Michael Neylon comes full circle to land in Clonmel

Miltown-Malbay’s 1990 adventures in Munster are still fresh in the memory of Michael Neylon, hardly surprising given the corner-back travelled via Boston to be present in Clonmel.

Victory over Kilmihil in the county final, set up an away fixture against Clonmel Commercials in the first round of the Munster Club football championship.

For Neylon, fresh off the runway in Boston to begin his college co-op year, it meant that a return flight home was required sooner than he had envisaged.

“The county final that year, unlike nowadays, was played during the height of summer and then there was a big gap to the Munster championship.

“I had headed off to Boston to begin my co-op year, but sure I was no sooner there than I was home again for the game. I came home a week or two before the game, but, unfortunately, it didn’t go our way. They won by four in the end, 1-8 to 0-7.”

Twenty five years later and Miltown-Malbay are again top of Clare football’s tree and the reward is again a trip to the sportsfield in Clonmel.

A quarter of a century later and the lines of symmetry are plentiful for Neylon, who’s since swapped his boots for the bainisteoir’s bib.

“Their forwards really stretched us that day. Looking at their team now, their forwards really stand out again. We are going to be put to the pin of our collar to come up with a plan to try to limit some of the great footballers they have, Michael Quinlivan and Ian Fahey, in particular. For young guys, they have quite an amount of experience of playing at the highest level.

“It is home territory for Clonmel and we certainly found that difficult 25-years ago. There was a long gap between the Clare final and game with Clonmel back then and we were glad of the four-week break this time around. If this fixture had come sooner it would have been more difficult in terms of mindset adjustment. We have had four-weeks to build up to this. They were required.”

The reason being there was a fair amount of celebrating to be done following the 0-13 to 0-9 win over Cooraclare. 25-years, you see, is far too long a wait for county success for a club of Miltown’s stature.

“The three-weeks leading into the county final made us aware of how important football is to the parish and maybe we had forgotten how important football was in the parish. It put a little bit of extra pressure on us coming into the match to fulfil the expectations of many.

Cooraclare brought it back level two-minutes into the second-half and they kept it level for the next six or seven-minutes where both teams had chances to take the lead.

“It really came down to who wanted it more in the last 15-minutes. Our lads showed real character to play through to the final whistle and we finished extremely strong. When you are waiting as long as we were and you have a number of players who are over 30, who have been playing for 12, 14-years and have seen bad days, it would be no surprise that we celebrated the win for a good few days.” The four-point win at Cusack Park completed a remarkable three-year journey of redemption, the club having been relegated from the senior ranks in October of 2012.

“We let ourselves down by going down intermediate. The players got themselves straight back up and the graph started from there. We consolidated last year by getting to a quarter-final and the aim for this year was to continue that momentum to bring us a little bit further. As the year developed and unfolded, winning a county title didn’t surprise us.

“We knew from the way the players were reacting and their attitude that there was something special happening with each game. They were taking it to a new level with each championship game, they were taking confidence from each game.

“Coming into the final, while it might have looked like we were a surprise package, we as management were not surprised. The aim now is to keep it going for as long as possible.”