Itching for return to the top ranks
For a couple of decades Douglas has been talked about as one of the coming teams in Cork. From its origins as a small village on the outskirts of the city, Douglas today boasts a population of over 20,000, and the local GAA club has expanded accordingly, leading to the expectation that senior honours would follow sooner rather than later.
That hasn’t happened. A dual club, the closest Douglas has come was the senior football final of last year, when they lost heavily to Nemo Rangers. On the hurling front, intermediate honours were won in 2000, leading to promotion to the senior ranks, but it didn’t last long, and Douglas were soon back at intermediate.
This year they have again won the Cork intermediate title, and this time veteran corner-back Dave McSweeney insists it will be different. He explained: “I started in ‘95, and at the time we were bordering on being a very good team, but we were up against Delanys and teams like that. The intermediate is a tough championship to win in Cork, and even when we finally won it, in 2000, we were lucky to win by a point
“It was the same thing this year, Newcestown should have beaten us in Ballygarvan but we were lucky to get away with the draw. You need a lot of luck, though we played well in the final. After 2000, we had a lot of retirements – Tomás Twomey packed up, Ronan O’Hara did the same, and we had a lot of lads around 28 or 29. We just didn’t have the panel to compete at senior.
“This time we’re far better equipped. The majority of the team are around 22 or 23 and those young fellas are bulling for it. And we have other young lads coming through – Eoin Cadogan has a younger brother, there’s Martin Barry and the likes of those. It’ll be hard at senior, but we’re way better than we were in 2000.”
In Limerick, for Shane O’Neill and South Liberties it’s almost the opposite story. One of the oldest clubs in the GAA, founded in 1884, the Liberties were a force from the beginning and completed an early hat-trick of senior titles in 1890. In the 1970’s, and powered by such luminaries as Pat Hartigan, Eamonn Grimes and Joe McKenna, they came again, won another four championships, the last of those in 1981. Since then, however, South Liberties have gone back and were eventually relegated.
Many times they’ve come close to winning promotion, many times they’ve failed, until this year, that is.
O’Neill admitted: “After losing so many (six finals) you can get demoralised but we knew if we kept tipping away we’d get there eventually. Regaining senior status was the biggest reward.
What happened in South Liberties, why did they slip so far? “It was a generational thing,” he feels, “We lost a lot of great players from that team, then we lost others to emigration, so you were working from the grassroots again. There was a Brother Phillip Ryan when we were young fellas and he was very good for us, he kept us together and a lot of those lads have come through to this team. The average age is only about 23 or 24, so we’re a young side.”
For both those teams, Douglas and South Liberties, the big carrot this year in winning the intermediate championship was promotion to senior, up with the big boys in their own county next season. This intermediate club championship, however, is a very welcome bonus.
McSweeney agreed: “We missed out the last time, in 2000, because this competition wasn’t there at the time, but this is a great occasion now for the club – hopefully we’ll do it, it would be a big boost.”
O’Neill concurred: “The seniors got to two senior Munster finals in the 80s, lost to Mount Sion and Glen Rovers, so it would be nice to finally win a Munster title. Even though we were focused on winning the intermediate in Limerick, a lot of us had our eyes on this also.”
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