Patient Duggan making most of his chance to shine

WELL, it’s hardly been an overnight success anyway.

For three seasons, Diarmuid Duggan soldiered away at the foothills of the Cork panel with only some league minutes here and there and a cameo in last year’s championship win over Meath to keep himself entertained.

If the rewards were pretty slim for the workload in the past, this year has been a different story. Duggan clocked up every minute of their five league games at corner-back, came through his first start against Limerick and then marked his first Munster final with a man-of-the-match award. Good things come to those who wait then.

Still, it’s an obvious question to ask, weren’t there times when he felt that breakthrough was miles away?

“Ah there’s bound to be I suppose,” Duggan admits. “It’s only human nature and you would get frustrated at times. But I knew Cork had a great defence, I suppose it would have been different if I knew I should have been definitely on in front of somebody. So it was only a case of biding my time and hoping things would come right.”

Conor Counihan’s new regime brought a fresh approach and when the broom was taken to the panel, Duggan was left standing at corner-back for the league opener with Roscommon. He says he knew right away then he’d a decent shot at holding down a spot.

He’s been there ever since, the highlight being the Munster final, where he was solid defensively, picked up the world of loose ball in and used it all intelligently enough to stand out even in the storm of Cork’s second-half revival. Was there a personal buzz to the achievement?

“You have to get a buzz out of it alright, and I did, to win an award like that against the All-Ireland champions. But to be quite honest, it was all about winning a Munster title, that was more important. Looking at things at half time, it was difficult to see a way through. To pull it out of the fire like we did, we were just delighted after.”

Now all roads lead back to another meeting with Kerry, something that’s proven problematic in the past for this bunch of Cork players. He accepts that these meetings with the old rivals are how they’ll be judged ultimately.

“I suppose that’s how we will be judged. We know what we’re up against, we haven’t done as well as we’d have liked against them. We didn’t perform really, results would show that, even though going into the games we thought we could beat them. It’s hard to say why, they’re a very good side. Their results have proven that, putting back-to-back All-Irelands together.”

Is the baggage from those losses to Kerry a worry?

“I don’t think there is baggage really. Obviously these things linger in your mind. I was just a sub, though certainly I’d remember the games. But I don’t think there’s a whole load of baggage.”

Duggan wouldn’t read too much into the Kildare game and the Ilen Rovers man reckons this Cork group is as good as they’ve been.

“I think so, I think it is for a number of reasons. I mean, this team has been going for the last four or five years, we’ve an amount of experience, we’ve got to a good few semi-finals in-a-row, a final last year, so it’s no flash in the pan. We’re certainly getting stronger every year. At the same time we’ve got to go out and do it.”