Sideline abuse motivated Cooley's Brian White into action

Brian White spoke to this Dundalk Democrat writer a couple of months ago about playing as long as he could. His stunning second half performance in Cooley’s famine ending intermediate final success was maybe why he continued to play.

 “For days like this,” he began. “I haven’t had many days like this so when I said I wanted to play for as long as I can, I might have to review that now.

 “I would rather be a starter all day long, but I just wouldn't have been fit for 60 minutes. So I'm happy to play any part I could and the way it worked out I really couldn't miss when I came on.

 “I have days like that and then I have some horrible days as well. But today everything went for me and it's just great."

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Coming in at half time can be difficult and White needed a free to settle himself into the man of the match winning performance. Some extra motivation came from Kevin’s supporters, before sensing it was all coming together for him and his winning side.

 “The first kick with me was a free, I was nervous hitting it. It was an easy free kick but I hadn't really touched the ball much before that and I just needed to get a score and in my head once I got that I was on it.

 “And then, I was getting a bit of abuse from the far line as well about being old and being finished and that really kind of made me grit my teeth and get stuck into it. So, it was a bit of a mix of getting on the scoreboard and the abuse from the sidelines.”

 White has suffered through a long career and six final losses in total for the club, but they put all that previous heartache to good use in the winning of Sunday’s showpiece and that serenity slowed everything down in the finish.

 “Once you get a goal and the noise and everything surrounding it,” he explained. “This is their first intermediate final, a great young team that really damages you when you hear that. Things start going wrong for you and they were letting simple hand passes go.

 “Once you get on top and there is noise and that you really have to go for it, and I think that's what we done. I think the crowd really did help us today. Once we started to get ahead, experience definitely told.

“I thought it quietened down for the last 6-7 minutes. Is that clock wrong? Because it said 58 and usually it gets a lot noisier and the tension goes higher but it wasn't really like that. I kind of got a wee bit mixed up with what was happening to be honest with you.

“So when the full time whistle went it was just relief, and I wanted to be around the older fellas, the likes of Gally, Richard Brennan, Conor McGuinness and Aoghan and Keith White, just to see them winning a championship medal, see us winning a championship medal. It's just nice.”