KILLINAN END - In with the new
The winds of change are certainly blowing through this year’s club hurling championship before a blow is struck in the competition.
Only the inevitable presence of Ballygunner has prevented a total clear-out of all last year's county champions in the Munster. Even in Kerry, whose champions participate in the Munster Intermediate championship, Abbeydorney won the County Final for the first time in half a century. They are potential semi-final opponents for Cashel should the two clubs surmount their considerable quarter-final hurdles this Sunday – both play away, Cashel against Newcastle West with the Kerry champions meeting Brickey Rangers, a club based near Dungarvan.
It is not, of course, strictly correct to imply that the Munster championship will not see familiar faces as Cork will be represented by Sarsfields who also played in last year’s competition. This year, however, they will do so without the mantle of county champions to engender confidence. Based in Glanmire, just north of Cork city, and perhaps most famous for Paddy Barry and Teddy McCarthy, the modern era has been good to Sars. The 1989 Cork County Final was a novel one. It provided Glen Rovers with the club’s only county title during the four decades between 1976 & 2015, but defeated finalists Sarsfields were appearing in their first final since the club had won its second County Final in 1957.
In those days the club was very much in the shadow of Cork’s famous ‘big 3’ but they are the modern-day poster-boys of Cork hurling. Including the breakthrough title of 2008, they have added five county titles to their record over a decade and a half - an unrivalled achievement in an era when the county has not seen a dominant club emerge to exert a greater stranglehold on the championship. Of course, it could be argued that Sarsfields are in the ha’penny place in contemporary Cork hurling when compared with the team that beat them with some comfort in the County Final. Imokilly beat Sars 1-23 to 0-17 in the final recently to win their sixth County Senior title since 1997 when they won their first. There must be an underbelly of opinion in the Rebel County that questions the validity of a divisional team being so relatively strong, but it is underpinned by a long tradition in that competition. The emergence of Feakle as champions of Clare for the first time in 36 years is as strong a gust of fresh air as you might expect. However, in the Clare context it is well-established trend with Ballyea, Cratloe, and Crusheen all having won their first titles in recent years while Clonlara won their first in nearly a century back in 2008.
What may be more noteworthy is that rather than an area of classic modern population sprawl, Feakle represents one of the traditional strongholds which had its real glory days in the 1930s & ‘40s. Even the club’s 1988 win bridged a 44-year gap. Freshness in the win maybe but this is good old East Clare old money. Biddy Earley can be absolved after this. The win against the modern-day aristocrats – all fifteen of Sixmilebridge’s county titles have come since 1977 – will only have enhanced the celebrations in Feakle. The lifting of the Canon Hamilton cup while Clarecastle operate in a tier below is a reminder of how fortunes can fluctuate too. In a weekend when both All-Ireland champions teams in hurling and football exited, it is worth noting that Cappataggle who beat All-Ireland champions, St Thomas, in the Galway semi-final won the County Junior hurling title as recently as 1994. In that same county the teams which contested the 1999 Senior football final – Killererin and An Cheathrú Rua (Carraroe) – met in this year’s Junior final. Back in the day the laurels went to Killererin the club of Pádraic Joyce, but this time the county title went to Conamara. The moral of the story might be that the doldrums can be as temporary as the glory days. An even starker example of that over the weekend was that of Thomastown who took the Kilkenny senior title just a year after winning the intermediate championship. This was no overnight success either with the intermediate win over Mooncoin last year having come only after losing three of the previous four county finals including one on penalties and another after extra-time. Not only was it the club’s first senior title since 1946 but they have been in only two finals since. The first of those came in 1967 when they lost by a dozen points to Bennettsbridge. Some 21 years later, they lost to Ballyhale Shamrocks by seventeen points. To win a county senior title beating the winners of the previous six championships along the way is some going. Kilkenny’s selectors, who had six O’Loughlin Gaels’ players on their panel against Clare last July with just one from Thomastown, might reflect in the coming months.
We must give pride of place on the weekend that is in it to our border neighbours in Doon who a took thoroughly deserved first ever Limerick county title. They too did it the hard way beating Patrickswell in the semi-final and ensuring Na Piarsaigh’s third failed attempt at three-in-a-row since their recent dominance of Limerick hurling began. They will winter well where the Mulcair River flows.