Kanturk's dual operators have one more summit to climb

Kanturk face Éire Óg in the Cork SAFC final seeking to join the tiny group of clubs operating at Premier Senior level in both football and hurling

Lorcán McLoughlin: 'There’s just something in the team that we’ve been through so much that a resolve has been built up.' Pic: Chani Anderson

Sport’s crueller side almost got an airing at a soaked Macroom on Sunday, October 11. And what a most unforgiving airing it would have been.

Two minutes of second-half injury-time had been played in the Cork Senior A football semi-final. Kanturk found themselves two points adrift of Carbery Rangers. It was only the second time across the previous hour where Carbery Rangers’ lead had managed to stretch beyond the minimum. Neither side had ever got out to three in front.

In a game of so few scores and so many times deadlocked, seven in total, Rosscarbery’s 0-12 to 0-10 injury-time advantage wore out-the-gap status.

Kanturk hadn’t scored in 19 minutes. Spent and sopping, it was in Macroom where their championship season had come to die.

A championship season of 10 games across 12 weekends. Removed Blackrock from the hurling conversation. Ended the reign of Sars. Reached a first-ever Premier Senior semi-final. Were mere minutes from reaching a first-ever decider.

Football victories were being chalked up every other weekend. In their fourth campaign in Cork football’s second tier, there was a fourth successful negotiation of the group phase.

It was the same group going back out Sunday after Sunday. A dozen dual starters on both teams.

But here in Macroom, an unglamorous and unrewarding end was near. For all the headline results they had written and for all the bouquets thrown their way in admiration, Kanturk’s season would sign off without county final involvement.

Back-to-back semi-final defeats, in the space of seven days, would be their lot. A season of almosts.

Kanturk’s dual operators saw this obituary and said, no thank you.

Cork hurler Alan Walsh brought them within the minimum in the opening seconds of the 63rd minute. Rosscarbery retained the subsequent kickout. Darragh Hayes wanted green instead of white. Kanturk’s Lorcán O’Neill, not long on the field, produced a season-saving block.

Their collective advance in search of an equaliser was halted for a three-back breach. A row broke out. The free was reduced to a throw-in, which Alan Walsh rose highest for. Brian O’Sullivan mailed possession into Grantas Bucinskas. Forgetting to signal for a mark, the hurling goalkeeper and football top-scorer swung the leveller in the seventh minute of injury-time.

Four behind at half-time in extra-time, they again turned their nose up at a season of almosts.

And so here stand Kanturk, one hour from dual Premier Senior status. It’s a tiny group - St Finbarr’s and Newcestown the existing members - they seek to join.

This season of everything has, at the very least, given them county final involvement. Sport has a conscience.

“Games are funny. You think you're beaten, you think you are dead and buried, your backs are to the wall, and then the next thing… there’s just something in the team that we’ve been through so much that a resolve has been built up,” says Lorcán McLoughlin, who will make his 168th championship appearance for the club in Sunday’s Senior A decider against Éire Óg.

“In that semi-final, you get a sense that momentum is going against you late on and that you’re in a spot of bother. It does take individuals to step up then. We were trying to force a goal in second-half injury-time, Alan’s shot just goes over the bar, and you can kind of get stuck in this rut that you find hard to get out of.

“But players just stood up. Brian played an unbelievable ball in. Grantas showed unbelievable composure to get the score. All these individual moments lift the team and give you confidence. They make you believe again.” 

Lorcán laughs when asked to explain how they’ve acclimatised to three weeks of single-code focus. Such time spent exclusively on one over the other is an alien concept up their direction.

“It was hard to know what to do with ourselves! The gap to the final meant there was an opportunity to get bodies right because we had been going week-on-week.

“The three-week run-in gives you that time to prepare properly, first and foremost, and then just enjoy that build-up because you look at the Barrs who had to go from one county final to another on successive weekends, that is extremely tough.

“The time that was there just gives our football management a fair crack of preparing the team properly so there are no excuses at the end of it.” 

Their hope is that this campaign of scalps will have silverware to show at the end of it.

McLoughlin was top-scorer when Kanturk won the junior county for the first time in 2011. He, brother John, Lorcán O’Neill, Mark Healy, John Browne, and Ian Walsh are chasing a seventh county medal - across the two codes - on Sunday.

“We’d love to do it for the team and management, but also for the people that have supported us and travelled in their numbers all over the county this year,” said Lorcán.

“You have so many that are sacrificing weekends and the cost of taking a family up to Páirc Uí Chaoimh, kids, everything, even the businesses locally who have put out so much colour, there is so much tied up in the whole year, and so it would be great to do it for the town itself.”