BY KIERAN McCARTHY
GARNISH football manager Cormac O’Neill left Allihies at 12 noon on Saturday for their Confined Junior B Football Championship opener against Shanballymore played in Ballinlough– and he didn’t get home until after nine o’clock that night.
Garnish manager Cormac O'Neill.
‘It takes two and a quarter hours to travel from Allihies to Ballinlough, and that’s one way,’ O’Neill explains.
‘That’s four and a half hours travelling to and from the game alone.
‘If this was a one-off thing, you’d say fair enough and move on, but this is an ongoing issue.’
O’Neill took over as Garnish manager ahead of the 2023 season, and they have played six championship games since (five last season, one this year), and he has calculated that the Beara club is being asked to travel far greater distances to play games than their opposition.
‘On average we are being asked to travel one hour and 40 minutes one way. That compares to 49 minutes on average for the opposition. That’s an extra 50 minutes one way, that adds up,’ O’Neill stresses.
‘I feel that the fixture makers must be lumping all the Beara clubs in together, but we’re 50 minutes from Glengarriff. We’re the most western club in the peninsula and it’s like we are being penalised for our location.’
Take last Saturday’s championship opener against Shanballymore, for example. This was originally scheduled for Ballyvourney, but Garnish learned on the Thursday afternoon before the game it was being switched to Ballinlough in Cork city, which is a four and a half hour round trip from Allihies. Shanballymore to Ballinlough takes 54 minutes, according to Google Maps,
The game was moved from Ballyvourney as it clashed with Naomh Abán’s home county league tie against Glanmire. Garnish did contact the county board to highlight the ‘four and a half hour round-trip for our supporters and home-based players’ and asked for a more ‘equitable’ venue for both teams, highlighting that ‘somewhere on the west side of the city would be more manageable for people travelling’.
The county board responded that while they worked ‘tirelessly’ to get a venue, Ballinlough was the ‘only venue available’.
‘I feel we’re being very hard done by in the distances we are being asked to travel for games,’ O’Neill says.
Given the venue in the city and the 5pm throw-in on Saturday, O’Neill counted five Garnish supporters at the game, and they were all relatives of players. He also highlighted how a Dublin-based Garnish footballer, Hugh O’Sullivan, left the capital 15 minutes before the home-based players and they all arrived at Ballinlough at the same time.
‘Whoever is fixing the games in Páirc Uí Chaoimh needs to take out Google Maps and have a look where Allihies is because that’s where the bulk of our players are coming from,’ the Garnish boss says.
‘This isn’t about sour grapes or anything, because we have won three and lost three of these six championship games, and in the games we lost we were beaten fair and square, but this is more about fairness for the club and our home-based players, which makes up the majority of the squad.
‘Everyone has Google Maps so everyone should know where every club is, and the onus is on the county board to make this fair. We played Lismire in the Páirc Uí Chaoimh 4G pitch in a county quarter-final last year; that was two and a quarter hours one-way for us. For Lismire, it’s just over an hour.
‘Another example, and it’s being repeated this year it seems, is our championship game with Clann na nGael – we have to travel one hour and five minutes to Bantry to play, while they are less than 20 minutes away. You are asking one club to travel three times the distance of the other club. It takes us 20 minutes to get from Allihies to Castletownbere. It was originally fixed for Glengarriff this year, which is better than Bantry in terms of travel, but it has been moved back to Bantry. What about Adrigole?’
The six championship games Garnish footballers have played since the start of 2023, with the travel times of both teams, are:
• 2023 Confined JBFC, Garnish (one hour eight minutes) v Clann na nGael (19 minutes) in Bantry.
• 2023 Confined JBFC, Garnish (one hour 43 minutes) v Araglen (one hour 20 minutes) in Enniskeane.
• 2023 Confined JBFC, Garnish (one hour 20 minutes) v St Oliver Plunkett’s (42 minutes) in Aughaville.
• 2023 Cork JBFC, Garnish (one hour 33 minutes) v Goleen (38 minutes) in Skibbereen.
• 2023 Cork JBFC, Garnish (two hours 13 minutes) v Lismire (one hour seven minutes) in Páirc Uí Chaoimh 4G.
• 2024 Confined JBFC, Garnish (two hours 15 minutes) v Shanballymore (54 minutes) in Ballinlough.
‘We are not looking for special treatment but to be fair,’ says O’Neill. Garnish, who travelled with only 17 players, defeated Shanballymore 0-11 to 0-7 last weekend, and their next game against Clann na nGael is fixed for Bantry on Saturday, May 25th, for 5pm.
