YOU HAVE TO ask the question but you rarely get an inspired answer.
When you see a couple of examples of skills so outrageous as Éanna Burke produced in the last eight minutes, you’re duty-bound to ask what he might have been thinking in that moment.
Truth is, they are never thinking. Applying instinct is when players empty their minds of all thought and live in the moment.
The first came with a snap shot, the ball barely in his hand before he let fly without a spare inch of room. The second came in the 64th minute, O’Loughlin Gaels defenders hounding him down, striking off his left side and falling backwards over the sideline as he did.
“I probably didn’t have the time. Sure, 60 minutes gone, I was out on my feet as well,” says Burke, after he emerges from the victorious St Thomas’ dressing room after winning his second All-Ireland title.
“I thought if it went wide, he might blew it up after a minute but just thanks to be God the guys won it out of the ruck.
“I just had to hit it. In fairness, the wind was pulling it in as well. The stuff of dreams but it hasn’t really sunk it yet.”
It was an inspired second half by Burke who was a mere 17-year-old when he came on in their final win over Kilcormac-Killoughey.
The same thing couldn’t happen nowadays with restrictions on young players. It was the same for fellow survivors Shane Cooney and David Sherry.
“We were thinking it was going to happen every year or that we’d be there or thereabouts, but that’s not how it happens. It’s been a long time coming but we worked awful hard to get here,” he said.
There have been lessons along the way.
Despite dominating in the notoriously flinty Galway championship, they faced accusations of underachieving in All-Ireland semi-finals. How that stands up to scrutiny considering their automatic path to the semi-final is up for debate.
But Burke for one is not buying it.
“I’d be kind of the opinion when people say we have underachieved, but at the end of the day we didn’t deserve the games we lost,” he said.
“We were outworked by Borris-Ileigh, outworked by Ballyhale, outworked by Dunloy. We didn’t deserve to win those games. You just have to take it as it comes and be a man about it and got back to win Galway and do it all over again.
“Sometimes when people say we underachieve, we just didn’t turn up. It’s a disrespect to the teams that have beaten us.
“Like that against Dunloy last year. I have no qualms, they beat us every way up so you can’t really go on about not playing well.”
For this final, he was up against one of the best markers in the game in Mikey Butler.
“I was never going to get anything easy,” he said.
“In the past, if I started poorly, sometimes it got to my head. We’ve done a lot of work over the last year, mentally resetting and going again and going again. So I just thought if I kept ploughing on spaces are coming and I just worked myself into the ground and everyone else did and that’s what it’s all about.”
Butler imposes himself on his markers in a pure hurling sense.
“In fairness, there’s no badness. It’s all on the ball. It’s perfect. We’re sound with each other.
“He popped up and got a point as well in the first half. I was like, ‘Oh Jesus, that’s my man’. But that’s what he’s bringing to his game as well. I just thought if I stayed working and tried to wear him down… like, he was tired there at the finish, I was tired and that was it, thank God.”
At the final whistle, what could they do but embrace each other, as hurt as Butler would have been.
“Yeah, when the whistle went I didn’t know what to do. I kind of hugged Mikey Butler, I was just so tired. It hasn’t even sunk in yet,” said Burke.
“Obviously we’ll get a bite to eat now and tip down in the bus. In with the boys tomorrow and maybe the day after as well. That’s when it will start to sink in and they’re the memories you make along the way. It’s going to be unbelievable.”
