Bobby Butterly not fussed about individual honours as he heaps praise on his teammates

After their heartbreak in front of goals last week, Stabannon Parnells found their attacking mojo last Saturday in the Junior Final Replay to seal the Christy Bellew Cup for the first time since 1999.

Central to their victory was two goals by the highly influential Bobby Butterly, whose brace either side of half time proved decisive.

For his display, he was given the match of the match award. However, the humble attacker only had the club and teammates on his mind when giving his thoughts on this honour.

“It’s more about the team today then me, those goals were put on a plate for me” he stressed. “The first one we were pressing high up the field, and we overturned them. David Cluskey popped it back to me and I just stuck it in the net.

“It was the same again in the second half, David this time played a high ball in. There was a defender coming onto me and I just turned and knew in my head that I had to go for goal.

“This means nothing at all, it all about the club. We’ve lifted the junior trophy today, that is what matters. This honour doesn’t really bother me.”

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Despite his early goal in the first few seconds, the men in green found themselves behind at the break. They needed a big second half, something that didn’t materialise in the first final.

Spurred on by the words of encouragement at half time, the Parnells lifted their game significantly to make sure they lifted the trophy. Butterly believes their talks were a key part of their success.

“We came into half time knowing we weren’t at our best, we were a point down and we still believed in ourselves. We said ‘lads come on, we haven’t really got started, we need to kick it up another two gears or so.’ 20 or 30 percent.

My father spoke to us, he summed it up, it a man versus man battle, so everyone had to up it 20 percent if we are to come away with the win and we did that. We came out and blew them away.”

This is their second big title of the season, having already grabbed promotion in the league after topping Division 3B. That set them up for the year ahead and gave them the confidence to push on to another level.

“Leaving 3B was our initial goal, that was what was in our minds, we felt we could not be in that division for another year” he noted. “It was still good competition there, but we needed to get out to progress and become better players, be a better team and get up the ranks.

“We did that, then it left us with the new goal of going for the Junior title. There were tough games. In the quarters the Mitchels were very strong, it was hard to win there. Then their was the semi-final against Togher, another good team who we had in the group stages. We managed to beat them by a point.

“Then obviously you had Glyde, who have lost a couple of finals in recent years, so it is amazing to get the win today against them too. It is all about pushing on for Leinster now, then next year giving Intermediate a good rattle, to make sure we keep on progressing and pushing.”