Nash eyes perfect finale with Kanturk

Anthony Nash recently put an All Star nomination in his back pocket: a nice way to end your season.

Only Nash’s season hasn’t ended. The Cork keeper lines out for Kanturk against Kilworth in this weekend’s Cork IHC final. Given that his Cork hurling team-mate Lorcan McLoughlin and Rebel footballer Aidan Walsh will also be in the Kanturk colours, victory is surely a foregone conclusion, no?

“Not a bit of it,” said Nash. “We were only talking about this at training the other night. The bookies have us as outsiders according to the lads, 2/1 outsiders.

“Now it’s not as if being underdogs, or favourites, really has an impact on a team, but we are massive underdogs. We played Kilworth last year and struggled to beat them, but they were missing some of their best players, who were overseas at the time. Throw them into the mix the next day.

“We know that we need everything to go right for us the next day to win. There’s no sense of overconfidence. We have a very young team, after all. We’ve achieved in getting to the final but we’ve won nothing yet, after all.

“It’s the best part of 10 years since we’ve won anything so we wouldn’t be entitled to have the attitude that we’re entitled to win or anything.”

There are distractions. Several Kanturk hurlers helped Duhallow’s march in the county SFC. That can’t help.

“The lads who are playing away with Duhallow, they mightn’t have been able to train fully all the way along with us but it’s good to see them winning with the division and going so far in the football championship,” said Nash.

“It’s certainly not a distraction or anything. They’re four or five fit, hardy lads who only need a bit of work on their touch in hurling to get back into it.

“We’d probably have liked a few more challenge matches or whatever but if we lose the final, then it won’t be because of the lads playing football, certainly. It hasn’t been a distraction at all.”

Still, it’s been a long year. Nash has been on the road with the Cork seniors since January, for instance.

“The day after the county final, I’ll be putting the hurley away for a couple of weeks. I’ve a holiday booked and I’m looking forward to that, but as people say, if you start the year training under lights and you end your year training under lights, then you’re after a good year.

“I love hurling, after all, and everything in my life is geared towards that, but you also have to look at your approach and taper back at times.

“Having said that, it’s different for a keeper. You probably train more outside the pitch than you do on it — when other players are running, you’re probably doing short, sharp drills, and so on. You’re watching your sharpness.

“But certainly I’ll be putting the hurley away for a couple of weeks after the final. Taking a break.”

First, though, there’s Kilworth.

“We wouldn’t have come across them that much, apart from last year. We wouldn’t know all their players inside out, but we know they’re a well-balanced team and well able to hurl.

“We’d know Adrian Mannix and Will Twomey and Paudie Lynch, but my understanding is that they have plenty of good forwards, so there’s no point in focusing completely on one particular forward, say.

“We’d be focusing on ourselves anyway, I think sometimes you can overanalyse the opposition. I know it’s a cliche but we tend to focus on ourselves and getting ourselves right. Also, obviously at this grade you wouldn’t have loads of DVDs of the opposition but I presume they’ll be well aware of Lorcan and Aidan, for instance, so we’ll need our other players to chip in and help them out.

“We’ll try to get ourselves right and take it from there.”