Club Championships: Everyone wants to play a final in Croke Park. But winning there is what it’s all about
AIB ambassadors and hurlers, Walter Walsh of Tullogher Rosbercon, left, and Shane Cotter of St Catherine's. Pic: Sam Barnes, Sportsfile
One of the most robust trends of the club senior championship is that the big, or successful, clubs keep coming back. When the finalists line up in Croke Park next weekend, all four have been on this stage before in the last 15 years. Glen are the third football team in the last three seasons to reach successive finals. Before them, Corofin won three in-a-row. Last year, Ballyhale secured a third final from four successive final appearances.
Before Christmas, Ballygunner became the first club to win three Munster hurling titles in-a-row. Kilmacud did something similar in the Leinster football championship. The previous year, Ballyhale became the first club to secure four Leinster titles in succession. Corofin won four-in-a-row in Connacht between 2016-’19.
The real beauty of the Junior and Intermediate championships though, is that the environment for serial winners doesn’t really exist. In total, 106 different clubs have played in All-Ireland finals since the Junior and Intermediate competitions began two decades ago. And yet, 20 clubs have still managed to return to an All-Ireland final, in either the same, or both grades; Dicksboro, Cookstown Fr Rock’s, Ballinhassig, Finuge, Carbery Rangers, Bennettsbridge, Mooncoin, Ballygiblin, Conahy Shamrocks, Fr O’Neill’s, Fullen Gaels, Carrickshock, Charleville, St Patrick’s Ballyragget, Easkey, Kilmeena, John Mitchels, Rock St Patrick’s, Stewartstown Harps and Ardfert.
Stepping up a grade removes the same propensity for repeat winners but some clubs have still managed it. Bennettsbridge were crowned All-Ireland Intermediate hurling champions in 2016, just a year after winning the All-Ireland Junior title. Ardfert were crowned All-Intermediate football champions in 2007 only a year after they’d won the All-Ireland Junior. Ardfert are the only club to have appeared on this stage on three occasions, having also won the Intermediate title in 2015.
Some clubs that did get back followed a completely unique path. Despite losing the 2003 All-Ireland Junior final, Carbery Rangers won the All-Ireland Intermediate crown a year later, even though they hadn’t even won the Cork championship, having been nominated to represent the county after losing the Cork final to Nemo Rangers.
A day out in Croke Park is a dream for most clubs at this level but recent years have also shown how much of a pathway these competitions can be to a higher goal. Mount Leinster Rangers from Carlow won the 2012 All-Ireland Intermediate hurling title. Two years later, they reached an All-Ireland club senior final.
In the history of the All-Ireland club championships, MLR are the only club to go from winning an All-Ireland Intermediate to reaching a senior final. Moycullen had the chance last year to become the first club to reach an All-Ireland senior football final (they lost the semi-final to Glen) after winning a title in another grade – the Galway club were All-Ireland Intermediate champions in 2008.
A handful of other clubs have reached an All-Ireland senior final, as well as an Intermediate decider, with St Gall’s managing it in both codes, in the same season; five weeks after losing the 2010 All-Ireland hurling Intermediate final to St Lachtains, St Gall’s won the All-Ireland senior football title. In 2015, another Belfast club, O’Donovan Rossa, won the All-Ireland Intermediate hurling title, 26 years after losing the senior final to Buffers Alley.
All-Ireland Intermediate hurling champions in 2022, Naas have emphatically built on that success by reaching the last two Leinster senior hurling semi-finals. In the history of the All-Ireland Junior and Intermediate championships, Easkey is the only club to reach finals in both codes. Last January, 15 of the squad that lost the Junior hurling final to Ballygiblin were part of the panel that reached the 2019 All-Ireland Junior football final.
This weekend, two clubs return to the All-Ireland final stage having been there before. Thomastown are trying to win an All-Ireland Intermediate title 11 years after securing an All-Ireland Junior title. Fifteen years after losing the 2009 All-Ireland Junior final, Tullogher Rosbercon are trying to end that hurt when they play St Catherine’s in the Junior final.
