Youth is ‘Kee’ for Holm men

On Saturday they clinched their fourth trophy of the season - Long’s Supervalu Senior One, Northern Bank Senior Cup, Faughan Valley Cup and Faughan Valley Charity Cup - and Kee feels there is more to come.

The squad has young players like Ryan Hunter, Ricky Lee Dougherty, Andy McBrine, Gary and William McClintock then they certainly have a great chance to dominate North West cricket for a number of years.

“The squad really is very young, Junior and James (McBrine) are obviously getting on a wee bit, but they are still performing as well as anybody, they are brilliant and then you have me, Jordan (McGonigle) and Dwayne (McGarrigle) who are in our 30’s, but apart from that the rest of the squad is 24 or below, so it’s really looking good for the future,” he declared.

“Cricket is definitely in the blood here, we won the Senior Cup this year and we had three under 15-year-old’s playing for us and I don’t think any other club in Ireland could do that to be totally honest.

“It has been an unbelievable year and it’s the first time that I can remember winning so many trophies in the one season, so it’s absolutely amazing.”

The captain like any top player wasn’t totally satisfied with the 2012 season and would love to make a big charge to try and claim the Bob Kerr Irish Senior Cup in 2013.

“To be honest we were really disappointed this year with how the All Ireland ended, we got to the semi-final of the All Ireland and the Ulster Cup, so we were really disappointed with the way they fazed out.

“First and foremost your league is the most important thing at the start of every season, then the Senior Cup and then see what happens in the All Ireland, but obviously we will be looking to win every competition again next year.”

This season the Holm men haven’t relied on just one man, but Kee does feels their batting line-up has been their plus point this campaign and he also believes no one match stood out this summer.

“I think our strength has been that we bat right the way down, people think we don’t have such a strong bowling attack, but batting wise we are very strong.

“Last week we got 300 at Strabane and Junior McBrine didn’t bat, on Saturday we chased 120 runs for four wickets and Junior didn’t bat again, so I mean if Junior McBrine isn’t in our top six batsmen then that says a lot for the team.

“There isn’t too many matches that stand out, because really every match we played really consistently, we had a few blips. We didn’t play too well against Creevedonnell and Fox Lodge, but overall we have been pretty good, batting and bowling wise,” concluded Kee.