'It's one of the best days of my life' - captain Cole

SFC final reaction

Ramor United captain Ado Cole described this afternoon as “one of the best days of his life” as he led his team to the Oliver Plunkett Cup.

“It’s unbelievable, it’s one of the best days of my life. I’m so happy we did it,” Cole said.

“To see the support here today, what it means to people, it’s unbelievable. I’m just absolutely delighted, delighted for everyone.”

Coming into the replay, Ramor were stung by suggestions that they were underdogs, he said.

“We knew what we could do. We kind of felt a bit hurt coming into the game, they said Gowna’s forwards were better than Ramor, Gowna were favourites. We knew what we could do and what we were capable of and that just fuelled us. We put our heads down today, things just kind of went right for us today, a lot of hard work and it just got us over the line.”

Asked about Ramor’s long ball tactics and whether Gowna were ready for it, Cole joked: “I nearly wasn’t ready for it myself! Jack kicked in a good few balls and it paid dividends, we got a couple of scores off them. You have to mix it up because that Gowna defence is tight, they’re well set up so you just need to change it up and we did that and I think it paid off for us today.”

Ado was full of praise for fellow marksmen Sean McEvoy and James Brady, who scored 1-12 between them.

“The two lads are just in my opinion two of the best forwards in Cavan. They make my job way easier. I’m delighted for James, he was the best player in the championship in my opinion and he got his Man of the Match award there. I’m delighted for him.

“Sean, again, another exceptional talent. Exceptional.”

Not winning another title since the breakthrough year in 2016 makes this one all the sweeter, he said.

“It probably does. I suppose we thought it was going to be like this every year but the amount of work and dedication that’s involved in getting to a county final. We did 139 training sessions between gym and training.

“That’s what it takes to win, people think because you’re young and you’re coming up, you’re going to win these things. It’s just pure hard work that gets you over the line and the boys put in the hard work this year and I’m absolutely delighted for them, they got what they deserved.

“The management leave no stone unturned, they study the other team and everyone knows their job before they go out. I think they got their tactics spot on today and I’m just happy we got over the line.”