Run of games 'whet the appetite' for Carlow captain Foley

32-year-old Darragh Foley played for Carlow for the 150th time last month against Wicklow in the Leinster SFC.

Wed, 10 May, 2023 - 07:06

Paul Keane

At the start of the pandemic, light on games and with pages to fill, the Carlow Nationalist compiled a feature on players with the most senior appearances for the county.

Johnny Nevin, with 176 football outings and 155 hurling games behind him, comfortably headed the list with a remarkable 331 appearances overall.

Darragh Foley won't surpass Nevin any time soon but it was a landmark moment all the same when he played for Carlow for the 150th time last month against Wicklow in the Leinster SFC.

There could be as many as seven more games for him and Carlow this summer though while that would improve his own personal record, he's more interested in what the run of matches could do for the team.

"You are guaranteed three games in the group, three games in the middle of the summer, we got that in 2017 and 2018 but it was very hard generally to get that amount of games in the old structure," said the 32-year-old.

"It is something that really whet the appetite for me, made me want to stick it out, to see where it goes."

Carlow played five games in the 2017 Championship, eventually bowing out at home to Monaghan in the qualifiers.

The following year they gained promotion from Division 4, beat Kildare in the Championship and gave a decent account of themselves at home to Tyrone in the back door series. Turlough O'Brien and coach Steven Poacher were hailed throughout the county.

They called it Carlow's rising and the reason captain Foley has stuck around is because he believes they can rise up again.

"We felt we could compete with most teams in the country at the time, bar maybe the top three or four," said Foley. "We probably showed that in a couple of our performances against the likes of Monaghan and Tyrone in the qualifiers, that we could do it."

Foley admits that the golden era for Carlow feels like 'a distant memory' now but he believes the Tailteann Cup campaign, which will start for Carlow this Sunday with a trip to neighbours Wicklow, who beat Carlow in the Leinster SFC last month, represents an opportunity to begin a new one.

"It is a great opportunity to get a run of games under your belt to try to get a run at it," he said.

"People talked about last year's win being a generational moment for Westmeath. I suppose in 2017 and 2018, we had that in Carlow. That is why I'm still here, I want to have another taste of that, to keep interest alive in football in Carlow."

Improvement for Carlow, according to Foley, starts with greater discipline.

"Our discipline has been very poor, and it has been over the last two years, just getting silly black cards at crucial times in games, little bits of skill errors, simple handpasses going to ground, simple turnovers," he said.

"We have been getting really punished for them. They were some of the things we have really looked at and we hope to see an improvement in the Tailteann Cup."