Cooperation key in Barr's tilt for double glory

DOUBLE JOBBING: Brian Hayes is one of a number of dual players in the St Finbarr's ranks. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

“The Barrs for the double”.

A refrain that was once commonplace in Cork GAA discourse, albeit one that hasn’t been uttered or heard for nearly 30 years now, is “beginning to bubble to the surface” once again.

On Sunday afternoon down at the Páirc, St Finbarrs’ hurlers won through to the last four of the little All-Ireland. Their football brothers, of which there is a crossover of five dual starters on the respective teams, booked their last-four spot the weekend previous.

Barrs involvement in the semi-final stages of both Cork championships once came as a given. Neither those within the Togher walls nor those on the outside looking enviously in would bat an eyelid at what was a most common occurrence.

That was then, though, and this is now.

Empires rise, empires rule, and empires fall. The Barrs were no exception.

The success of their 2022 classes in reaching the penultimate stage of the respective Cork championships is the first time the club has managed such since 2009. And you have to go back a further 16 years for the last time the Barrs contested Cork hurling and football finals in the one year.

That 1993 season - in which they won the hurling (they’ve not won another since) but lost the football decider - represented the fall of a blue curtain after almost two decades of unrivalled dual dominance.

A quick refresher of blues history, if you’ll bear with us: Between 1974 and 93, the club contested 22 county finals - split evenly between the two codes - and won 13 of them (eight hurling, five football).

Six times during this golden period did the Barrs reach both finals in the same season. Add in the men of 1965, and they’ve been dual finalists on seven occasions in total.

In 1980 and 82, the double was achieved. Only UCC, in 1963, and sister clubs Glen Rovers and St Nick’s, in 1938, 41, and 54, have managed what remains a rare feat on Leeside.

“The whole 80s was the double because every year we were competing for both county titles. It was an unbelievable time,” says adopted Barrs son John Meyler, a starting member on both 1982 county winning teams.

Barrs teamsheets from those two double-winning campaigns contained names like Ger Cunningham, Denis Burns, Donal O’Grady, John Allen, John Cremin, the late Christy Ryan, Tony Maher, Jimmy Barry Murphy, Charlie McCarthy, Dave Barry, and a young Tony Leahy.

What you had, in the words of Meyler, were two teams of inter-county quality. And so, they didn’t require coaching or direction. What they required was communication between the codes to ensure each blue diamond didn’t lose its sparkle.

“You only ever see the success on the field, you never see the co-operation that goes on behind closed doors. We had tremendous players, but we also had tremendous people serving on the hurling and football committees.

“You had people like Donie Cremin, Tim Mullane, and Mick Kennefick running the hurling club. On the football side, you had Pat Lougheed and Mick Keating. All those people were hugely influential, and they all cooperated together.

“To win the double in 80 and 82 was massive. It is a tribute to the club structure that it facilitated that coordination and cooperation. You had great people in the background, people with vision. They wanted the club to be successful – in both codes. And they knew what to do to make it happen.” 

That cooperation continues today between Ger Cunningham and Paul O’Keeffe, football boss O’Keeffe part of Cunningham’s hurling set-up as team doctor.

The five dual starters on their respective teams are Jamie Burns, Billy Hennessy, Ben O’Connor, Ethan Twomey, and Brian Hayes. There are up to eight more who are part of the respective panels.

Last week was a hurling one and so the dual players trained exclusively with the hurlers. This week, on account of the footballers not being involved in quarter-final action at the weekend, they will do a bit of both.

Their dual operators have already played seven championship games across eight weekends. That this coming weekend is match free is to be welcomed and taken advantage of given the following fortnight holds back-to-back semi-finals against Newtownshandrum in the hurling and either Castlehaven or Mallow in the football.

Fatigue, as much mental as physical, is the chief concern herein.

“We are back training Tuesday night, but the dual players will only do recovery work,” explains O’Keeffe, who was at the helm for last season’s county and Munster club successes.

“And if any of them are coming back with knocks or sprains from the hurling quarter-final, we will leave them off altogether and see them later in the week. It’s just about being sensible really and not doing anything stupid at this point. There is no point trying to take the horse to the well too often.” Back in 2017, Kanturk won the Cork Premier Intermediate hurling and Intermediate football titles. Twelve dual players started on both teams.

One of the 12, hurling captain Lorcan O’Neill, couldn’t overstate the importance of taking a winning mentality from one code into the other, when speaking to this newspaper towards the end of that campaign.

“Going into each game we’d say, ‘we need to win this game to set us up for next week, we need to win the hurling to win the football, and vice-versa’. It is hard to stop a team with winning momentum.” It’s an attitude O’Keeffe has come to appreciate in recent weeks.

“We are feeding off each other at this stage and it creates an incredible atmosphere in the club that both teams are winning. I know there is talk about the double beginning to bubble to the surface, but that is not something you can pay much attention to as there are two very difficult semi-finals on the horizon.” That there are. But how glad the Barrs are and how long they have waited to be back contending on two fronts.