Kilcoo facing their toughest battle in bid to break record
LATE last October, Kilcoo manager Paul McIver fetched up at a coaching clinic in Kilkeel hosted by Carlow trainer Steven Poacher, where Tyrone’s Peter Donnelly took a session on transition play.
Afterwards, McIver was one of a few panellists in a top-table discussion in front of interested coaches from all over Ulster and further afield.
Naturally, a lot of them were keen to find out what the secret sauce is in Kilcoo. McIver gave them a few ingredients without revealing all the herbs and spices.
His job, he maintained, was gloriously simple. When he arrived at training, his backroom team had the pitch decorated with cones for the drills they would run through.
During the day, two teams would be picked out of who was available. There was never less than 30 and half of them would be presented with a white jersey, the others with black jerseys.
The players took care of all the personal stuff; girlfriend issues and so on. The club itself had their own kit man and the backroom was staffed with the likes of Dr Ciaran Kearney, a Behavioural Scientist who might also be described as their sports psychologist, along with all the medical staff and masseurs they would ever need.
He outlaid a set-up that, frankly, was more comprehensive and well-resourced than a great deal of inter-county teams. It is that environment that has produced six consecutive Down county titles.
Last year’s win was 100 years from their first Championship. They were just after equalling Burren’s run from 1983 to ‘88 with six Championships in a row.
“Every night you go down to our field, you can’t even get parked in the car park there are that many people down,” said captain Darragh O’Hanlon.
But as soon as one is won, thoughts turn to the next year. How about going one better than Burren, making yourselves the greatest-ever team in Down with seven consecutive Frank O’Hare Cups?
“It would be brilliant next year to beat it!” beams O’Hanlon. “But next year is a long, long way away.”
Well, it’s just one sleep away now. And would you believe it, Burren stand in their way once again, for the fourth attempt at halting this gallop.
But, they are vulnerable. O’Hanlon is joined by others such as goalkeeper Stevie Kane and last year’s county final man of the match, Dylan Ward, as long-term injury absentees.
Ryan Johnston is struggling. So too is Conor Laverty along with Aidan and Aaron Branagan.
“It doesn’t last forever,” says Benny Coulter (inset on main pic) who was the main man in the Mayobridge side that helped themselves to seven county ti- tles in eight years in the decade previous.
“You probably think that you are going to dominate Down football for a long time, you think it is never going to come to an end and then — bang — it’s gone. There is another team better.”
Then, there are other forces at play.
In 2003, The Loup came from nowhere to win a Derry and Ulster title. They were the last of the outliers. Since then the Seamus McFerran Cup has been the preserve of Crossmaglen Rangers who came back in 2004 to win seven titles in nine seasons. St Gall’s had established total supremacy in Antrim.
Ballinderry put together three consecutive titles in Derry before swooping for Ulster in 2013 and then came the Slaughtneil takeover of almost everything.
In that period, Kilcoo have lost two Ulster finals, to Cross and Slaughtneil. That record is identical to where Colm Bradley (below) and the Enniskillen Gaels team were when they failed to collect their seventh county title in 2004. Their failings in Ulster, including final defeats to Cross in 1999 and Errigal Ciaran in 2002, spread a virus of self-doubt through the team.
“I think what happens to you is that after you win county title after county title after county title, it’s not as if they mean less to you, but when you are not making the breakthrough in Ulster you start to get an anxiety over it,” reflects Bradley, who was a mainstay of those teams.
“There was never a sense that you weren’t good enough, that never was there. Genuinely.
“But as the years went on, I think an anxiety came that ‘look, we need to make this breakthrough. We need to win this’. We were just never able to relax then. Those finals, what was in it, three points over two games? So even though Errigal were the better team, we still could have won that. The Cross game, we definitely should have won that.”
He adds: “As the years went by, the sense of not winning Ulster sort of — I won’t say it tarnishes the Championship success, but there is a bit of a bitter taste there. When you are asked if you could have one game back what would it be, it would be one of those two finals, more so than the county games you played.”
During the past number of years, the lack of an Ulster title nestled in the Mournes has been a dull ache.
In their club gym, images of Crossmaglen success were stuck onthewalls.Theywereputthere as a constant reminder of what they aspired to.
As the handover from Jim McCorry to Paul McIver occurred, the target remained the same.
No matter how many ‘take it one game at a time’ interviews that you read, don’t believe it for a second. And the first step on that road begins tomorrow at 4pm in Newry against Burren.
History awaits. But it is a heavy hand on their shoulder, a serious burden to carry for a ravaged team. If they win, it would be possibly the greatest one ever.