'Fellas grieve together, they celebrate together' — Denis Ring on Imokilly's 'club' culture

The east Cork divisional outfit claimed a county final win over Sars on Sunday.

Sun, 20 Oct, 2024 - 20:41

Therese O’Callaghan

There's a lot of sadness and sickness in the Imokilly camp, manager Denis Ring revealed after the Cork Premier SHC final win over Sars. It was their strong bond that helped them through tough times.

“There’s a lot of sickness in our camp. I lost my sister and her husband last year, unexpectedly. Avril (Geary) chairperson lost her mother this year. The most driven thing of the whole lot, and it is great to see Darragh O’Brien and Ciarán O’Brien up on the steps, their mother Caroline died of cancer earlier in the summer.

“We’ve other people who have people going into Marymount and stuff. You’re dealing with a family, friends and guys. If ever you look at a club mentality or parish mentality, we have that.

“Fellas grieve together, they celebrate together. There’s a massive mutual respect there. Massive credit to Seánie O’Leary and then Fergal Condon for introducing a lot of that culture.”

Imokilly had to weather the storm, literally. The gale force wind changed everything. Veteran Brian Lawton was chosen as sweeper.

“I don’t think I’ve ever come across a player at any level, and I’m not saying this lightly, with the hurling brain of Brian Lawton. I think he is exceptional, he’s very reassuring on the ball. I don’t know a game where he doesn’t impact. When the conditions were the way it is, it almost suited us to get him on the ball because there is nobody better.

“It’s a different game, it’s almost a different sport with the wind. We had plans for playing 15 on 15, we had plans for coping with Sars where they’d drop a player – which they normally do - so we were ready for that, but then you hit the storm!

“It gave us some encouragement, to go in six points down at half-time – to be honest, I was delighted with it, to know that you had the elements with you then in the second half.”

Adam Murphy’s 33rd minute goal was a game-changer, Imokilly closed with 10 straight points between the 49th and 61st minute.

“These lads, their use of the ball all year has been, to me, the most satisfying element of it. In training, when we are together, we put a lot of emphasis on use of the ball and a lot of work on shooting but also shooting sensibly from distance and so on. The other side of it is that guys had a lot of confidence in shooting, in their own ability."

Cork defender Ciarán Joyce was one of the Imokilly players that stood out. He said it took ‘a while to get to grips with the game.’

“The wind made it very difficult. The second half, with the wind, we just pushed up on our men, we weren’t letting Sars have any spare men at the back. We just built our way into it. We turned them over in the back line and we got a few scores up front.

“We felt at half-time six points was fairly manageable with that wind. Obviously we knew the quality we had in the dressing room. We’re star-studded at the moment, so we knew we’d get over the line. It’s all about confidence, these type of games.

"We won the toss and decided to play against it and try to slow things down as much as we could. We got our goalie to come and take long frees and slow things down. We told Jack Leahy to take his time on the frees. That probably helped at half time being six points down.”

He had inter-county teammate Jack O’Connor for company.

“He’s very hard to mark. He’s probably the fastest player in the county. I tagged him for a lot of the game when he came out to the half forward line. I get on very well with Jack.

"It was awkward marking him. I’m getting used to it at this stage, marking inter county players at club level.”

Does this victory make up for the All-Ireland defeat?

“Jesus, I don’t know, maybe a small bit but that’s still a tough one to take. Hopefully we’ll be back again next year. There’s a few lads putting up their hands (for a Cork call-up) on both teams. Hopefully we'll see a few of them next year.”