Manager says resilience key for Ardscoil
The students who’ll wear the school colours in tomorrow’s decider are quizzed on their hurling memories, their greatest hurling achievement and their favourite player.
In the majority of profiles, there is reference to the Battle of Bansha. The Battle of Bansha in fact refers to two games - the Harty Cup quarter-finals - drawn game and replay - between Midleton CBS and tomorrow’s opponents, Ardscoil Rís, in January of last year.
The first outing to Bansha required extra-time, with the teams level on 11 occasions. Back they went a week later and it appeared we were in for another serving of extra-time when Midleton, trailing by 0-15 to 1-11 and reduced to 14 men, were awarded a 59th-minute penalty.
The instruction from the line to Liam O’Shea, however, was to go for goal and the Lisgoold youngster duly obliged to send Midleton into the semis.
The significance of the result was not lost on those present; it was the first time since the spring of 2007 that Ardscoil Rís had failed to progress beyond the quarter-final stage of the Harty Cup.
In the interim, there had been nine consecutive semi-final appearances, four final outings and four final wins. Of the five semi-final defeats, two required replays. In this decade, there has been no school as dominant on the Munster colleges hurling scene.
Tomorrow represents their fifth final in nine years.
Familiarity with the knockout stages, said manager Liam Cronin, is what took them past Christians last time out.
“The one card we had that CBC maybe didn’t have was that experience factor. We have guys who have hurled in the Harty Cup for two or three years and have that experience of knockout stages.
"The bunch of players we have, the one characteristic I love about them is that they have that bit of resilience.
"When CBC got their second goal and it looked like things were going against us, I think we played our best patches of hurling.”
And similar to Christians, before they ever looked to impose themselves on the latter stages of the Harty Cup, the teachers in Ardscoil Rís who were hurling orientated first had to promote hurling within a school where rugby was the number one game.
Limerick senior Shane Dowling, who was corner-forward on the breakthrough team of 2010, told this newspaper two years ago that the school’s rise to prominence was born out of the environment fostered by current manager Cronin, Derek Larkin and former Limerick hurler Niall Moran.
“We were very well looked after, it was a professional set-up. You wouldn’t get one like it until you hit inter-county senior. When I went into the school, it was a rugby school, no question, but we were lucky that a lot of good hurlers came together and we were the first team to win the Dean Ryan.
"That set the tone as it was the first time the school had won a Munster cup. The top hurlers in Limerick, and even some in Clare, they want to play with Ardscoil Rís.”
Come and gone through their doors are, among others, Declan Hannon, Kevin Downes, John Fitzgibbon, Ronan Lynch, Cian Lynch, Ian Galvin, Peter Casey, while current student Diarmuid Ryan has already lined out for the Clare seniors.
“Every year now, if you don’t get to a Harty Cup semi-final or final, it’s seen as a disappointment.
"The opposition now go in against Ardscoil thinking, ‘God, these are the kingpins of Munster hurling’, it’s amazing how things like that can change within the space of 10 years. It’s a part of the religion in there now.”
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