YET another super weekend of football as the county final pairings were decided and the premier senior football relegation play-off finally went ahead. With my Carbery Rangers hat on for a moment, there was huge relief around Ross after securing premier senior status for 2025 with a 1-11 to 2-6 victory over Éire Óg.
After relegation from Division 1 of the county league, a second demotion would have been hard to swallow. Thankfully, a strong second-half showing gave Ross enough of a cushion to render a late, late Colm O’Callaghan goal a heart-stopping consolation effort. Luckily for those of us with a nervous disposition, the final whistle sounded immediately on the kick-out.
Paul Hodnett’s goal a few minutes earlier was the key score for Ross, and he will dine out on that one for a few weeks. Improvement is needed to ensure Carbery Rangers aren’t in a similar position again next year, but that is for another day.
Truth be told, outside of the top three and perhaps improving Clonakilty and Ballincollig sides, any team could find themselves in a similar predicament. You could throw a blanket over more than half of the teams at premier senior and even the better senior A teams, and there wouldn’t be much between any of them. Mallow, for example, contested the relegation decider just last year before their run to this year’s semi-final.
That run was brought to a shuddering halt on Sunday as a Nemo Rangers team that never had to get out of third gear qualified for yet another county final, beating Mallow 2-11 to 1-5. There are towns and villages across the country where the world would stop just for the smell of a county final, particularly at the highest level of club football. However it is par for the course for the Trabeg side. Nemo’s semi-final record is incredible, 19 times since 1998 in the penultimate stage and only two defeats both to Ballincollig in 2014 and 2016. Sandwiched in between those, Carbery Rangers came very close to being the only other side to deny them at the same stage, when only a slow start and a controversial late non-penalty call saw them hang on as we battered on the door in the second half. Very much one of the ‘what could have beens’!
While I lament the missed opportunities, Nemo march on to yet another final against another team with another team not short of experience of the big day in Cork football.
Castlehaven sharpshooter Brian Hurley scored 0-11 in the win against St Finbarr's. (Photo: George Hatchell)
Castlehaven were impressive yet again in handling their old foes, the Barrs, with a degree of comfort. Brian Hurley’s incredible first-half exhibition of forward play gave the Haven a four-point cushion at half-time that they would still have when the final whistle blew, 0-18 to 0-14. The Barrs huffed and puffed, but poor execution in the final third saw them spurn opportunities for the goal it always looked like they needed to ignite their challenge.
A misplaced pass to an unmarked Johnathan Wiggington-Barrett just before half-time, a Steven Sherlock effort that went high and wide off the post and a great block from Johnny O’Regan as the dangerous Brian Hayes went for goal late on were key moments where the Barrs couldn’t capitalise. The Haven defence, marshalled by Mark Collins, defended stoutly and Jack Cahalane and Cathal Maguire did most to support Brian Hurley in the second half as they pilfered enough scores on the counter-attack to keep the Barrs at arm’s length.
Collins, the Hurleys, the Maguires and the Cahalanes are all senior inter-county calibre players, and a supporting cast that know how to do their jobs make this Castlehaven side seriously formidable. I would have considered comparisons to the great Haven team of the 90s premature and a bit of a stretch previously, but this team is starting to get close. Should they see off Nemo on Sunday week, that comparison will start to look ever more reasonable. They will be favourites, but Nemo fear no one and won’t hand anything to them. We hope for a better spectacle than last year, and I think it will be.
On Saturday in the senior A championship, I’ll allow myself a little not so humble brag as my prediction of penalties in the Carrigaline v Kanturk game came to pass, with outfield substitute Ryan Delaney taking over in goal for the penalty shoot-out and saving four Kanturk penalties, while also converting one himself as Carrigaline progressed to the final. Possibly, it was right that they did too having seen a late two-point lead slip, as three minutes of injury time for a ten-minute period of extra time was more than generous.
The second semi-final saw disappointment for the Dohenys as a very poor start and a second-half red card just when they had dragged themselves back into contention put paid to their chances against Knocknagree. Dohenys will be disappointed, but credit to Knocknagree and John Fintan Daly for their progress over the past few seasons. They have now charted a path from the lower echelons of Cork club football to the cusp of promotion to the very top. It will be a classic battle between a big suburban town and tiny rural parish in the final, and it should make for an exciting game.
At premier intermediate, Aghabullogue are through to another county final after winning the lower grade last year, where they will face Kilshannig who put a stop to Uibh Laoire’s gallop, winning by a goal after extra-time after another great tussle. With Aghabullogue surviving by just a point against Naomh Abán, the closeness of the weekend’s games shows once more just how effective the new gradings in Cork club action have been in finding the right levels for teams across the county in both codes.
There was a single point between the teams in both intermediate A semi-finals also and we were deprived of a West Cork-Beara derby as Gabriel Rangers and Adrigole both came out on the wrong side of 1-9 to 0-11 results. Adrigole, in particular, will have cause for immense regret having let a four-point lead slip in the final minutes. Devastation for the men from the west. There will be the most local of derbies in the premier junior as Kilmurry and their parish neighbours Canovee will face off. There will be no quarter asked or given in that game, and it all adds up to a mouth-watering weekend of football over the bank holiday weekend.
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This weekend will see the first public display of the proposed new rules from the Football Review Committee as the previously defunct Railway Cup competition is revived for televised trial games under the bright lights of Cork Park.
It will make for an interesting spectacle, at least, as some of the best players in the country get to exhibit their skills, with no prospect of facing 15 opponents parked behind the 45.
The Railway Cup games were never noted for being overly competitive or indeed negative so the rules may not get the stress test they very much need before so many alterations are adopted. Nonetheless, even though I’ve seen plenty of good football in Cork club games in recent times, pictures from Derry and Clare this weekend prove the need for adjustments to what is still a great game at its core.
I don’t have the space to go through the nitty-gritty of each proposed rule change this week, but I look forward to watching what will pan out. Basketball (the shot clock and the three-point arc) and rugby (changes at the breakdown and the 50/22 rule) are two sports where material changes have been made at times to improve the spectacle and moves to do the same for Gaelic Football are to be applauded.
I’m not convinced that all will be successes, but I wouldn’t mind being proved wrong. It gets tiresome listening to so much complaining about the game we love, and I hope this is the start of the road to unleashing the full potential of the sport. We can but hope.
