Alan Cadogan's Rochestown can harvest decade of hurling work

THE ECHO RORY NOONAN 12/03/2022

When Alan Cadogan and his management team were putting together 300 words on the history of hurling in St Francis College, Rochestown for tomorrow’s All-Ireland final match program, the list of names they saw necessary to include brought home the amount of work done at Roco over the past 12 or so years.

Having long been a college that operated away from the Harty Cup spotlight, Rochestown, back in 2014, weaved a path all the way to the last four of the competition.

A year later, they went one better and secured involvement in their first-ever final, the school narrowly coming up short in that season’s Harty and Corn Uí Mhuirí deciders.

The knockout stages were again reached in 2016 and while the school has dropped down a tier in more recent years, it has coincided with a tidy accumulation of silverware, a collection that stands to be further grown in tomorrow’s All-Ireland post-primary Senior B hurling final (Meelick, 2pm).

Having won the Munster Senior B title in 2019 and again this year, a first Rochestown All-Ireland is now the prize they crave. And were Cadogan’s students to get over the line against Coláiste Bhaile Chláir, it would represent the culmination of more than a decade of work in growing hurling in the Cork city school.

“The likes of Paul O’Reilly, Diarmuid Fahy, Humphrey Canty, and Aidan Lonergan, all of these lads have developed hurling over the last 10, 12 years. They developed hurling when it was rock bottom,” said Cork hurler Cadogan, who manages the Rochestown class of 2022 alongside Mark Dolan and Peter Murphy.

“The lads we have on the panel at present have been brought right the way through from first year, so it is not just our own management team that are currently there now but all those people I have mentioned have played a crucial role in the development of hurling in the school, which is so important.

“Getting to Corn Uí Mhuirí and Harty finals in the middle of the last decade, there is huge history and tradition in the school, but we have never won an All-Ireland and so we have come a long way. The lads are only 60 minutes away from being All-Ireland winners and so they are looking forward to Saturday.” 

With there having been no post-primary activity last year, Cadogan, Dolan, and Murphy weren’t exactly sure what sort of panel and pedigree they had on their hands when the school doors swung back open last September. And with the Munster B competition being straight knockout, they weren’t going to be afforded much time to find out.

Perhaps that is why Cadogan, during our chat, repeatedly comes back to their first day out against Dungarvan CBS, a game Rochestown won on a 5-12 to 1-14 scoreline.

From there, Hamilton High School Bandon, Causeway Comprehensive, and Charleville CBS were taken down to secure provincial honours, with St Patrick’s GS Downpatrick overcome in the All-Ireland semi-final.

Their average winning margin stands at eight points, with six points as close as any team has come of them during their run to the final. Driving this dominance has been centre-back Kevin Lyons (Ballygarvan) and centre-forward William Buckley (St Finbarr’s), two players who were starting members of the Cork minor team that achieved All-Ireland glory last August.

“The standards they have set at minor inter-county level, they have brought that to schools level. They are very good role models, not alone for the team, but for Rochestown college, as well,” continued Cadogan, a past pupil of the school.

But beyond these two All-Ireland minor winning pillars, the young Business and Geography teacher cannot speak highly enough of the collective.

“You have to know your audience as a young coach. I always try to implement a professional environment from my own background playing inter-county and playing club. With today’s youth, they just want to go out and play 15 on 15, but those days are gone and we asked the lads at the start of the year if we could get a buy-in from them in terms of what we are trying to do.

“From one to 27, they all bought into the game-plan, the system. They are reaping the rewards now and are 60 minutes from being All-Ireland champions.”