Haven's rookie boss Seanie Cahalane thriving at the deep end

To go from never having managed a team to taking charge of a county and provincial club-winning side is quite the leap. Seanie Cahalane willingly leapt.

Pictured at the press briefing at Castlehaven was Seanie Cahalane taking time for a cup of tea with Marian Collins. Picture Denis Boyle

In management, you have to start somewhere. Oftentimes, that starting point is chosen for you. Necessity and unfilled positions will see the debut manager roped into an U14 or Junior B dressing room by a determined and won’t-take-no-for-an-answer club official.

That is not Seanie Cahalane’s story. His was not your typical managerial start. He was given the opportunity to start at the very deep end. And once the invite was extended, he hardly fixed his goggles before diving in.

To go from never having managed a team to taking charge of a county and provincial club-winning side is quite the leap. Seanie willingly leapt.

When James McCarthy stepped down in February after four years at the helm in Castlehaven, those aforementioned club officials who don’t take no for an answer didn’t go very far for their preferred successor.

Seanie’s first foray onto the sideline was to serve as U21 Haven selector under Enda Buckley around 2018 and 19. His second foray came last year when he came in as senior selector for the fourth and final year of McCarthy’s tenure. It was a year that delivered a first Cork football crown in 10 years and a first Munster in 26 years.

And so Seanie’s debut managerial gig saw him discharged with the responsibility of keeping Castlehaven atop local and provincial summits.

If that implies pressure, he didn’t feel any. Maybe that’s partly the reason they asked him in the first place.

The one iota of reticence he had was becoming manager to close friends he’d soldiered alongside in blue and white for years. Having captained the club to back-to-back county titles in 2012 and 13, he’d continued togging out for the seniors all the way up to 2019.

“There was a certain element of nervousness as I would have played with a lot of the lads. I'd have played with Mark Collins, Damien Cahalane, and Michael and Brian Hurley, they'd be considered some of my best friends. There's obviously that element that if you have to make difficult decisions and stuff. But thankfully, there haven't been too many.

“I'd probably have been a bit more reluctant to take it on if I didn't have the backroom team with me, but all the lads were willing. The backroom team James put in place over the last two years are nearly all there or thereabouts again, and you need that. They are all excellent, with the inclusion of Anthony Seymour this year, and that is half the battle.

“If you didn't have any part of that jigsaw, you'd be questioning it a small bit and asking is this right.” 

The early part of their 2024 jigsaw was concerned almost exclusively with managing carefully the load on each piece after the 2023 season ran all the way into the first week of this year.

Rather than dragging fellas onto the field for the standard spring slog, there was no skimping on the downtime afforded. Different players were given different weekends off. Being fresh for the first round in late July was the priority.

That we are chatting to Seanie on county final week means it’s been a case of so far, so good for the rookie manager and the reigning champions.

His Haven bunch have unquestionably been the form team of this year’s Cork championship. Not even a four-week lay-off to their semi-final assignment against a crowd who had received a searching quarter-final examination could remotely trip them up. Instead, it was the Haven who began that semi-final as the team to have come through the searching quarter-final a fortnight previous.

“To be honest, we were worried going in against the Barrs because you just don't know what you are going to get after the four-week lay-off. You don't know how you are going to start. There was a sense of nervousness from us.” 

Bar a shaky finish where the Barrs sought an equaliser they had no right to be in contention for, it was a superb tactical showing from the champions.

“We were a bit panicky towards the end when we probably should have controlled the game a bit better, but it is good learnings for the next day,” Cahalane continued.

The next day is familiar opposition. Castlehaven are chasing a repeat of the 2012-13 back-to-back which Seanie captained. Nemo, on the other hand, do not want to lose a first set of back-to-back county finals.

“We know they are going to bring an unbelievable hunger the next day. You only have to go back two years when the Barrs were playing them in the final, they brought a savage workrate and savage intensity. We are expecting the exact same the next day.

“If we are to have any chance, we are going to have to match that workrate and hunger.”