'We’ve had some tough days' - Diver delighted as Gaels lift hurling silverware

Letterkenny Gaels midfielder Brian Diver was a mixture of delight and pride as his side won their first hurling title at adult level.

A club who didn’t have a hurling team until six years ago, it has been a long road with bumps along the way, but the tough days made their win on Saturday even sweeter as they lifted the Donegal Junior Hurling Championship title.

“It’s unreal to get over the line,” Diver said after their win over Burt reserves.

“A lot of boys have soldiered hard over the last six years and it has been tight going with trying to get the numbers there.

“But the boys stuck at it and it was great to get over the line today.

“We’ve had some tight days but the boys kept going the whole way through underage and eventually we got a senior team.

But this is such a big day for the club to get over the line, especially against a serious Burt team who have such a history in hurling in this county.

We had dark days at times and sometimes you’d nearly have boys not showing up or losing the head.

But we stuck at it and this year it all clicked, the boys came together, especially the management who put in some serious work and gave us the belief and platform to perform all year.

Hopefully this will help us kick on and it’s a big thing for the club, you could see a lot of young kids from the club there today with the flags and it’s something they will want to live up to in the future and that’s something to look forward to.

We want to use this as a springboard and push on, that’s the Junior title and the Intermediate final is on after us and hopefully somewhere down the line we can push on towards that.”

It was a fairly routine win in the end for Letterkenny Gaels, winning by 3-18 to 0-5 against the second string Burt side.

Diver was in fine form himself, hitting 1-3 from play and his second goal, despite being after just 20 minutes, almost put the result beyond doubt already as the Gaels led by eleven thanks to a fast start.

When the pair met earlier in the campaign, Diver and co had seven points to spare on their Inishowen counterparts, but the gulf in class was much wider in the final.

“We’re glad to have got the performance on the day.

“It was all about getting a quick start because if they got the tails up then we could have been in bother.

“We reacted well and chipped away at scores and got a few goals, but even the defence there, to keep Burt to five scores shows how much credit they deserve.”