O’Connell focused on pitch matters

Most of the headlines regarding last Sunday’s St Finbarr’s-Castlehaven SFC quarter-final centred around events in the aftermath of Jason Sexton’s late equaliser for the Barrs, when a brawl broke out.

Simmering tensions came to the boil then, but ahead of today’s replay in Bandon, the city side’s manager Bill O’Connell is hoping events on the pitch take priority.

“The minute the whistle went I brought the lads down to the town-end goal for a warm-down. We spoke for a few minutes and I told them it was a great result to pull it back from two down, focusing on the match rather than anything else.

“You can’t ignore what happened, it’s not ideal, but you just want to move on. It doesn’t look good on the clubs that something happened, especially as most of the rest of the game was fairly peaceful. The next game will be a different match and hopefully it’ll be about the football.”

A six-day turnaround is far from ideal either for the Barrs as the toll of competing on two fronts catches up with them.

“We have a lot of tired legs,” O’Connell says, “and we asked the county board for two weeks as our players had been on the road a while with hurling and everything else.

“The Clonakilty and Bishopstown game [also today] is only a fourth-round match so we hoped we might get the extra time, and it might have helped defuse any tension too.

“Two of my selectors have had to cancel holidays, but there’s nothing we can do about that now.”

Preparations are hampered, however, with the definite absence of Ronan Curran, while their saviour Sexton could also miss out. O’Connell is up front about the impact of the pair not playing.

“They’re massive losses,” he says. “Ronan had been in flying form and he brought a strong presence to the attack, so his loss is a blow. Jason’s a fabulous player but he did his cruciate last year and he’s still not right with it. He’s struggling, he won’t be able for all of it.”