I'd love to see Sars take Newtown record, insists Ben O'Connor

The Rebel County great is part of the new series of Laochra Gael. 

DOUBLE VISION: Ben O'Connor stands for a portrait during the launch of TG4's award-winning Laochra Gael series at the Light House Cinema in Dublin. Pic: Seb Daly/Sportsfile

A trip down memory lane this week for Ben O'Connor at the launch of TG4's latest season of Laochra Gael.

On Thursday, he was at the Lighthouse Cinema in Dublin's Smithfield for the official launch of the 23rd season of the popular series with the life story of the O'Connor twins, Ben and Jerry, set to air on Thursday evening, March 6.

Both played, and won, at the highest levels with Cork though a significant part of their story is winning the AIB All-Ireland club hurling title with Newtownshandrum in 2004. Two years later, they were back again but lost the final to Portumna.

When Sarsfields cross the white line at Croke Park on Sunday, they will relieve Newtownshandrum of their record of being the last Cork team to contest the decider.

O'Connor would be more than happy for Sarsfields to take Newtownshandrum's other record too as the last Cork team actually win it.

"It seems like yesterday," smiled Ben. "Before that in the '80s, Midleton were the last (Cork) crowd who won it, so it doesn't happen too often. We've seen with Sars the amount of work that's been done to get there after being beaten in the county final.

"They could have downed tools, the same as they did last year. They won the county last year and got a hiding off Ballygunner. I suppose they didn't want that happening again and they got their bit of luck along the way. I think they've gotten better every day that they've played since.

"Hopefully on Sunday there'll be no more talk of Newtown being the last team to win the All-Ireland club from Cork and they'll be talking about someone else. It's great for Cork hurling. After Watergrasshill and Russell Rovers last weekend it would be nice to finish the whole thing off with Sars lifting the trophy."

O'Connor is being genuine about wanting Newtown's record to be overhauled?

"Absolutely," he maintained. "There are people below in Cork who don't want to see Sars winning. There are people above in Tyrone who don't want to see Errigal Ciaran winning. It's just a jealousy, I suppose. I'm a Cork man so I want to see Cork teams winning everything. Local rivalry has to be put aside at this stage. They're representing Cork, they're the Cork team at the weekend so everybody should be behind Sars."

The two O'Connors will be interested armchair viewers. Ben and Jerry are both still closely tethered, living just a solid puck of a sliotar from each other. Both have three children.

"He has two girls and a boy, I have two boys and a girl," smiled Ben, who enjoyed the reminiscing project with TG4.

"The way we looked at it, not many people are asked to do it so we said we'd have a go at it. The day we went down to the studio, we were expecting maybe 10 minutes of a chat but we didn't get up off the seat for maybe three and a half, four hours. It just flew, the time went by so fast."

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