'That load is lifted now' - Relief and joy as persistence pays off for Doon

The Limerick side claimed a first-ever senior county title on Sunday.

DOON PROPHESY: Pat Ryan, Richie English and JJ Thompson celebrate after the Limerick County Senior Club Hurling Championship final. Pic: Ray McManus/Sportsfile

Relief poured over the faces of Doon’s players in the TUS Gaelic Grounds on Sunday evening. They’d finally done it. After eight semi-finals in as many years, and two final defeats, the East Limerick club had finally claimed a first ever senior county title.

They had done it the hard way, slogging through a gripping decider on a rain-soaked night that made heart as valuable as hurling, and rebounding from the concession of two Na Piarsaigh goals inside a minute in the first-half.

Adam English said afterwards that they just couldn’t countenance departing down the Ennis Road without the cup. Recent history had come to weigh too much but this was a journey that started long before so many of them had become men.

Pat Ryan was part of a superb U14 Doon team that went unbeaten in Limerick 15 years ago. They won the Feile nan Gael, the county league and topped it off by beating Mungret with eight points to spare in the county final.

James O’Donovan, Darragh’s father, was part of that management team in 2009. The seniors had done well in what was the club’s 125th anniversary year but lost a quarter-final to three-in-a-row-chasing Adare that same year.

Even then, the club’s inability to have ever claimed the John Daly Cup was exercising minds.

“We won a county final and the first thing he said to us in the dressing-room afterwards was, 'You know lads, this club has never won a senior’,” said Ryan. “This group is going to have to come on’.

“I remember we went from celebration to... He said, 'ye have to start getting ready for it now and training hard because ye have a good group and it just has to be done. If ye’re group goes without doing it we'll never do it'.” That load is lifted now.

They can look back after Sunday’s success and see the journey as life-affirming rather than crippling. That they overcame a Na Piarsaigh side that was chasing it’s own three-in-a-row in the final should only stand to them more.

Doon had edged the city side by a point in the group stages in August but it was Na Piarsaigh that had framed their failures until now having beaten them by 27 points in the 2020 final and by a penalty shootout in last season’s semi-final.

Soon had been part of the county’s Big Four with Shane O’Neill’s side, Patrickswell and Kilmallock but, at the same time, not really part of it. Only winning a title would change that and allow them shed the sense of being peripheral in more ways than one.

“We've wanted that cup for many years to come back to Doon,” said Richie English. “We're at the very edge of Limerick and I don't know do people forget about us sometimes but we keep on plugging away and keep on doing the right things.

“We knew that eventually it would come right. We've had many hard days in here, we got bad batings in a few semi-finals and finals but we've been there knocking on the door every year so hopefully we can keep it going now and the next generation gets inspired by it.” 

There was a sense here of all the pieces finally falling into place.

They were missing too many key players in that 2020 decider, and luck was against them last term in a semi-final that Richie English watched from the stands injured, but the little details and major moments fell in their favour in 2024.

Derek McGrath coming on board was big step, the former Waterford boss having been impressed when he first met a player’s delegation. Darragh O’Donovan was fresh after a serious injury. Ryan opted against another trip to America to focus on the club.

“I'm playing just over 10 years now and every single year we lost, as a group we never ever said we should have won one,” said Ryan. “We never came out after a match or a season saying, 'Oh, we should have won that last year'.

“We always said the team that wins it is the only team that deserves it. I remember losing in ’18, in the dressing room after the final and talking about it and after the semi-final last year, [saying] we just have to get better.

“That if we're just getting better and we're on the way up the whole time, eventually, hopefully we'll keep knocking on the door and it'll come down.” 

A new door awaits in Ballygunner and a crack at Munster next weekend.