Kilkenny-based Mark Sherry goes extra mile for his Kildare club

AS a minor, Mark Sherry became the first Kildare captain to lift the Leinster Cup at that grade since 1991.

Uniquely, he now travels from Kilkenny to play football in his native county. Following his family’s move to Thomastown in Kilkenny, Sherry continued to play for his club Twomilehouse and, for five years, he has maintained the commitment.

In doing so, Sherry has held his parents to a promise they made to him when the move to Kilkenny was first mooted. A pledge that he could stay playing for his home club and county.

“Well, Twomilehouse won the junior All-Ireland a couple of years ago, I was playing centre-forward and it was a great achievement to win it with your club and people you grew up with and people you looked up to,” he recalled.

“I live in Kilkenny still, but am in college in Carlow. I live in Carlow during the week. We moved down to Kilkenny for the start of second year in secondary school and transferring would have been the easy option, but there is not a great deal of football down there, so there wouldn’t have been any future in football if I had done that.

“I’m in Thomastown, which is about an hour and 15 minutes away. Coming back to Kildare to play was something I enjoyed doing, so I kept at it.”

This weekend’s Eirgrid Leinster U21 final against Dublin is taking all of his attention right now. Sherry is a leader in that side; one of the U21 team who has already gained senior experience.

Last summer, he experienced the low of being trounced by Dublin and the subsequent high of beating Cork in the qualifiers.

“It was up and down, obviously, the Dublin game was a massive low point because we had ambitions of coming into it OK and competing, but we just fell away,” he recalls.

“Then coming back and winning against Cork was an amazing feeling with everyone coming onto the pitch and the crowd chanting. We played with purpose and kept the ball well and everything, but Cork were probably a bit flat. They only started playing in the last 10 or 15 minutes and that’s when they gave us a bit of a scare, but we were far enough ahead to hold off.”

He says the senior squad has relished the chance to regroup under Cian O’Neill in the shadowlands of Div 3.

“Not much attention or not much of a crowd, but it’s all good. I’ve met Cian and I think he’s a top-class person. He’s very good at speaking and communicating and he just has a very good aura about him. He kind of brings the best out of everybody and if anyone needs anything he’s the first man to do it, personally. Cian’s message to the 21s was just to lead as a senior player on the squad in training and drive everything on, that’s just it.”