Confident Carrig may have found right formula
They’re used to this altitude: in 1949 they won the competition but stayed out of senior to backbone Imokilly’s bid for county senior honours in 1950. Imokilly were unsuccessful, but Carrig won the intermediate championship again anyway and went up.
These days they’re not as patient. In 1960, their last year in the top grade, they’d been in the senior championship for 58 seasons. Carrig have been intermediate since winning the junior county title in 1994 and Jim O’Connor, who starred on that team, acknowledges that the east Cork men didn’t build on the victory.
“After winning the junior county we were just trying to consolidate. We never really progressed after that, we were hammered by Tracton a couple of years and there was a complete overhaul of the team.
“We made the semi-final in 1998, when Killeagh beat us, and Niall McCarthy and Jason Barrett played that year. That was when we started to progress, though we went backwards again in ‘99.”
As with other clubs, Carrig had to balance thin rations at underage level with ambition in the adult grade.
“If you look at the underage section we were struggling to compete at B grade, not to mind the A grade,” says O’Connor.
“We had the basic fifteen when we won the junior county, and we had to bring Seanie Farrell on in the final though he had only just turned 17.
“People look at Niall and Jason and Noel Furlong, but a team isn’t built on two or three players. We often had ten or eleven good players but didn’t have the extra two or three to make the difference. Reading the papers you’d see fellas saying we were underachieving, but I think people got carried away by the fact that we had two or three very good players.”
His clubmate John O’Mahony agrees that people may have expected too much of Carrig, despite onfield talent — and a housing boom in the area.
“You have to wait until key members of your team mature, it’s just taken that amount of time for the thing to gel.
“There is a lot of development around here, but there’s no immediate benefit, you’re talking about getting the benefits ten or fifteen years down the line.
“Obviously if you had the good fortune to win an intermediate championship and go up senior it might have the effect of enticing people coming down to live in Carrigtwohill to get involved in the club, that would increase our profile of the club.
“There’s a huge thing in having kids grow up in a senior club — they’d be aspiring to play senior hurling.”
This year Carrigtwohill have a good centre-back in Noel Furlong, while Mickey Fitzgerald in goal has given the backs a lot of confidence. Keeping Cork star Niall McCarthy and Jason Barrett in the forward line has also helped, but they’re well aware of the threat Bishopstown pose.
“Brian Cuthbert of Bishopstown trained us in football last year,” says Jim O’Connor. “If Bishopstown’s other 14 players have his attitude they’ll take some beating. He’s a ferocious competitor.”
Four years ago Carrig lost the intermediate final to a Delanys side who’d been knocking on the door of the senior grade for some years. John O’Mahony acknowledges that the men in blue and gold now occupy that role.
“There’s a lot of reverse similarities there if you like — the nucleus of our team in 2002 was the minor team which won a premier minor county ttile in 1998, and they were probably just that little bit young in 2002. We probably lacked a couple of on-field generals but this season the lads have come through.”
Jim O’Connor agrees.
“I suppose we should have a bit more experience than Bishopstown, you’d be hoping Niall, Jason and Noel would carry that through on Sunday. We know better than most how bad it is to lose games.”
No better time than tomorrow to find out about winning.
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