Fintan Burke on how St Thomas’ turned heartbreak into motivation to get back on top

It was at their lowest point, in the midst of the heartbreak and the tears, when the St Thomas’ players pledged not to allow that day define them.

“We were in the dressingroom in Thurles and I don’t know how many lads would admit it, but there were 30 lads crying,” recalls Fintan Burke. “It’s very rare you’ll see or be in a place like that where 30 grown men would actually be in floods of tears.”

The context for it all was last January’s devastating All-Ireland club semi-final defeat to Ballyhale Shamrocks, who scored an improbable match-winning goal in the fourth minute of injury-time. TJ Reid, who else, stood over a free to the right of the D and despite a forest of bodies between him and the goal, the Ballyhale forward somehow found an alley to send the ball whizzing through. Goal. Ballyhale won by a point.

“We made a promise in the dressingroom after,” continues Burke. “The easiest thing would have been to get on the bus and go home, but we made a promise that we owe it to ourselves to get back here and give it another shot – don’t let that be our way to sign off.

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“For three or four days afterwards I didn’t want to leave the house. We’d always go to the local on the way home but even the local was just sombre.

“Monday morning and you’re waking up to get the bus to Galway to have a few pints with the lads, and you’re just wondering “how did it happen? Is it real or a dream?”

“People would laugh at you when you say how much it hurts you. At work Tuesday and Wednesday and all everybody wants to talk about is the match and you just want the ground to swallow you up.

“It’s not easy to take but it was probably the making of us this year, being honest. Put that bit of hunger back. Had we won that game, would lads be as hungry this year? Hard to know.”

The Galway kingpins have fulfilled their promise to get back to another All-Ireland club semi-final, on Sunday they will face Ulster champions Dunloy at Croke Park.

This season they claimed their fifth Galway senior hurling championship in-a-row but their one and only All-Ireland triumph remains 2013. They lost the 2019 decider to Ballyhale.

Despite the club operating at such a prominent level for much of the last decade, Burke is one of 25 St Thomas’ players on the current panel with no All-Ireland medal.

Like many rural clubs, they face challenges with playing numbers at some grades and so there is a feeling among the current senior players that they must strike now, because the potential for a downturn in fortunes is very real.

“We know it doesn’t last forever, given how small of a club we are we don’t have the numbers coming that towns and larger villages would have,” says Burke.

“We are literally at the side of a mountain and you have no motorway, we have one shop which is technically outside of the parish and one or two pubs, that’s as good as it gets for us.

“We were struggling to field an under-21 team this year. We know it’s not going to last forever so the biggest thing for us is while we’re here to try win as much as we can.

St Thomas’ will face Dunloy in the AIB All-Ireland club SHC semi-final at Croke Park this Sunday, 1.30pm (Live on TG4).