McEntee faces up to final battle

WITH just 20 miles separating the two towns there was bound to be some common denominator between Portumna and Birr, the two protagonists in Monday’s All-Ireland senior hurling club final in Croke Park, and there is.

Two years ago Eugene McEntee captained the Galway champions as the club won its first national title; four years ago, 2004, Eugene’s uncle Mick Salmon was a selector on the Birr side that won its fourth All-Ireland crown. According to Eugene, the pair are well familiar with each other. “Mick is a farmer, retired now; he hurled half-back for Offaly, hurled with Birr as well but that was 30 or 40 years ago. I went over there a lot as a youngster giving him a hand cutting the hay and all that and he’d take me to all the matches. He’s dead-on, we’d always have the bit of banter.”

They have something else in common, these two; in recent years, both have had to battle adversity, both have won the fight. Eugene: “Mick is a lucky man to be alive today; a few years ago he got a fright, gangrene in the arm. I don’t know what it was, a bit of a dart in the hand that went back along his arm, but they were giving him test after test; first he was supposed to lose all the arm, then it was just from the elbow down, then just the hand, then the fingers, but he fought it all the way. Eventually he went from the worst scenario to the best and now he has the full use of the whole arm again.” And Eugene’s own story?