Bray Emmets players celebrate after their Leinster Intermediate Hurling Final win over Trim.
By John Harrington
When a stock-take is done of all the great victories achieved by so many teams, club and county, in 2022, then the Leinster Intermediate title won by Bray Emmets will surely be near the top of the list.
They’re the first Wicklow team to ever win a competition that’s traditionally been dominated by Kilkenny clubs.
This success is all the more laudable considering they exited from the competition last year after a 15 point hammering at the hands of Wexford side Oylegate-Glenbrien.
That defeat stung the Wicklow club because they knew they’d let themselves down on the day, and from the moment they won their fourth Wicklow SHC title in a row they were determined to make amends for it.
And so they have with wins over Laois champions Abbeyleix, Dublin champions Naomh Barrog, and, in last weekend’s Final, Meath champions Trim.
They have no time to rest on their laurels because they now play Munster champions Monaleen of Limerick in the All-Ireland semi-final on Sunday, but manager Paul Carley was happy to let his players enjoyed the historic achievement of winning their province before they switched their focus to the next challenge.
“It's amazing, I think a lot of them don't even realise what they've done,” he ways. “It's so alien to a club in Wicklow to win a Leinster hurling title that it probably won't hit home for a while.
“We have to get them back down to earth now for this weekend because it's a short turn-around with sore bodies and sore heads. But we just have to get on with it.
“I was talking to lads outside of the set-up in the club and they were saying do we want to tame down the celebrations. And I'm there, you don't get to do this that often. You have to enjoy it, you have to celebrate it.
“We met as a team for breakfast at 10am the next morning after the game and every one of them were there. And we just said, look it, we just focus again now on next weekend and see where we can go against Monaleen.”
Bray Emmets manager, Paul Carley.
Winning this Leinster Intermediate title is no happy accident for Bray Emmets. They’ve put in huge work at underage level for the past two decades and are the dominant force in the Wicklow SHC, winning seven of the last nine championships.
That makes this achievement all the more satisfying for everyone involved, because they know it’s the product of many years of hard toil away from the limelight.
“I was just talking to one of my selectors who's been in the club all his life and he was saying the first underage they had was only in 1999 and the amount of work that has gone on since then is huge,” says Wexford native Carley. “Some of the lads that were playing at the weekend were part of that underage team.
“Then John Henderson took over the team and they won two in a row and then there was a gap of two years and I'm there five years now and it's been constant work. I always try to tell these lads that they are good enough.
“It's been five years of hard work but after winning a Leinster title it's been worth every minute.”
Coming a year after Naas won the Leinster Intermediate Championship, Carley hopes that this win by another club from outside the traditional powerbase of hurling in the province will prove inspirational for others like them.
“It has to be,” he says. “Just even look at the four All-Ireland semi-finalists. You wouldn't be surprised Limerick have a team in it but then you have Mayo, Down, and Wicklow teams. It just shows that no matter county you're in, if you work hard enough you will progress and get there eventually.
“The big thing for us over the last six weeks is we've had 15 on 15 every night and they're all challenging each other. We wouldn't have had that all the time in Bray. You just have to keep working at it.
“It has to be massive for the smaller counties and smaller clubs to show what can be possible if you work for it.”
Monaleen looked very impressive when winning the Munster Championship and will go into Sunday’s match as warm favourites, but such is the self-belief that this Bray team has now developed you wouldn’t write them off.
“They look very good in fairness,” says Carley of the Limerick club. “They look very physically strong, they're all very good hurlers. I think they've two lads who won All-Irelands in Mark O'Dwyer and Andrew La Touche Cosgrave. And I think a lot of other lads have come through Limerick development squads, so they're very good.
“They'll be a hard team to beat but we'll do our best. We'll do our homework and see where we go. The main thing for our lads is they know now they can hurl at this level so it's a case of just doing the simple things right and going and expressing themselves like they did in the Leinster Final.
“We're in a great position, 60 minutes from an All-Ireland Final, and if you had told our lads that at the start of the season they'd have taken your hand off. So hopefully they'll go out and hurl with a bit of freedom.”
