Laois contingent help Pfizer win All-Ireland title
The Pfizer Newbridge squad line up before the All-Ireland Inter Firms Senior Football Final in Round Towers GAA Club
Pfizer Newbridge last week delivered a sensational All-Ireland title, beating Medtronic Galway by two points to capture the All-Ireland Inter-Firms Senior Football Championship.
The final was played at the home of Round Towers GAA, and saw Pfizer take an early two-point lead over their Connacht opponents. Medtronic got off the mark in the 12th minute and had their noses in front just five minutes later, but Pfizer came storming back six unanswered points in as many minutes.
Medtronic pulled a few scores back and trailed at half time by 0-9 to 0-5, but reduced the deficit to the minimum soon after the restart.
Pzifer added another couple of points to keep the Galway side at arm’s length, but fell behind once more moments later before drawing level midway through the second half at 12 points apiece.
There was nothing to choose between the sides, who were all square at 14-14 with just five minutes left on the clock, but two late scores from Brian Cardiff’s team were enough to bring the title home to Newbridge after an incredible decider.
“It was great buzz, from a football point of view and from a workplace point of view,” the manager told the Nationalist.
Cardiff is no stranger to success, winning senior county titles as a player with Athy and as a manager with Blessington. He has also recently been appointed as the new boss of one of the most successful clubs in Laos senior football, St Joseph’s.
“It was very different from a footballing point of view. You're used to being involved with club or county teams; this is a very different scenario where you're bringing a lot of lads together from different clubs. It's nearly like a college team feel about it in terms of pulling lads together - I think there were 15 clubs represented on the squad altogether,” he said.
“You're not necessarily doing what you do with club teams in terms of working on a whole lot of tactics or anything like that. But it makes it a little bit more pure as well, seeing lads in their raw state as opposed to very structured.
“With the club teams you'd be involved in you're at it three or four times a week. With this, there's a lot less time and thought put into it. But it's funny when you get into the dressing room, you get on to the field and you're still in a competitive environment; the feeling is the same.
“It mightn't be as all-consuming as the other teams you'd be involved with; there's more of a social feeling to it between matches. But then when the games come up and the matches start, you're saying to yourself: ‘Right, we're in a competition here.’ You just default to, ‘well, there’s no point being in a competition if we don't want to win the thing’.”
Cardiff says there is a seismic difference between a work team and a more traditional club or county set-up.
““It's almost a complete reverse of your club team. Your club bring you together because of football, whereas it's your workplace that brings you together here and then you decide that you're all going to play football together.
“You see with your club, most of your connections are built on the football field. Whereas, it’s the other way around here - your connections are built in work and then you bring them on to the football field.
“I don't know whether one is better or worse than the other. I'll just say they're different. Especially in (Pfizer), there's 1,200/1,300 people on the site here. On a day-to-day basis, you're probably dealing with a core group of the same 30/40 people. But what this has done now, it's just open pathways of communication.
“The mix of people from across the site, different departments, it gives you something different to talk about when you meet them in the corridor. It's a real bringing together of people.
“A lot of big companies do an awful lot of things to try to bring the workforce together and create that team environment in the workplace. But there's nothing like a sport to bring fellas into their raw form and something they're passionate about. You could spend a hundred workshops or meetings at work trying to bring folks together, then all of a sudden, you've got five footballers together and they're more valuable than a hundred workshops.
“It’s also a great leveller. Obviously in the workplace there's a natural hierarchy, people hold different positions. But once you tog out or go into a dressing room or whatever, everyone's on the same level. It's great from that point of view as well. That was a big thing for me, seeing people in what you might call their natural environment or their natural state. That was brilliant as well.”
The Pfizer team was awash with senior inter-county stars, with, including legendary Kildare duo, Padraig O’Neill and Mick O’Grady.
There were also nine Laois men in the squad, including five senior inter-county players - Damon Larkin, Niall Donaher, Benny Lawlor, Tom Shiel and Eoin Buggie – and former League of Ireland star, Garry Comerford, who made a name for himself with Cobh Ramblers, Waterford FC, Cork City and Athlone Town.
Cardiff says this level of talent and experience was a major part in being able to put together a winning formula.
“As mad and all as it sounds, we ended up not training. Just the way it turned out, lads were so involved with their club team, especially since the turn of the new year and with going back with the clubs and all that.
“We were trying to arrange training sessions, but with schedules at the clubs and all that, we decided to let lads do what they're doing with the club and then put a bit of focus around match days as opposed to trying to organise training sessions.
“It was a thing where you were trusting that lads were doing all their stuff with their club and then bringing it together on match day. That was probably another reason it had a bit of a college feel about it.
“You're not trying to make up a team - the team is already there. It forced us as coaches to go back to the basics, because you don't have the time to spend working heavily on tactical stuff or prep stuff. It forces you to filter down what's important on the day and to go after that.
“Then with the nature of it as well, you don't know a whole pile about opposition teams either, so you're not going looking at videos of opposition or studying opposition. You're just kind of picking it as you see it and then responding in game to what might or might not be working.
“So, it's good from a coaching point of view as well because you're forced to do things in real time rather than with a whole pile of planning going into it you know. And to have all these lads that have played county or are in and around county squads – like you’ve Damon Larkin there who was midfield for Laois up until last year. You’ve Eoin Buggie, Conor Goode, then there’s Niall Donoher who was top-class for Laois for a number of years – I’ve never seen a 40-year-old man in the shape he’s in, so fair play to him.”
It has been a monumental season for Pfizer, with the first piece of silverware delivered in January by beating Laois/Offaly Gardaí in the Kildare-Laois-Offaly Regional Final. That sent the Newbridge company into the Leinster Championship, beating Tallaght Gardaí in the semi-finals before being crowned senior provincial champions at the expense of Dun Laoghaire ETB.
Pfizer were paired up with defending champions Liebher in the All-Ireland semi-finals, where a tremendous performance from Brian Cardiff’s men resulted in a 0-21 to 0-11 triumph over the Kerry company and with it a ticket to the final.
The manager closed off with a special word for team captain, Tom Shiel: “In fairness now, the whole thing was the brainchild of Tom Shiel. He was the one. I don't think there's been an Inter Firm team here in Pfizer for 20-odd years and it was Tom who brought it to his manager in work at the time that he was interested in seeing if we could get a group together to go after this and that's kind of where the seed was sown. So, in fairness, Tom has to be called out as been the instigator of all this.”
