“You’d be emotional" – Kilkenny clubman sums up incredible Blacks & Whites achievement
Full match report will be available in this week’s edition of the Kilkenny People
Blacks & Whites’ Sam Byrne has admitted he’s never experienced a game quite like it after their hard-fought victory over St Martin’s on Saturday.
The rural club maintained their Michael Lyng Motors Hyundai Intermediate Championship status with a hard earned 2-16 to 1-14 win in John Locke Park.
“I actually don't even know what to say. That was one of the toughest games I've played ever. I thought I was going to drop there for a while,” Byrne said after the match.
“For a game like that, you just know all week, you're eating right, you're drinking right, you're sleeping right. You just know it's going to be a dogfight. You just know it's going to take everything out of you,” the corner-forward explained.
“We played Gowran (Young Irelands) two weeks ago, and we were in the dressing room after and it was the worst feeling I've ever felt,” Byrne recalled while hailing the panel’s reaction to that setback on Saturday afternoon.
Byrne, who scored a crucial first half goal for the Skeogh team, wasn’t surprised by the St Martin’s second half resurgence, who aided by a Sean Hunt goal, tested Blacks & Whites all the way to the finish.
“We knew they were going to have their purple patch. We said it in the dressing room, we were like, they're going to come out mad. They're going to be like mad dogs out here now, they're going to fight for everything. So we knew if we could just hold the goal count down to one, we'd be happy enough by the end of it,” he continued.
Next year will be Eddie Scally’s team’s fifth season in the second tier, an achievement that’s not lost on the young player.
“We are such a small parish, you'd be emotional to even think about it. There's 40-year-olds there and they're giving it everything. There's 18-year-olds there, and it means the world to them. Just to provide this moment is just everything.”