Cork Premier SFC: Tom Clancy and Clonakilty keen to make up for lost time

Tom Clancy won a Cork SFC medal his debut season in 2009 - Sunday marks his first final in the championship since then

Clonakilty's, Tom Clancy solos the ball against St Finbarr's, Steven Sherlock when the sides met in the group stage of the Premier SFC. Picture: Gavin Browne

- The Cork Premier SFC final between St Finbarr's and Clonakilty will be live-streamed by the Irish Examiner

Tom Clancy wasn’t a wet week with the Clonakilty seniors before winning a Cork senior championship medal in September of 2009.

Clancy, 17 at the time, was plucked from the junior panel and promoted to the senior ranks midway through that season’s campaign by current manager Haulie O’Neill. And while used off the bench during Clon’s semi-final win, he did not see action on the afternoon of their one-point final victory over St Finbarr’s.

No matter, thought Clancy, there’ll be plenty more county final chances in the future.

Nemo halted their back-to-back bid at the semi-final stage the following year — and that was the last time Clon reached the last four of the Cork football championship until the class of 2021 came from six down with 15 minutes to go in the quarter-final against Duhallow.

“As a young fella going into that 2009 final, you thought this is going to be the story every year. I soon learned that wasn’t the case,” recalled Clancy, now 29 and one of the first names on the teamsheet.

“A big chunk of the 2009 team retired or moved away from Clonakilty in the years after. We were struggling then for the next number of years.”

Tom Clancy, who played in the 2009 county final for Clonakilty. Picture: Denis Boyle

And struggle they did, the 2015 season seeing Clon end up in a relegation play-off after failing to secure a win across Rounds 1, 2, and 3. The club’s senior status was saved when overcoming Aghada in the relegation final, with a young Clon team beginning to take shape in the years following, one that Clancy believed contained sizeable potential.

The problem was their performances didn’t remotely reflect this potential. Well, not until recent weeks anyway.

Central to their dramatic shift in fortunes, according to the former Cork senior, was the one-point second-round group win over Ballincollig, a swing of 11 points on Ballincollig’s 2-17 to 1-10 group phase victory last year.

“We have had a good team the last couple of years, but we didn’t really perform or show it on the day. The big point this season was beating Ballincollig. We were after beating Ilen Rovers in Round 1. Everyone would have expected the Barrs to come out on top in the group and so it was between ourselves and Ballincollig for second.

“The way we won it, a very tight game, was a great thing for this group of players.

“We proved we can come out on top in close games. We came up short against the Barrs in the last group game, but we showed team spirit to come back against Duhallow in the last 15 minutes of the quarter-final and kick the last seven scores.”

Sunday represents another shot at the Barrs, can Clon make it third time lucky having come off second best in the aforementioned group clash and Division 1 League decider?

“We are going to have to play to the best of our ability if we want to keep ourselves in the game. What we learned the last day against them is that if we switch off for any couple of minutes, before we know it we could be four or five down and the game could be gone. We can’t let our focus slip for even a second.”