Roslea’s Conor Quigley
It’s easy to do interviews after you win. A touch harder doing the ones after a defeat.
That takes a certain guts of its own, especially when the wound is still fresh and raw.
But that’s the kind of man Conor Quigley is, meeting with triumph and disaster, and treating those impostors just the same, or as well as any man of flesh and blood can.
And so he stands on O’Donnell park minutes after his Ulster dream has been shattered for another year, fielding the questions with a commendable patience and fortitude.
“Maybe our heads weren’t right, I don’t know, something wasn’t right. In the first half we just couldn’t get a real chance on goal to get ourselves settled down,” says Quigley by way of opening thoughts.
He knows the first half, that penalty in particular, was where the damage was done.
“We knew what to expect, we know how Donegal teams play football. It’s defensive and it’s patient and you have to just hold on and get tackles in, but not foul. They were dominating fair enough. They got a lot of ball around midfield and they were coming at us, but we seemed to be controlling them. They were only four or five points up. The penalty shouldn’t have been allowed to happen and we wouldn’t have been going in eight points down at half time.”
Quigley reflected on last year when Roslea lost to Glenswilly in the Ulster semi-final 3-9 to 2-8. Lessons were learned from that defeat. There would be no aimless lumping the ball in on the square against St Eunan’s.
“We knew we had to be patient today and keep the ball instead of kicking in. We pumped a few in and it didn’t pay off so we had to be sensible and keep the ball. But whether we didn’t have the runners or the energy, we just couldn’t break their defence down so that’s credit to them.”
What is hurting Quigley most though is the unfulfilled promise of a special group of Roslea players.
“That’s the hard bit about it, the fact that we know we are good enough. Nobody outside of Roslea would even have given a thought that we’d be competing in Ulster football and actually beating teams. And I don’t think we’ve got the credit we deserve for that.
“In the bookies we were a ridiculous price. There was nearly even club teams that hadn’t won their championship and they were better odds and that was very disrespectful to us. We wanted go out and show those people and prove it to ourselves that we were good enough, but it just didn’t happen on the day.”
After a game when there were few enough crumbs of comfort to be found, there was at least a modicum of respect to be retrieved from winning the second half.
“It’s a bit of character alright,” said Quigley. “At half time we could have just come out and dilly dallied and got hammered, but there’s pride in this jersey and we wanted to show that.”