Cunning plans to make amends for last year’s loss

CONOR CUNNING is a bit of an outsider in the Dunloy team. Well not outsider exactly — when you come from a Catholic village of a little over 1,000 people in north Antrim, you can’t really be an outsider. Particularly if you happen to be a hurler.

However, Cunning, whose father is chairman of the club, is one of only two Dunloy players not to live in the village. They reckon hurling has kept the parish populated with the youth. In most northern villages like Dunloy, people have fled to Belfast or Dublin, in search of work. In Dunloy, Gaelic games has ensured they all stayed around.

"Well, that was one of the original aims of the GAA when it was founded, to keep people in their area and to stop emigration," says Pat Cunning, father of the midfielder so vital to Dunloy's hopes of finally securing their Holy Grail this evening.

Alongside Sean McMullan, Cunning is the only Dunloy player to leave the village for the bright lights of Belfast.

Given that the city is only 45 miles away, it is not too big a distance to cover, certainly in the context of how far the team has travelled in recent years.

In the village, there is never any danger of Cunning feeling left out because of his relocation to other pastures. His midfield performances have been one of the pillars of their season, a season that was built around erasing the disappointment of Paddy's Day last year. Of course, if there was a great plan to be back in Croker a year later, they weren't saying in Dunloy last week.

Firstly, they had to win the county. Five players, including the talismanic Gary O'Kane, were looking for a record nine Antrim senior county medals.

"It was a strange year," Cunning remembers. "We met a couple of weeks after the Birr match, everybody was still very disappointed and very down. We just made an agreement to make the Antrim title our first target, get the boys nine titles, get the four-in-a-row, that was a big target. Those things get you focused again. Once we started to get on a roll, you get on with it.

"When I first came into the team, the older lads motivated us with their success. When we starting out this year, we set ourselves a target of the lads setting a record of winning nine county medals. We wanted to do that for the likes of Gary and Nigel [Elliot], and they motivate us with their success, allow us to set targets."

Mentioning the Birr game last year still causes the Dunloy players to shudder. While the match might be recalled as the last hurrah for the great Offaly side, Dunloy believe the Antrim side simply didn't turn up. It is something Cunning wants his team to rectify today.

"If we went down and played the way we can play, that would have been okay. If we went down and played as well as we can play, Birr still might have beat us on the day. You can't tell, but there is no guarantee that playing well is going to win it [for you]. More galling was the fact we didn't play at all.

"It was a hard lesson to learn, but we have all learned it. From the Mount Sion game, some of the minds went off the right track. It wasn't a preparation thing, maybe more of a mental thing. Getting to an All-Ireland final was a big thing and maybe we let ourselves get rolled up in the emotion of the day rather than just getting down to the bare essentials, performing on the day."

And so, this afternoon, Cunning will be back centre-stage playing for the pride of Dunloy. No team can come to Croker four times and lose All-Ireland finals. That is what they are banking on. At work in Belfast, they are all wishing Cunning well, but nobody knows what this afternoon is going to mean for him and the lads he grew up with, looked up to, helped develop.

"The club is the hub of the community. Growing up in the hurling field and everyone in this town has done exactly the same, gone to school together and hurled together. That is why it is such a strong bond."

Just like Newtown. The unfortunate thing is only one parish will be celebrating a famous victory tonight.