David Cashman glad he stuck to his guns

When Blackrock last won county titles, in 2001 and ’02, David Cashman was the greenhorn of the side, a senior star while still graduating from the minor grade.

In 2003, the city side made it to a third decider on the trot and fourth in five years.

While they lost to Newtownshandrum, there was no reason to think that they or Cashman would be waiting 14 campaigns to get back to the decider.

“When you get to three finals in your first three years, you expect that it’ll go on forever,” he says.

“I came into the senior team with Paul Tierney, the two of us were best friends since school and I remember the two of us sitting in here one night saying it wouldn’t end. Unfortunately, since then I’ve gone the rest of my career without going beyond the semis.”

Reaching his mid-30s, having to deal with the rigours of being principal of Sunday’s Well boys NS and with a new arrival on the way — his wife Grace’s due date is Tuesday — it would have been understandable if Cashman had opted to hang up his hurley.

He admits that there were thoughts given to retirement, but the potential of an up-and-coming group of hurlers, who collected minor and U21 county titles as a matter of course, won out.

“You could say that,” he says, “but I knew that there was a very good group of committed and successful young lads.

“In saying that, you can never fully predict it. Cork is very competitive and anyone can win it in a given year, you don’t know if you’ll get to a final again.”

With 32 county titles already won, five more than nearest challengers Glen Rovers, Blackrock don’t tend to tolerate transition periods for too long.

“The thing about Blackrock is that there’s an expectation every year to be competitive, to be at the business end.

“Even when we were involved in the relegation one year, at the start of the following year you were still expected to do well enough.

“This year was no different, but the way things have worked out has been great so far. We’ve gone into a good few games as underdogs, and the final will be no different.

“We’re under no illusions about the task we have ahead of us, but we’re a very hard-working and competitive team.”

That was proven most notably in the semi-final against Na Piarsaigh. The Rockies held a 0-12 to 0-11 half-time lead but found that blitzed within two minutes of the restart as half-time sub Evan Sheehan plundered two goals for the northsiders.

A five-point deficit proved to be surmountable though, with Cashman believing that the lessons of past years allowed them to display a patience and coolness under pressure to get them over the line, something which has developed from coming out on the right side of close games during the campaign.

“It was a bit of a disaster, let’s call a spade a spade!” he says.

“Evan Sheehan’s a very good player and got two great goals but there was a lot of time left, it didn’t faze us and we kept tipping away.

“It definitely was the test we needed to show our mettle, I think we’ve learned from our experiences in years gone by.

“Against Erin’s Own last year, we went for goals too early, maybe with 15 minutes to go, whereas this time we trusted ourselves, trusted our team-mates around the pitch and kept tacking on the points.

“We were still very lucky to come through in the end, but leaders develop as the year has gone by, John Cashman got the goal late on against Bandon and he did it off his own bat.

“We’ve scraped through a lot of the games by a point and that’s what happens, leaders show themselves then.”

Cashman is of course one of those leaders and he’s a leader professionally too, the mature hurler being a young headmaster.

With all of the duties that job entails, it can be difficult to combine it with hurling, but he also makes the point that sport can be an antidote to the stresses of the day-job.

“Definitely, there are a lot more work commitments,” he says.

“I find that I’m not able to spend as much time on rehab, I’ve had quite a few injuries and I’d put that down to the role I have at work.

“The one thing it does is that it makes you enjoy your hurling, I’ve had a really good time this year.

“When you’re at work, you’re under pressure so the hurling is a release, it’s obviously a lot easier to enjoy it when you’re winning!”