Castlecomer link signposts the road long Tulla have travelled

There is a cross-country and symbiotic relationship between two small hurling enclaves in Clare and Kilkenny

Fri, 04 Mar, 2022 - 07:30

Joe O Muircheartaigh

It’s a long way from Tulla to Castlecomer, but in hurling terms the 160-mile round trip from East Clare gives an added context to the epic journey made by first time Harty Cup champions, St Joseph’s, Tulla, over the past few months.

There is a cross-country and symbiotic relationship between two small hurling enclaves, because it was Castlecomer Community School that provided a window to the Tulla school’s future when coming from nowhere to win a landmark maiden Leinster College’s A title in 2007.

“The Tulla and Castlecomer stories are very similar in many ways,” admits Pat Murphy, ahead of Tulla’s All-Ireland semi-final joust with famed Kilkenny side, St Kieran’s, in MacDonagh Park, Nenagh this Saturday.

Fifteen years ago Murphy was joint-manager of the Castlecomer side that claimed Leinster honours. The team was powered by current Kilkenny star and four-time All-Ireland winner, Conor Fogarty, and made history on the back of famous victories over bluebloods St Kieran’s and reigning champions Kilkenny CBS at the provincial semi-final and final stages respectively.

“It took a lot of effort and training and psychology to bring the players to the point where they believed they were good enough to compete and beat the very best,” continues Murphy.

“That was our biggest challenge. Ours was a story of perseverance when as a small school with 300 boys we came from not winning a match in Roinn A of Leinster in 2004, ’05 and ’06 to winning our first game in 2007, from where we just took off.

“That’s exactly what the St Joseph’s, Tulla team have done this year, a similar size school winning a first-ever match in Roinn A competition this year and now they’re Harty Cup champions after beating the big teams just like we did in Castlecomer.

“But I do think Terence Fahy’s story in St Joseph’s is even more remarkable than Castlecomer’s. He brought them from being an average Roinn C team all the way to being on the top of Roinn A. It’s some achievement,” adds Murphy.

In namechecking Fahy, Murphy alludes to the added relationship between the two schools and their provincial successes — that’s because back in ‘07 the Tulla manager was Castlecomer’s joint-manager during his nine-year stint teaching in the North Kilkenny school.

That Kilkenny experience is something that Fahy has drawn on more than once during Tulla’s fairytale run through the Munster Harty campaign to reach the Croke Cup All-Ireland series, and particularly ahead of the penultimate round clash when he renews rivalry with St Kieran’s after 15 years.

“We had a great collective (in Castlecomer) — a club spirit and a great collective,” remembers Fahy. “It’s kind of replicated in the Tulla team too. It’s more like a club team, with the spirit very vibrant in this Tulla team. The big similarity is that there was great character in both teams and great grit, resilience and singlemindedness in both teams.

“There’s that hardiness and grit,” he continues, “that hardiness that’s around Tulla and the East Clare area. It’s in the DNA; it’s there, that little bit of steel in the hurling community, that’s in our team,” he adds.

This steel was on display on numerous occasions in Munster — in the second-round clash against St Colman’s when they came from behind to draw level, before kicking on in extra-time to score the school’s first ever win in Harty competition; in the quarter- and semi-final wins over CBC and De La Salle when they also came from behind in the closing stages; and finally in the decider when producing a stunning 60 minutes against favourites Ardscoil Rís.

Now Fahy is looking for the same, and more, against the Kilkenny City nursery that’s just 60 minutes away from the school’s 36th All-Ireland final berth since 1948 — that’s a strike rate of a final appearance nearly every two years.

“Kieran’s are out on their own,” says Fahy. “They are well used to this road. They are very familiar with what it takes to win the Croke Cup. They have 23 All-Irelands and traditionally they would fatten playing on Harty Cup opposition. It doesn’t come any bigger.

“We have faced big challenges in the Harty Cup but this is of a different scale again. Our boys like a challenge and have a proven track record of rising to challenges, so we hope they do the same again.

“We will need to produce a season’s best performance and we’ll need to be on the pitch of it, intensity wise and speed of our hurling. That’s the big challenge, because taking on Kieran’s, some teams rise to that and some teams don’t.”

It’s just what the Castlecomer team moulded by Fahy and Murphy did in 2007 when facing the St Kieran’s juggernaut. They were eight points down after 15 minutes, before bringing to a five-point game by the interval.

“Everyone thought it was business as usual for Kieran’s at half-time,” remembers Fahy, “the usual story that you blink and they will knife you, but we turned it around in the second half. We showed that steel.

“The approach against St Kieran’s was terrific,” said the Kilkenny People of Castlecomer in 2007. “Once they got scent of victory they went for it and all but blew away the opposition. They charged magnificently towards the winning line.”

For Fahy and Tulla, charging towards the winning line isn’t a priority, winning certainly is though, as the team carved in Castlecomer’s image bid to write the next chapter of their hurling fairytale.