Ciaran Brady: All-Ireland win ' just surpasses any dreams’

Some say winning an All-Ireland with your club is a dream but for Ciaran Brady, Arva’s success on Sunday went even beyond that.

“Yeah, I suppose, to be honest, it hasn’t sunk in. I don’t know what to feel, like you do dream of these days, probably with your county first, because that’s your heroes when you’re growing up,” the Arva captain stated after his team beat Listowel in the All-Ireland Club JFC final.

“But then when you get a bit older, it’s your club and you know what it means to them,”

“And I suppose getting to this stage with your club, it just surpasses any dreams, really.

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“And to do what we did today, like in other games, we’ve got an early start, I suppose it’s the first time in a while that our back was against the wall.”

Arva found themselves three points in arrears after a disappointing first half.

The second half, he said, was about “bringing war” to the opposition.

“There was no shouting or roaring at half-time. There were deep, deep conversations, man to man, were we able to go to war? And we brought the war to Listowel, the second half, and they wilted. And bit by bit, we got stronger and stronger.

“And credit to our team, to every man. I remember coming out of defence at one stage myself, and I handed the ball away. I looked around and James Morris got a last-ditch block for a goal attempt.

“How many times in my life have I seen James Morris getting last minute blocks? And that’s to the credit to this team and what we’ve been true together. It’s just amazing.”

The first half didn’t go Arva’s way as Listowel were able to build from the back.

“Yeah, to be honest, it was draining. We went out to play front foot football and we went out to squeeze their goalie. We thought we could get after them.

“We watched clips on them and every other team gave them the kick out, and we felt we could get a squeeze on them. In the first half we probably didn’t do too bad. We went up by two points, but the gaps became bigger and wider and the pitch felt bigger.

“And I suppose a little bit of a lack of experience, maybe, in different cases, it was a lot of boys’ first days out in Croke Park but we regrouped at half-time.

“We settled down, we gathered our breath, and in the second half, lads just grew inches wider and taller and it just showed. We squeezed Listowel and we suffocated them, ultimately.

“Look, we have men in that team to just supply energy all through it, like Tristan and Johnny McCabe. We feed off each other and a massive thing we’re into is body language. And when there’s lots of eye contact, you feed off energy.

“No man’s able to do it on his own and you see it at any level.  In the first half, we weren’t probably just tailing each other off the shoulder.

“In the second half, we were. We were tailing each other, we were getting under each other for breaks, we were scrapping together.

“And as I said, the spaces then become smaller and it becomes easier to play. And that was ultimately what happened.”