Everyone wants to play a final in Croke Park. But winning there is what it’s really all about.
In the history of the Ulster Intermediate championship, one of the most glaring statistics, prior to 2023, was Armagh’s poor record in the competition; every other county in the province – bar Armagh - had won an Ulster title in the 24 years between 1998-2022. Only five Armagh clubs had reached a final, the last of which had been in 2011 when Culloville Blues lost to Craigbane by one point.
Ballymacnab (2006) and St Michael’s (1999) had also gone close but they’d both lost replays in those seasons to Eoghan Rua (Derry) and Brackaville (Tyrone). An Port Mór won an Ulster Junior title in 2012 but Armagh’s record in that competition wasn’t much better either, with clubs from the county having only contested two Junior finals in the 22-year history of the competition.
From as far back as the end of 2022 though, there was a feeling that St Patrick’s Cullyhanna could change that record at Intermediate. For a start, they never expected to be operating at this level. An underage powerhouse early in the last decade, when winning four Armagh U21 titles in a row between 2011-’14, Cullyhanna had reached senior finals in 2013 and 2016.
They were regularly at the business end of the senior championship until a combination of injuries, retirement and emigration saw them relegated in 2022. From the moment they annihilated St Paul’s in the county Intermediate final by 22 points last October, Cullyhanna were installed as favourites for Ulster.
In their own mind, that was exactly where they expected to be anyway. “I think we knew this team should be in an Ulster final,” said manager Stephen Reel before that game. “At the start of the year, that was the goal, that was the expectation.”
It wasn’t all straightforward but the Armagh side emphatically met those levels. In Ulster, they conceded an average of only 0-9, which included two narrow wins against top-class teams in Pomeroy (Tyrone) and Ballyhaise (Cavan).
Their opponents in Sunday’s final Cill na Martra have made a habit of winning tight games but so have Cullyhanna; their victory against Allenwood in last week’s All-Ireland semi-final was their third one-score win in their last four games. The Armagh side also haven’t conceded a goal since the Armagh final.
Mapping out any journey is never easy, especially given how hard Ulster is to win, but, in their minds, Cullyhanna would have been entitled to visualise reaching an All-Ireland final in Croke Park. Now that they’re there, they are one hour away from living the dream.
At the end of 2014, Eoin Davis impressed the audience in Limerick’s Limetree Theatre with his renditions of Poulenc's 'Sonata, 2nd Movement' and Jim Parker's 'House of Eliott’ on his clarinet. Davis, who was only 15 at the time, was amongst a select group of 18 musicians to perform at the Royal Academy of Music's 2015 'High Achiever Awards' Munster concert.
Davis has long been an outstanding clarinet player with the Fermoy Concert Band but he has also made his name as an excellent hurling goalkeeper. An All-Ireland U20 winner with Cork in 2020, Davis was also part of the extended Cork senior squad which reached the 2021 All-Ireland final. Goalkeeper on the Cork side which won the All-Ireland U17 title (the last year the minor championship was U18), when they defeated Dublin in the final in Croke Park, Davis finally returns to headquarters Saturday as a key player on the St Catherine’s side which contest the All-Ireland Junior final.
Davis has shown his class and experience throughout this campaign while his long striking and freetaking has always been a key weapon for Catherine’s.
In recent years, the biggest stage Davis has been operating on has been with Imoikilly. In the dying moments in extra-time of the Imokilly-Sarsfields Premier SHC semi-final last October, Davis had a free with the last puck to try and bring the game to penalties for the divisional side. The free was from way back the field and, while he was facing into a stiff breeze, Davis had the distance – he just didn’t have the accuracy and his shot tailed just wide.
It was the second time in just over 12 months that Davis had suffered such heartbreak at the business end of the senior championship as Imokilly had lost the previous year’s quarter-final to Blackrock on penalties. Davis was the only St Catherine’s player to see game-time for the divisional side in those two matches.
Although Davis hasn’t got his hands on that coveted Cork senior medal, he could more than make up for that disappointment if his side can secure an All-Ireland Junior title.
