Crokes switched team to counter Hurney threat
Eoin Brosnan was moved from centre-back to full-back to mark Hurney, a player O’Neill said would have “loads of All-Ireland medals” if he was in Kerry.
“Looking at Ballinacourty, their main threat is Gary Hurney,” said O’Neill. “Luke Quinn did well for us last time out but if Gary was in Kerry, he’d have loads of All-Ireland medals because he’d be on the (Kerry) team.
“We saw him as a serious threat so we felt Eoin was the man with the physique, strength and experience to take care of that. He had Darran O’Sullivan last week, Gary Hurney this week, so that’s real little and large, but that’s the measure of Eoin, any task and he’ll take it, while Luke (Quinn) would be comfortable out in the half-back line.
“Eoin got one run up the field towards the end, he was bursting for it, but he’s a fantastic club man, he’ll do anything required to get us over the line.”
O’Neill said he and his team were glad of the winter sunshine in Dungarvan.
“We stopped off in Ardmore for grub and looking out over the sea, it was flat calm and the sky was clear blue, no puff of wind. We were delighted with that. No matter how difficult the pitch was going to be, at least we had some sun on our back. I’d have hated to come down on a day like the one Ballinacourty won their county final, because you probably wouldn’t get out of here. But the gods were with us, the weather was perfect.”
Ballinacourty rattled the Kerry champions early in the game.
“We were very lucky early on, they could have had two goals early on and missed a few points,” said O’Neill.
“They threw everything at us and were probably the better team, with more scoring chances, in the first half, but we kept plugging away. It was about hanging in there, because games aren’t won in the first five minutes — you’ve to get in there and see what way it settles. And we got the start to the second half you just dream about. They got two goal chances in the first half, they didn’t take them, and we got two and took them.”
Colm Cooper struck for those two goals early in the second half, but O’Neill also paid tribute to late call-up Brian McMahon, who replaced back injury victim Ambrose O’Donovan just before the game.
“In fairness to Brian he’s been very good all year and in most of our games Ambrose (O’Donovan) has been breaking down after 20 minutes. Ambrose was at a specialist and there’s nothing seriously wrong, which is the good news, so we said we’d hold him back against Ballinacourty.
“He was warming up at half-time because at six points to four, we felt we might need to get him into the battle, but (in the end) we didn’t need him.
“Brian’s always been an able deputy and there was a chance Ambrose might have blown out again after 20 minutes, so it worked out.
“Ambrose has two weeks now for the next game and hopefully he’ll be right.”
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