Christy O’Connor's GAA talking points: Gunners' home comforts, the time is now for Athy
GENERATION GAME: Ballygunner's Philip and Harry Mahony after the Munster Club Senior Hurling Championship quarter-final against Na Piarsaigh. Pic: INPHO/Tom O'Hanlon
At the Ballygunner-Na Piarsaigh Munster quarter-final two weeks ago, a handful of the Sarsfields players were in the Gaelic Grounds watching on and taking mental notes of the winners to prepare for Sunday’s Munster semi-final, fully aware of how difficult that task would be against whichever high-calibre team came through. And particularly when that semi-final was an away match.
Deep down, Sarsfields probably knew they would be facing the Waterford champions and a team that is gunning for them since last year’s Munster final. And now that they are, the task is going to be even harder again for Sarsfields when they have to go to Walsh Park.
Sars know all too well how difficult that assignment is after Ballygunner hammered them there by 17 points in the 2023 Munster quarter-final. That was an outlier performance from a Sars side that have improved and matured immeasurably since that result. They are far more experienced now too. They’ll take huge confidence from being the reigning provincial champions. But there is still no getting away from the Walsh Park factor, and how hard Ballygunner are to beat there.
The last time they lost a championship match at the venue was in June 2015 when De La Salle beat the Gunners by two points. Ballygunner still came back to win that championship and establish themselves as the most dominant club team in the county’s history; 12-in-a-row champions in Waterford, four Munster titles, as well as becoming the first club to win three in-a-row in the province.
Having contested eight of the last nine Munster finals, one of the reasons the Gunners have become so consistently dominant is because of their record in Walsh Park; the Gunners have now gone 46 games unbeaten there in championship.
In the history of the provincial club championships, no other club team has ever come anywhere close to having that kind of a record over such a sustained period in their county grounds. Crossmaglen Rangers used often play their home Ulster matches in their own pitch at Oliver Plunkett Park, but even when the Rangers won a colossal 19 county titles and 11 Ulster titles in a 20-year period between 1996-2005, they weren’t able to stitch together an unbeaten home sequence stretching to the numbers Ballygunner have reached.
After losing to Bellaghy in Oliver Plunkett Park in the 2005 Ulster quarter-final, Crossmaglen’s longest unbeaten streaks at an Armagh venue was when they put three consecutive Ulster titles together across two separate periods between 2006-’08 and 2010-’12.
Yet the unbeaten run on each of those occasions came in the Athletics Grounds. Pearse Óg famously denied the Rangers a 14-in-a-row when beating them in the 2009 Armagh quarter-final at the county grounds. When Crossmaglen finally surrendered their grip on Ulster after winning six Ulster titles in six appearances in the competition between 2006-’12, their unbeaten run ended in the Athletic Grounds at the hands of Kilcoo after extra-time in a 2013 provincial quarter-final replay.
Since Ballyguner began their incredible run in Waterford in 2015, going 66 matches unbeaten, there has only been two occasions when they were close to being taken out in the county; De la Salle drew with them in 2016, while Mount Sion ran them to two points in the 2021 semi-final. In their other 64 matches, a team only got to within six points of Ballygunner on just 13 occasions.
The last time the Gunners were beaten in Walsh Park in Munster was in October 2014 when Cratloe, the Clare champions, over-powered them by three points in the quarter-final. That was an exceptional Cratloe team that included four players from the side that had won the previous year’s All-Ireland; Podge Collins, Conor McGrath, Conor Ryan and Cathal McInerney. Liam Markham and Seán Collins were also part of that Clare panel.
It still took Cratloe all their time to get the win that afternoon. The Gunners were surfing a huge wave of momentum after hitting an unanswered 1-4 in the third quarter before that flow was stalled in the 45th minute when their corner-forward Brian O’Sullivan received a second yellow card.
In the intervening years, Ballygunner have beaten nine different clubs in Walsh Park in the provincial championship; Glen Rovers, Thurles Sarsfields, Sixmilebridge, Midleton, Ballyea, Patrickswell, Kilruane MacDonaghs, Sarsfields and Loughmore- Castleiney. They beat Loughmore twice but the 2021 provincial semi-final was played in Fraher Field.
