Foley sets sights on breaking into Cork hurling's big time with Charleville

The six-time-capped former Irish international divides the Cork hurling championship into two tiers. Six market leaders occupy the top half. They are Sars, Midleton, Blackrock, the Glen, the Barrs, and, of course, Imokilly.

Sat, 20 Sep, 2025 - 06:05

Eoghan Cormican

“Never reached the big time,” reflects Dominic Foley towards the end of our conversation.

The Charleville hurling manager is reflecting on his 18 years as a professional footballer. A career that reads as a busy inter-railing summer such were the many blades of grass covered.

Pins collected from Wolves, Watford, Notts County, QPR, Swindon, Southend, and Oxford in the UK, Ethnikos Piraeus in Greece, Braga in Portugal, and Gent and Cercle Brugge in Belgium.

For all his travels, the big time Foley didn’t reach. That’s his own summation, not ours. The big time he wants for his Charleville players.

Everybody else, including his own Charleville, are in the bottom tier. The job is to bridge the gap.

There are seven knockout places in the little All-Ireland. That means, going by Foley’s logic, there is space for only one team from the chasing pack.

In this latest edition, that place has been taken by Charleville. Last January’s All-Ireland finalists, Sars, are their quarter-final final opponents tomorrow.

“Our aim is to be one of those top six. If you look at the bottom grouping of teams, we finished top of that league, so we’ve earned the right to have a go at one of the top six in the quarters. We're looking forward to putting ourselves against them and to see how far off we are from joining them up there,” he says.

“It is [bridgeable]. But it's not done overnight. It's not done in one or two years. There've been lots of good coaches and managers before me, but the players this year definitely became more accountable. So far, they’ve got out of it what they’ve deserved.”

Foley hurled himself before football became his 9 to 5. He hurled in local red and in county red. He has regrets over the latter and the length of time he wore that shirt.

Once all trials were concluded and the county had been scouted from top to bottom, Foley was among those to make the cut and earn selection on Jimmy Barry-Murphy’s 1994 Cork minor panel.

It wasn’t his sole trial of that year. Liverpool, the same as JBM, wanted a look.

Their audition, though, came with the condition of parking the hurling. When no second audition followed, the Cork minor ship had moved on without him.

“I had to give up the hurling with the hope of going back to Liverpool, which never materialised. It's one of my regrets that I didn't tell Liverpool to keep their trial. The minors ended up going all the way to the All-Ireland final where Galway beat them,” he recalls.

Part of the Cork U21 set-up the following year, the then 19-year-old made his Wolverhampton Wanderers debut, in the old first division, four months after the Rebels exited at the Munster semi-final stage.

“Within two months of the U21s being knocked out, I was gone to Wolves. Soccer gave me an opportunity to earn a living so that won out.

“I had been playing with Charleville; we competed in the Limerick League. Every year, a Limerick league team was picked to compete in an All-Ireland competition. I got picked for Limerick County and we went all the way to the final where we lost to Waterford. Paul Flynn, the hurler, was in goals for them.

“I got spotted playing against a Dublin team in the semi-final, and the trials started from there. Once one person hears about you, everybody kind of hears about you. That’s how it started for me back in the mid-90s. It was a lot harder back then compared to now because there's centres of excellence everywhere and FAI coaches going around to different clubs.”

On his travels from Charleville to the continent, Foley made 11 appearances for Watford in the 1999-2000 Premier League season. Eight years further on, he captained Gent to Belgian Cup final involvement.

“I would count myself very lucky. How many people playing soccer at a young age would have dreamt of doing what I did. When you're doing it, it's your job and you don't think anything of it. But when you look back, I got to do a lot of things.” In everywhere that he went and pulled on local colours, there was a level of detachment. They weren’t his people.

Charleville are his people, Charleville is his home. His latest posting is inseparable from his everyday existence.

“Any club I was involved with was far away from here. I could wipe my hands, walk out the door, and not meet them walking down the street. Whereas when it's your own town and you know the players’ mothers, their fathers, their uncles, you just can't get away from it. So that's the hardest part of it, being only able to pick 15 when we have a squad of 30 that are very good.

“In 18 years as a professional, I've seen a lot in terms of body language, different types of characters, and knowing what's required to be at the highest level when it comes to fitness and looking after yourself.

“So all these kinds of things I can pass on, and if you can make everybody 1% better, that’s a 30% improvement in our squad. As I always say to the lads, there's nobody in this county 30% better than us.”

The ex-pro’s theory will again be put to the test tomorrow.