ST PAUL’S, Holywood manager Peadar Heffron pointed to the jubilant scenes as he watched his team hug, smile and cry with sheer joy at winning their first ever Down Championship title.
They defeated Division Two side Aughlisnafin 2-6 to 0-10 after extra-time in the Down Parador Lodge Junior Football Championship final on Friday night and it meant the world to the players and fans from Holywood, Bangor and Newtownards.
It was heartbreak for the Fin, who came so close to clinching the Junior title, but for the second successive season they came up just short in the final.
However, the night in Newry’s Pairc Esler belonged to St Paul’s.
They finally got their rewards after 41-years of hard graft, crushed dreams and their fair share of heartache.
Having set-up an underage system in the early 2000s, their labour has now borne fruit.
And Friday’s win meant the world to the St Paul’s boss.
“I am just really happy,” said Heffron.
“What does it mean to us? I think you can see that we are just all over the moon.”
Captain Daniel Eastwood lifted the Junior Championship trophy and he delivered a Man of the Match performance, but St Paul’s didn’t make life easy for their fans and the seven frees they kicked wide had the mentors frustrated on the touchline.
“We tried our best to lose it there and I just think that they were testing everybody’s wits on the side-line,” Heffron said.
“At the end of the day the fitness work that we have done has stood us in good stead especially in extra-time where I think we had enough in the engine to get over the line.”
Goals from Sean Tucker and Niall Grimley were crucial to winning the title but there were impressive performances from young Tom Grimley around midfield, young Shea Haughey and Ryan Loughran in defence and when the Holywood side needed cool heads they made sure they had the experience of Gerald Walls and Cathal McKenna on the pitch.
Indeed, the St Paul’s manager praised the work-rate and ethos of his squad over the past few seasons and believes those that helped at underage level cannot be forgotten in the celebrations.
“These guys worked hard last year, we did a lot of strength and conditioning stuff and had some downtime at the end of last season,” Heffron said.
“Then we did a bit of pre-season before lockdown came and meant we could do nothing, but they all worked hard individually, and we raised a lot of money for charity, actually we raised £5,500 for Children’s Heartbeat.
“Then when football started again we trained hard.
''We have a huge squad of guys now and players back who hadn’t played in a while and we have a lot of young lads who came through the school teams that Paddy Hannigan been taking at Our Lady and St Patrick’s, Knock. It is just a real good combination.
“We have some old heads in there as well so fair play to Cathal [McKenna] and Gerard [Walls], they’re still going.”
St Paul’s created an important page of club history on an unforgettable Friday September 18 2020 evening in Newry.
The team's final performance, years in the making, and built by the enormous efforts of the entire club down the years, shows they are going places.
