THE heartbreak of a final loss hits hard. Once the final whistle goes, the dressing room is a sombre place.

Players find their own little spot to mull over what could or should have been. Very little talking is done as players slowly drift towards the showers.

The management will address the players on the season, thanking individuals as players’ heads are hung in silence.

Part of you wants to go home and lock yourself away but there is another part that feels like a beer or two with your comrades.

The bus is boarded with beer in hand as small conversations break out about what happened and how the game was lost. With each beer the feeling starts to fade as you start to relax a bit. The night goes on and before you know it you’re waking up on the Monday getting ready to head to the Monday club.

It’s not the Monday club you had in your head but it will have to do today. Players drift in each with different stories from the night before.

The game crops up from time to time but it’s soon drowned out by the sound of ‘80s music blasting from the boom box.

As the day wears on, past players join in the postmortem as most had the Monday booked off. The ‘what ifs’ get bigger as plans soon turn towards next year and who might make the difference.

Before you know it, you’re heading for home and in reality the pain only really hits home on the Tuesday morning.

Shaken from the day before, you make your way for a coffee in the morning but there is a silent feel to the day.

Flags still wave from shop windows but there is a real sense of dejection in the air. Your Tuesday normally revolves around training but that routine is no more as the dark winter nights set in.

It’s a horrible, horrible place for a few days but the show must go on.

Our lads lost Sunday’s county final to a gallant Naomh Conaill team.

We put ourselves in a fantastic position, going seven points up but we lost our way in the second half as the Glenties men ramped upped the intensity and forced the game to extra-time.

They took over in extra-time and although perhaps we could have forced a draw at the end, I don’t think anyone could argue with the fact that Glenties were the better team for the second half of that game.

That defeat will hurt our lads for a long time because it’s one I feel that they could have won but when you get to that stage of the competition, you have to be ruthless. That will be a massive learning curve for our younger lads.

Glenties are a serious outfit and they have a never-say-die attitude. When you consider all of the big teams that fell last weekend, I would put them now as strong favourites to lift the Ulster title.

They now have a few weeks to switch off before ramping things up again for the Ulster series so they are definitely one to watch from here on in.

We won’t be back involved unfortunately, but I am really looking forward to the Ulster campaign kicking off in a few weeks’ time.

With a lot of the big hitters gone, it should make for interesting viewing over the next few months. Kilcoo are obviously still there but something tells me this year that we may have a new winner of that competition.