Storey: We’ll be trimmed by Rangers if not careful

For Martin Storey, the decision by the Oulart-the-Ballagh panel to sign up for Movember and grow facial hair wasn’t much of a stretch. He fell in line with that plan very easily, thank you very much.

“There’s been a slagging match but it’s being done for charity. Everyone’s coming up with a different one,” he explained.

“Some lads have the handle bars and some lads have the little ‘taches and then some lads have I don’t know what you may call it. It’s only a bit of craic. They’re all jeering me because I’ve always had a moustache. I’ve just let it grow a little bit longer.”

With Sunday’s Leinster senior club hurling final falling on December 1, he doesn’t know whether the group will shave the day before or, if superstitious, wait until after the game.

Having lost the last three finals, there may be grounds for considering piseógs but Storey, having only taken up the reins this season, isn’t for looking back.

“I’m looking forward to a Leinster final, I’m not going to look back. I hurled 16 seasons with Wexford and I got one All-Ireland medal. I wouldn’t replace that with five because it’s the one I won with my county. When the lads cross the line on Sunday they won’t be looking back.”

Storey lost back-to-back Leinster club finals in 1994 and ‘95 so he can appreciate where his players’ heads might be this week.

“The players probably have a little flashback to the last three but it will be a very good leveller for them knowing they’ve been in the last three finals and haven’t come out on the right side of it. I think that’s incentive enough in itself. I think you have to put things right but you have to deliver the performance to put it right. There’s no such thing as deserving in sport — you have to win it..”

The bookies believe it’s Oulart-the-Ballagh’s greatest chance of getting the provincial monkey off their backs.

Storey, though, is wary, having expected Mount Leinster Rangers to come through their semi-final against the much-fancied Ballyboden St Enda’s.

“Anybody who is underestimating Mount Leinster Rangers is thinking back to maybe 30 years ago and saying ‘oh, they’re the Carlow champions’. That day is long, long gone. They were All-Ireland intermediate champions, Clara won that last year and they’re now Kilkenny senior champions. We know how good they are, how capable they are. We’re treating this as one of the biggest challenges we’ve ever had because this is the biggest challenge we have. Because if we don’t win it, it’s game over.”