Cian knows Cuala may be about to meet their match
CIAN O’CALLAGHAN won’t necessarily realise it but talking up AIB All-Ireland club final opponents Na Piarsaigh is a lot like talking up his own team. Held up against each other, there isn’t a whole lot of difference between hurling’s two heavyweight clubs and the same argument for one side to win tomorrow can just as easily be applied to the other. Like Na Piarsaigh in Munster, who have won four of the last seven provincial titles, Cuala are now the dominant force in Leinster, contesting the last three finals and winning the last two. Both are city outfits, laced with some one-off talents, both play an attractive style that yields lots of goals and both enjoy high representation on their respective county squads. The clearest tie that binds, of course, is their maiden All-Ireland wins in the last two years. Cuala won their first 12 months ago and return to Croke Park as holders while Na Piarsaigh made their breakthrough a year earlier in 2016. The bookmakers make Na Piarsaigh slight favourites this time, their record of never experiencing defeat in the Munster championship perhaps just giving them the edge. ‘Every year they’ve gotten out of Limerick they’ve gone on to win Munster, which is kind of frightening,’ said Cuala and Dublin defender O’Callaghan. ‘It shows the calibre of everything going on there, the players, the management, the training, the ethos of what the club is about. ‘We do expect them to be really strong. With ourselves, we’ve been lucky that we’ve got things right in the last three years after a long barren stretch. But we want to keep going and to make sure things keep going well in the next few years.’ Another common thread between the finalists is that they both struggled to regain a spark after winning their All-Irelands. Na Piarsaigh didn’t even make it out of their group when they returned to local championship action after the 2016 triumph. Cuala, obviously, fared better after last year’s win though they did lose to Ballyboden St Enda’s in their first game as All-Ireland, Leinster and Dublin champions before regaining their mojo through summer and autumn. ‘It definitely does take a bit of time afterwards,’ said O’Callaghan. ‘You’re in a bubble for the five weeks leading up to it. And for the last two or three days before the final, it gets a bit surreal. ‘It’s really only two or three weeks later that it sinks in that you’re All-Ireland champions. Then it’s time to go and park it and do it all over again. ‘That’s the approach that we’ve taken. We sat down at the start of the year and said, “Fair enough,
we were All-Ireland champions last year. But that’s in the past. What are we going to do in our next match?’’ It’s worked for the most part for Cuala, who edged a few tight tussles in the Dublin championship before steaming through Leinster again and taking out Liam Mellows with ease in the All-Ireland semi-finals. Still the Dalkey outfit are underdogs though O’Callaghan — older brother of dual star Con, who will be a focal point of their attack tomorrow — says they are driven to succeed. ‘Our hunger is massive this year,’ he said. ‘It’s just as big, if not bigger than last year. You don’t want to be known as the team that won a flukey All-Ireland, or a flukey anything. Having said that, I’m sure Na Piarsaigh want it as much as we do. It comes down to simple decisions on the day and making the right ones.’ Cian’s sibling, Con, has been making a lot of those good decisions for a long time now. He has played 25 major games over the last 13 months and won 24 of them, scoring at least a point in them all. That has led to eight different trophies being annexed in that period, the most recent of which was the Sigerson Cup with UCD last month. ‘Con’s very much his own man, he doesn’t need to bounce ideas off me,’ said Cian of his All-Star brother. ‘He’s wiser than I am.’