certainly be forgiven for craving the sunshine of his former place of residence. But the smile across the Elphin midfielder’s face at the final whistle at Dr. Hyde Park last Sunday made it clear that both last weekend, and this coming week against Crossmolina, there’s nowhere that he would rather be, regardless of the weather.

“You couldn’t have written a script any better than this” he beamed, as he reflected on a hard-fought 0-9 to 0-7 win.

“We have to savour these days. I hadn’t played in a county final before this year, and it might be the only chance that we get to play in Connacht, so we have to make the most of it, and that means finding a way to win and extending the season.

“This was a harder game to get up for than the Strokestown game. It’s not that it wasn’t as important, in some ways it’s every bit as special, but your whole year is built around getting to a county final, then there’s a little bit of a reset after that.

“We took some time after the county final win to get the minds and the bodies right, but it was always going to be a challenge to be fully ready for a good Eastern Harps team.” The scale of that challenge was apparent in the first half when the visiting Sligo club had the best of proceedings, and Killoran admitted that Elphin weren’t helping matters by giving the ball away too easily.

“We were lucky to only be a point down, they could have had a goal along with it, so even though we weren’t playing well, there was no-one panicking. At half-time we just said to ourselves that we had battled well all year, we needed to knuckle down, stop the turnovers, work the ball into the shooters, and we did. We really shut up shop in the second half.

“They were picking off scores from our turnovers because we just weren’t protecting the ball. It’s not what we’ve been doing all year and it’s not what we’re about, so we had to address that.

“Now we get to come back here next weekend to play Crossmolina, and it will be like the Strokestown game in that we will be big outsiders. It will be another huge occasion, another great day for the club, and another huge game that we can’t wait to play,” the Elphin midfielder proudly noted.