Their average winning margin in those matches is 0-8 but the Gunners have been absolutely ruthless in Walsh Park in Munster in the last three seasons, hammering Kilruane and Sars by 17 points in 2022 and 2023, while they whipped Loughmore by 10 points there last year.
Sars did exact revenge in last year’s Munster final but having to go to Walsh Park now presents a whole different set of challenges for the Cork champions. The climb towards greatness continues for Ballygunner. The climb for Sars – and for every other club in Waterford and Munster – still seems as steep as ever when they face off against the Gunners.
Especially in Walsh Park.
When Garrycastle edged past Athy in the 2011 Leinster semi-final, the Westmeath champions were the first to admit how lucky they were to do so. Garrycastle were an experienced side that subsequently went on to win Leinster and reach an All-Ireland final. And it was that worldliness that just got them past Athy that afternoon.
The game would have been over if Cathal Mullin, the former Garrycastle and Westmeath goalkeeper, hadn’t made four brilliant saves, two of which were one-on-one situations. Garrycastle got out of jail with a goal of their own from Gary Dolan in the 57th minute, which was fortuitous; Dessie Dolan’s shot for a point came back off the upright before his brother pounced to rifle the ball to the net. And still, it took a Mullin double save from Liam McGovern in additional time for Garrycastle to hang on.
“Our experience got us over the line in the last 10 minutes,” said then Garrycastle manager Anthony Cunningham afterwards. “You can’t buy that. You can’t coach it - it just comes. They (Athy) maybe lost their shape, got a bit ragged in the finish but they’re some coming team, with very young players. What a future Athy have for themselves in Kildare and in Leinster.”
Dessie Dolan more or less made the same point in another post-match interview. That was the general feeling at the time. And yet, it’s taken Athy 14 years to return with the appearance of a team that can win a maiden Leinster title.
A young group found it difficult to put that second album together, but they were also unfortunate to be around at the same time as an exceptional Moorefield side and a talented Sarsfields team that have always been difficult to beat in Kildare.
Moorefield and Sarsfields shared every county title between 2012-’19. Athy lost the 2015 final to Sarsfields and the 2018 decider to Moorefield, both by margins of one score, while they consistently came up short at the business end of the championship during that decade.
When Athy finally won the title again in 2020, beating Moorefield in the final by two points, they couldn’t compete in Leinster because there was no competition due to covid-19 restrictions.
Now that they are Kildare champions again and are finally back in Leinster, Athy look like a team on a mission to make up the ground they lost in this competition at the outset of the last decade.
Three of the current team – David Hyland, Kevin Feely and Niall Kelly – were part of the group that first tasted Leinster club championship action in 2011. Fourteen years on, and ahead of Saturday’s quarter-final against Summerhill, the older crew will be reminding everyone else in the squad of how Athy’s only future is now.
When Setanta became the first Donegal club to win an Ulster Intermediate hurling title in 2023, the club from the Killygordon/Crossroads area in the mid-east of the county did more than just make history – Setanta also finally broke down the door for Donegal clubs in the Ulster senior club championship.
Donegal clubs never had a presence in the senior competition but Setanta have finally found themselves there because they’ve developed a neat habit of breaking down doors in Ulster hurling.
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Burt were the first club from the county to win an Ulster Junior club title in 2011 but Setanta were the first Donegal side to win the competition twice, in 2017 and 2022. Setanta raised even more eyebrows in 2023 when beating an experienced Carrickmore side from Tyrone to win the provincial Intermediate title.
Carrickmore had beaten Kickhams Creggan from Antrim in the semi-final. Overcoming them in the final was even more of an achievement, considering Setanta were the first club from Donegal to even reach the provincial final of a competition that has been dominated by the Antrim clubs.
They were subsequently hammered by Thomastown from Kilkenny in the All-Ireland semi-final but Setanta are finally dining at the top table alongside the big guns in Ulster as they meet Antrim champions St John’s in Saturday’s senior semi-final in Owenbeg.
Some journey. Some club.
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