Gleeson to step aside as Golden-Kilfeacle coach for final clash with own club Boherlahan-Dualla

TOUGH ASK: Former Tipperary hurler Conor Gleeson in 2010. Pic: Diarmuid Greene / SPORTSFILE

Former Tipperary midfielder Conor Gleeson has confirmed he will step aside as Golden-Kilfeacle coach for Sunday week’s county intermediate hurling final against his own Boherlahan-Dualla.

In a last ditch attempt to avoid relegation, the former Laois and Offaly coach agreed to take over the West Tipperary club in late August but with one condition: if they faced his club, he would not be involved.

Beating Ballingarry in their final round game, Golden-Kilfeacle managed to avoid the drop and qualify for the knock-out stages partly due to the new score difference rule. 

After the totals with Ballingarry and Kiladangan’s second team were totted up, Golden-Kilfeacle and Ballingarry still couldn’t be separated and that head-to-head result ultimately decided their fate.

“I said to them before I came on board that if they face Boherlahan-Dualla, I’d step aside,” says Gleeson. “My mother (Pauline) wouldn’t have slept a wink if I didn’t. With a county final, there would be extra attention too and I just wouldn’t have been able to do the lads justice preparing them.

“I just couldn’t put myself in that situation. I know a good few of the Golden-Kilfeacle lads like Kevin Moloney and the chairman Brian Leamy. In fairness, they accept the situation, they knew where I stood.

“It’s been a great run to this point. We beat Drom and Inch by 13 points in the quarter-final and weren’t expected to come through against Kilsheelan-Kilcash. Nobody was giving us a chance but the final is there now.” 

To add to the intimacy, Sunday’s final, the undercard to the senior hurling in Thurles, will also see Gleeson’s Boherlahan-Dualla county SHC winning team of 1996 honoured at half-time in the intermediate final after they were denied a jubilee anniversary event due to the pandemic.

“It’s going to be a mad day with all that’s going on in the background. Could you have imagined me waving to the crowd and then going back to the sideline to face my club? I’d have been lynched.” 

That Boherlahan-Dualla team, which includes the club’s current manager Willie Hickey, are set to mark their famous victory over Toomevara with a four-day golf to Fuengirola in Spain the week after next. “We meet once a year and we remember the day and JJ McGrath who passed away with a brain tumour in 2009.

“Having won it the once, it is special. We went to Killaloe for a night after we won it and always said we’d go abroad one year to celebrate it.”