Coveney and Douglas bid to banish memories of 2017

Last year’s Cork senior hurling championship didn’t go to plan for Douglas. Pre-season favourites, they were beaten by Cork IT, and then failed to come through their second-round game with Killeagh.

As the quest for glory commences again this weekend, manager Willie Coveney admits the pain of “an incredibly disappointing 2017” still stings.

“There is no other way to look at it. Two defeats, and we deserved to be beaten in both. We played in patches, 20 or 30 minutes here and there in every game but we didn’t put a full 60 minutes together.

"Maybe there was a bit of hype around us and that might have been a small percentage of why we performed the way we did. But there were a million other things that contributed.

"Fellas didn’t play well, maybe we didn’t do it right on the line. We had a couple of injuries in the Killeagh game – Alan Cadogan went off and Shane Kingston didn’t play – but we still had a strong enough team. Killeagh got their match-ups right.

"Hopefully, players learn from it. Tasting defeat like that isn’t what they want. It was a short summer.”

Preparations for the new season are well underway, and progress is satisfactory.

Things have gone well so far. The players have come back with the right attitude. We have freshened things up. We have the same management and the same players. Having Eoin (Cadogan) back playing hurling is massive.

"The league is going well. But the good start won’t matter a damn if we are beaten on April 27. It is all about the Killeagh game.”

Coveney is not reading too much into the fact that the draw pits them against the side that ended their championship last season.

“It is definitely not a revenge mission, there is no point in looking at it like that. We were fairly beaten by them last year.

"It is a case of getting ourselves right and performing to a level we are capable of performing to. That the players justify the talent they have and hopefully that you come out with the right result.”

Douglas have players involved with both codes. They also have players involved with county panels, and while their experience is a massive asset, it can be difficult to manage.

“It is great for a club to have players on the various Cork teams. It is great for the player, and we always want to see the boys going well. Is it a help or a hindrance if you are trying to prepare a team?

“You want every player available to you all the time, so it is not ideal. We had six across hurling and football and that is a third of your team going back in without having played a lot of games together.

"It is not ideal. If you look at Blackrock last year, they had one or two in and around the Cork panel. Generally, they had their whole group together and they got to a county final. I think it is a help having everyone together. We have upwards between 12 and 15 on both senior panels, that is high.

We get on well with the footballers and we try our best to work it, but we are doing something 50 percent less of the time than a hurling or a football-only club. You are trying to manage that to get the skill level of the players to where it should be. It is an ongoing issue. There is no right or wrong answer to the dual issue. It is something you have to deal with.

Something else clubs have to cope with is the new GAA calendar. “To be fair, in Cork, we try and play a couple of the games compared to a lot of counties who put them off until their county teams are beaten.

We have a more structured timeframe, it is better. We are playing the end of April and after that then it is the end of July or August depending on how the Cork teams go. It is more ideal from a player point of view. In May and June, they can book holidays and be back for July.

“In training you basically taper down and start again. You can’t really ask a fella to go from January to August hammer and tongs when you know there is a three-month period when we won’t be playing championship.

"Depending on the Cork teams and the Super 8s, no one knows. We will play a couple of league games and build up again from the start of July onwards.”

By then, their injury list should also be clearing up.

“Sean Powter is still a bit away, he is only back doing light training. He is coming back from a three-month layoff, so he is not going to be rushed in. Brian Turnbull is long term, around the end of July. He is back doing a bit of training, but he is doing the Leaving Cert as well.”