Dual mandate double the fun for Fermoy lads

He’s been a permanent feature on four different teams, played 19 championship games in the space of five-and-a-half months and, instead of taking pause or drawing breath, now faces the most important two weeks of his playing career.

For Jeffrey Daly, this has been a summer like no other. The same could easily be said for the Fermoy club as a whole.

The 23-year old Fermoy dual player, having committed himself to the Avondhu hurling and football set-ups, knew there was potentially a hectic summer in store. What unfolded, though, went far beyond anything he could have envisaged.

The journey began at Caherlag on the second last Saturday in April, the Fermoy footballers, at Macroom’s expense, producing a winning start to life at premier intermediate level. By the close of May, Daly had started and finished five championship games at corner-back as both Fermoy and Avondhu teams recorded opening-round victories.

June brought a first double-jobbing weekend, but it wasn’t quite what they’d been hoping for, as the script ran temporarily off track. The club’s premier intermediate hurlers fell to Cloyne — 2-16 to 1-15 — but for Daly, Sean Shanahan, Tomás Clancy, Pádraig De Róiste and Peter Murphy, there was no time for pity parties, as the Avondhu footballers faced a sink-or-swim fixture against O’Donovan Rossa the following afternoon.

All bar Murphy played the full 60 minutes at Coachford, as the divisional outfit dumped out last year’s county semi-finalists.

“The first game on a weekend like that is fine, it is the second one that really gets you,” says Daly.

“You don’t really have time to process the first result. It’s all about getting yourself back in a frame of mind where you are ready to go to war for another 60 minutes, whether it be for Fermoy or Avondhu, and that’s tough.”

Irrespective of how each weekend transpired, Daly would hop into his car on a Sunday evening and make for Limerick where he is based. An employee with Ei electronics in Shannon, he’d return to Mallow or Fermoy for training on Tuesday and would be back again on Thursday. For company on those long drives, he had club hurling captain Eoin Clancy, who is working with Procter and Gamble in Nenagh.

“It can be a bit monotonous working nine to five Monday through Friday and not have anything to look forward to outside of that and, while there have been some long nights in the car, the many trips home for training and games have broken up most weeks this summer. It’s good to have Eoin in the car, as we’d have a bit of craic.”

The pair, along with club-mates Martin Brennan, Kieran Morrison and Brian O’Sullivan, made up one-third of the divisional hurling team. Fermoy’s progress in both codes, however, meant an ever-tightening schedule. So much so that the quintet were forced to withdraw their services ahead of Avondhu’s third-round fixture against Cork IT in mid-August.

“We had played Charleville on the Saturday night in what was a do-or-die game, the CIT game was on the Monday, but we then had our quarter-final against Inniscarra on the Friday,” explains Clancy. “It would have been a tall order to play all three. We had to mind the house first.”

Manager Denis Ring was grateful for the decision his players took.

“We said to the lads that while they could play senior with Avondhu for the rest of their lives, they weren’t going to get too many chances to play senior with their club. We told them they had to make a choice.”

The week previous, Noel Crowley’s football outfit had made it two wins from two when comfortably seeing off Ballinora. That second-round fixture at Mayfield was played on August 6 and, over the subsequent nine weeks, Daly has had only two weekends off.

“My grandmother is always making jokes at me: ‘Are you off training again,’ she’d say, and I’d always reply, ‘sure, what else would I be doing with my time’. How often are you going to be able to say that you reached two county finals in the one year? And, make no mistake, we want to win both.”

That the club stands one hour from senior hurling is a fairly remarkable feat, according to Clancy. He was corner-back in 2009 when the club annexed a maiden county junior hurling title. An injury-time Trevor Grumbridge free was required to edge past Bandon’s second outfit in the quarter-final. Tomorrow, they face their flagship team.

“We beat Ballinhassig’s second team along the way too. It is a testament to the progress we have made that we are now giving their first teams a good go. Darragh O’Carroll, at just 16, was centre-back on that team. He is a main force for us now. In 2009, we got to the semi-final of the intermediate football and lost that by a point. We went on to win the junior hurling with a young team and no one giving us a hope. I think that shows that, irrespective of how the hurling goes on Sunday, it won’t impact on the footballers and their county final the fortnight after.”

Ring is fulsome in his praise of chairman Brendan Keane and secretary Bosco Creed. The two officers drew up a club calendar at the outset of summer to ensure there were no incidences of in-fighting between the respective managements over who had the players on a given week. Given there’s a crossover of 12 between the two starting teams, he’s in no doubt that there would have been more than the odd row had a schedule not been devised.

“In previous years, we would be querying who would have them on a particular week. This year, there were no grey areas.”

In the end, though, it is the players who have written this story and it is they who will determine if there’s another chapter or two to be added.

“To weigh up the demands of hurling and football as they have done… it is just as well that there is only one or two of them married, because if there was more of them married, they’d probably be divorced at this stage. With this group of lads, there is the belief that anything is possible.”