Dual hopefuls Newcestown showing how to get balancing act right
HIGH AND MIGHTY: Sean O'Donovan of Newcestown and Mallow's Shane Merritt contest a ball at Macroom. Picture: Jim Coughlan.
Prior to Ben O’Connor’s appointment this week, the last Newtownshandrum man to take charge of the Cork senior hurling team was Fr Bertie Troy.
During his spell, which included the famous three-in-a-row of 1976-78, Fr Troy was assisted by the team’s trainer, Newcestown native Kevin Kehily, who combined that role with playing for the county football team.
As it happens, the fixture-list for this weekend’s last set of Co-op SuperStores Premier SHC fixtures has thrown up a Newcestown v Newtownshandrum clash in Blarney on Sunday. A win for Newcestown could send them through to the knockout stages if Charleville also beat Midleton but, whatever happens, the focus will quickly turn to football and a game against Castlehaven.
Wins over Valley Rovers and Mallow for both clubs means there is a bit less pressure than your average last group game, with progression guaranteed for both and a quarter-final – at least – to look forward to.
With Newcestown – the first non-city club in two decades to field in the top grade in both codes – the cliché is to say that they are punching above their weight, but for how long must there be consistent over-achievement before we can say that it is the norm?
For former Newcestown star Pat Kenneally, the achievements of Kehily, in tandem with those of Tim Crowley, who played hurling with Cork at the same time, set in train an ethos that has carried down the generations.
“That was a time when smaller clubs often found it hard to keep good players like that,” he says, “they’d often end up going to the city.
“Both Kevin and Tim had a loyalty to Newcestown that never wavered and you could see that commitment on the pitch. They instilled a tradition and a culture which have carried on.
“At the same time, we don't get carried away with the great players that we've had. They wear the jersey with distinction – like David Buckley is doing at the moment – but we move along and there'll be another fellow coming along in another five or six years.
“We have been very lucky that there have been a couple of fellas able to step up most of the time.”
But the supporting cast have never been found wanting, either. While the squad sizes will never be huge, tighter numbers afford fringe players a greater chance of exposure – something former football manager Tom Wilson feels is very valuable.
“I can remember times it looked like we might be short for a league game,” he says, “but you’d turn it to your advantage.
“I had a selector with me and he’d say, ‘Sure look, we’re going to have to look at this fella and this fella anyway, we can throw them in and see how they do.’
“We used to see it as an opportunity for a fella to showcase himself and give his best shot.”
Similarly, having so many dual players means that one code is never elevated above the other – and co-existence can lead to mutual benefit.
“I think you can refer back to Kevin and Tim again,” Kenneally says.
“One of them was a very good hurler, one was a very good footballer, but for the club, both of them were hugely effective in the other sport as well.
“There has never been a situation us prioritising one over the other, the culture is to give both equal weight. A culture is when you no longer have to think about something and that’s the way it is.
“There's championship next week, and whatever it is, they’re Newcestown players rather than hurlers or footballers. As well as that, the people managing the teams will all have gone through that as players too.
“When we played Dohenys in the senior A football final a couple of years ago, I think it was their second time playing in Páirc Uí Chaoimh that year but we had had the drawn senior A hurling final against Blarney and the replay and two other games that happened to be there too, so fellas had a real familiarity and a routine from playing there.”
As manager of a Newcestown team that reached the SFC semi-finals in 2019, Wilson has first-hand experience of the balancing of the codes but never found it an issue.
“You’ve so many dual players that that helps, in a way,” he says. “The way the fixtures are now, everybody is playing one code one week, whether it’s senior or junior, and then swapping over.
“There’s never any politics that come into it because it’s just straightforward. When you’re going well then, the momentum of one carries over to the other – in 2023, when they won the hurling, I felt that that would get them over the line in the football.”
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