Anthony Cunningham: ‘If you don't win it, this year still would be a failure’

Anthony Cunningham: ‘There is only one winner really, that is the hard line of sport.’ Pic: Seb Daly/Sportsfile

It came in sequence. Four days after their All-Ireland final defeat, Jerome Stack stood down as St Brigid’s manager. Twenty-four hours later, Anthony Cunningham was appointed. There was only one direction the club intended to travel.

They were closing fast on the summit of the county championship roll of honour. Cunningham, a former Galway All-Ireland-winning hurler and ex-Roscommon football manager, had worked with them previously — as well as guiding Westmeath’s Garrycastle to an All-Ireland final. 

The ambition had been set in the 2024 defeat by Glen. The only way to improve was to go one step further and finish the job.

For all the romance of the club championship, for all they have recently achieved — including two spirited triumphs over Scotstown and Maigh Cuilinn — the bottom line remains unforgiving. For Cunningham, the terms are stark.

“Everybody you meet this week, they say, ‘well done, whatever’. But that is the hard fact of sport, the winner takes all and if you don’t win it, this year still would be a failure because of the high expectations of the club here,” he said.

“It is the same in any sport, whether it is in the Premiership, whether it is rugby, anywhere. There is only one winner really. That is the hard line of sport.”

He can tell you all about the cruelty of defeat. What it is like to come close, to do so much right and still end up with nothing to show for it. He has won All-Ireland finals as both player and manager. Cunningham hurled on the victorious Galway teams of 1987 and 1988 and led their U21s to success in 2010. That doesn’t mean the scars of other disappointments are any less raw.

2012. Galway beaten by Kilkenny. 2012. Garrycastle beaten by Crossmaglen Rangers. Both after a replay. Ouch.

“Twice, twice two All-Ireland finals went to replays, didn’t come out the right end,” he said. “Yeah, they are really difficult places if you don’t win. It is the worst place on earth to be.

“If you don’t win, it is really, really tough, but the winner takes all. We’d hope to be on the right side, but it is going to take one hell of a battle.”

Cunningham knows this squad intimately. He recalls Féile trips to Derry to follow a sizeable underage cohort. He also trusts implicitly in the management team around him. 

John Murray is assistant manager and a former club manager; Owen Mooney and Evan Talty are highly regarded coaches; Niall Kelly is the intermediate manager and a selector who has been posted to Lebanon in recent weeks but returns for the final. They know the terrain.

Every legend in the GAA has been forged in the furnace of defeat. Dingle’s road to Sunday has included setbacks and scarring experiences. They hit bumps in county deciders or Munster campaigns and emerged better for it.

The former Galway hurler lined out at wing-forward in the 1990 All-Ireland final as Cork eked out a famous victory.

“Losses are bad anyway. You’d feel that with a manager, you have your coaches and you have your backroom team and you have the club,” Cunningham said. “Guys like Tomás Beades [football chairperson] and Michael McDonnell that you work with, they’re sort of your aide-de-camp there. They will help you with every aspect.

“They’ll organise the trips to Croke Park and all this stuff. So you do feel you have let them down if you didn’t get over the line. You do always feel, what could you have done better? Why didn’t we do this? Why didn’t we do that? So it is, there is a lot of heartbreak with losses, there is no doubt. We’re not shy in saying that.”

Those stakes are always heightened in finals, but every player on Sunday will be acutely aware of them. That is what makes it momentous. St Brigid’s know what it is like to fall short. Dingle know the value of striking when opportunity presents itself. A gifted crop has come along; Mark O’Connor has permission to play; they have demonstrated immense courage in repeatedly coming back and that makes them a formidable opponent.

Cunningham knows that too. Their resilience was on full display against Ballyboden: “You have to have huge admiration for the way they back into the game. Driven by their defensive attack, if you put it that way. Tom O’Sullivan, as an example. The scores that Paul Geaney got. They really got very dominant in midfield in the second half. So, with half an hour of football, to have done what they did was extremely… it is frightening really. We do have to be on top of our game.”