BY KIERAN McCARTHY
PADRAIG Reidy will never forget the Sunday night in July when the Goleen footballers brought the county confined junior B football championship cup home to their village.
The Goleen footballers had lost FOUR county junior B finals since 2019, but it was fifth time lucky – the mighty men from the Mizen peninsula beat Ballyphehane after extra-time, 0-11 to 0-9, in Páirc Uí Rinn to spark celebrations that lasted for days.
Leading the triumphant Goleen team as they walked through their village was captain fantastic Padraig Reidy, the cup in his hands as the heroes returned home.
‘For the parish, it was so exciting,’ explained Reidy, who picked up a West Cork Sports Star monthly award at the Celtic Ross Hotel in Rosscarbery, in recognition of Goleen’s county success.
‘The supporters are amazing, they travel the length and breadth of the country for a challenge match, not to mind a county final!
‘To share that moment with your local parish, all the people you’ve grown up with, all the people that are there to support you week-in and week-out … that was a special moment to be able to walk back into Goleen with the county trophy finally. It’s a memory that will stay with me.’
He added: ‘You’d struggle to go the length and breadth of the country and find a club as close-knit as Goleen. That sense of community is massive for a place like Goleen.’
Friends on and off the pitch, this is a tight Goleen group and their sense of togetherness is one of the reasons they decided against moving up to junior A for 2024, and instead to remain in the junior B grade. Together, they felt there was unfinished business at junior B level, with those four county final losses hard to shake. Last December, just days after losing the fourth county junior B final, to Douglas, Goleen footballers made a brave decision: we’re staying junior B.
Padraig Reidy with his West Cork Sports Star award.
‘We won the West Cork junior B divisional championship last year and that gave us the option of going up to junior A. But we had lost four county finals in as many years so we felt we had unfinished business in the grade,’ explained Reidy, who works as a teacher at St Brogan's College, Bandon.
‘We had an online meeting – and, in fairness, the club left it completely up to the players – a couple of days after losing the county final, and we felt we had unfinished business and that in a couple of years time we would be ruing the fact that we hadn’t won a county. We said we’d give it one good lash, do a good pre-season, use the league as a springboard because we were in Division 2 with a lot of junior A teams, and thankfully it all worked out, at the fifth time of asking.’
There are several pieces to the Goleen jigsaw, and two of those can be traced to Bantry – manager Shane O’Neill (son of Cork and Bantry great Terry) and Donal McGrath, two Bantry men, took over the reins in the summer of 2023. Their impact has been seismic.
‘Last July a new management team came into place and we instantly won the West Cork championship with them,’ Reidy explains.
‘The fact that this year they were able to implement a full pre-season and have a full league campaign and implement different strategies and tactics, it definitely brought players on a lot. It’s frightening the improvement I’ve seen in some players, and the structure the management has put in place has massively improved players.
‘Also, that composure, we had been to Páirc Ui Rinn four times previously, so we took this county final as another game, we knew what the day was all about.
‘Composure and the management played a massive part in the county final win.’
Reidy’s instant reaction at the final whistle that Sunday evening in July was relief. They’d done it. Goleen footballers backed themselves, and it paid off. Now they have the county title, and a West Cork Sports Star monthly award to keep it company. And there could be more to come – defending champions Goleen are through to the knockout stage of the Carbery junior B championship off the back of wins against Muintir Bháire and St James that saw them top the group with a scoring difference of +38. More success here could open the door to the interdivisional county junior B championship. They’re not finished yet.
