Brigid’s boss stays grounded but hails defensive ace Stack
If a supporter was forced to guess whether or not St Brigid’s had won or lost last Sunday week’s Connacht final, based on some of the answers given by team manager Jerome Stack in his post-match interview, it might take them a while to make a suggestion with any degree of confidence, such is the level nature of the Listowel man.
“I’ll keep a balanced view on where we are,” he said, somewhat unsurprisingly, after his team’s 1-13 to 2-5 win over Corofin.
“It’s fantastic to be in an All-Ireland semi-final, but we’ll be balanced about our preparation whoever we’re playing. We’ve had setbacks in games already this year. Okay, we mightn’t have dominated immediately after that, but we’re learning. You can talk about it until people criticise you, and say this and that, but the only way you’ll learn is by actually going through it.
“You won’t get it right all the time and you might come a cropper, but you do learn. I think we’ve learned a little bit today. We got a bit of traction, wrestled back the momentum and got our scores.”
By now you’d probably have figured out that St Brigid’s had found a way to beat Corofin. You certainly wouldn’t think that they had so comprehensively outplayed them, scoring twice as often over the course of an exceptional hour’s play.
“We played well, but did we play almost the perfect game? I’m not so sure”, he continued.
“Some of the games we played previously, we didn’t dominate on the scoreboard. But they’re different games, different weather, different set-ups by the teams you’re playing. I’m not going to get too high after today in the same way I wasn’t too low after the last one. I’ll keep a balanced view and get ready for the next game,” he argued.
Where Stack did get effusive was when it came to describing the performances and the character of his namesake Brian, who continues to play like the best man-marking defender in Ireland. Gary Sice added his name to an illustrious list of direct opponents this year, including Con O’Callaghan, Niall Murphy, Ryan O’Donoghue, Shane Walsh, Darragh Kirwan and Seán Sherlock.
Needless to say, Jerome had nothing but the warmest of praise for his defensive talisman. “Look, you can only give out so many All-Stars in the year and I absolutely understand that, but Brian Stack is an immense footballer,” he said.
“He’s a brilliant footballer for Roscommon and a brilliant footballer for St Brigid’s. Like, if you saw the game we had here where he was carried off towards the end (Connacht quarter-final versus Coolera-Strandhill), most fellas would have said that he’d play no more football this year. That’s not Brian Stack though, he’s a different man and made of different stuff.”
Then the conversation shifts back to the team, and the upcoming All-Ireland semi-final against Cork champions Castlehaven, who defeated Dingle in yesterday’s dramatic Munster final via a penalty shootout. Sure enough, Stack slips back into his more conservative tone when the topic changes.
“We’ll approach that game the way we’ve done in every round in Roscommon and Connacht,” he replied.
“We won’t read too much into today, the same way people would have had read too much into the last day. We’ll keep a good, balanced view on it and do our best to bring the best performance we can,” he added.