GOLEEN have already had a spectacular year, but they want more.
Their next challenge is a meeting with Ballinhassig in the McCarthy Insurance Group county junior B football championship semi-final in Enniskeane on Sunday at 2pm.
After winning the confined county junior B title as well as the Carbery JBFC, they want the championship treble. Added to that their West Cork junior league division 2 triumph and they are going for a quadruple of trophies.
After comfortably seeing off Deel Rovers by 3-8 to 0-9, captain Padraig Reidy epitomises their confidence right now.
‘We’re training well. After getting over Deel Rovers, we’ve been keeping to our usual training. We’re ready now and hopefully at the weekend we’ll be able to get over the line and progress to the county final, where we want to be. All the lads are in good spirits and everyone is knuckling down. We have one common goal, that is to get to the final,’ he said.
Astonishingly, Goleen have lost just one game in all competitions this year, against Randal Óg in the junior league. Winning is a habit at the moment and they have no intention of slowing down.
‘We sat down as a group at the start of the year and we wanted to win as much as we possibly could. The hunger is just there in the group,’ Reidy explained.
‘We had a couple of years getting to finals before losing out so as long as we keep winning, lads will be motivated to continue on for the season. Spirits are good. We have one target at the moment, beating Ballinhassig and getting to the county final again.’
Ballinhassig are coming into this one off the back of an 0-11 to 0-10 quarter-final win over Newmarket. The current group of Goleen players have never played the Carrigdhoun side. It is another new challenge that they will take on.
‘I’m sure the management knows about them,’ said Reidy.
‘That is the stage in the season you want to be at. We want new challenges, especially going up to junior A next year, we are going to be playing teams that we haven’t played before. We’re relishing it, they are bound to be a good team after some good wins recently. They got over the line against Newmarket so I’m sure the spirits will be high in their camp as well.’
Winning doesn’t just keep their treble dream alive but players are chomping at the bit as well. Every week, the team is excited to go to the next objective.
‘As a team, we have been through some difficult seasons. When you are winning, it’s easy to go back to training, it gets the motivation up,’ he said.
‘As a group, we were saying that we probably won’t have a season like this again so we are trying our utmost to finish out the season well. Lads are just highly motivated this season and it is great to be part of it.
‘We were given the option to go up to junior A after winning the south west junior B last year. The club let it up to the players to see if we wanted to go junior A or if we wanted to continue playing junior B football. The players said they had unfinished business in the grade, the fact we had lost four previous county finals. Thankfully in the summer, we got over that mark. It kind of rectifies our decision to maintain junior B status. Our aim is to get to another county final, we’ll do all we can to get there,’ Reidy concluded.
