Ballina will play senior football in 2023.
The 2021 county Junior A champions became the 2022 Intermediate football champions on Sunday.
That’s after they defeated Mullinahone in this year’s decider on a full-time score of 1-13 to 1-04.
The result means Ballina will compete at the top table of Tipperary football for the first time in their history.
Ballina manager Kevin Byrne was delighted with the progression of football in the club over the past number of years:
“It’s been great. It’s been a project that we established three years ago and the vision always was that we wanted to become a senior football team and wanted to compete in senior football.
“Ballina have had good underage teams for many years, I’ve been involved with a few of them myself and the pity was that we weren’t able to provide a pathway for players into adult football, particularly at senior level.
“We’ve done that now for the first time in the club’s history and the challenge for us now is to kick on again next year.”
The North Tipp club now go on to the Munster semi-final in November to play representatives from either Limerick or Waterford.
Kevin Byrne says they’re focus is now on representing the county:
“We want to take the Munster championship seriously, I think it beholds us as county champions, you’re representing the county.
“We’re going to take a few days off now to celebrate and enjoy the achievement but then we have to get back to it and we have to make sure that we represent the county in a proper manner going forward.”
