A Rebel school of thought
O’MAHONY FINDS TALENT IN CORK RUGBY NURSERY
DONAL O’MAHONY isn’t one to shy away from a challenge. Take, for example, the way he took a look around the halls of one of the country’s best-known rugby schools and decided he could mould a few decent hurlers into shape.
Fast forward a few years, and the current Cork senior hurling panel contains three past pupils of the Christian Brothers College (Robbie O’Flynn, Billy Hennessy and Michael O’Halloran), with three more lining out for the county’s Under 21s and another handful involved with the minors.
‘I introduced hurling there a couple of years ago,’ explains O’Mahony, who is deputy principal at the school.
‘We started from a low ebb, you’d go up to the field and we’d only have a couple of fellas, and progressed to where we got to a Harty Cup semi-final last year. Ardscoil Rís beat us by three points and went on and won the cup, so we are progressing very nicely and have fellas banging down the doors to play hurling.’
Given his eye for talent, O’Mahony is naturally suited to his role as a selector in John Meyler’s backroom team.
This weekend, the challenge facing the Rebels is a young, hungry Limerick team who have already accounted for Tipperary, Waterford and Kilkenny on their route to Sunday’s All-Ireland semi-final, while also drawing with Cork in their Munster Championship round-robin meeting despite having Aaron Gillane sent-off in the first half.
As Munster champions, Cork have had four weeks off in the build-up to the Croke Park clash, two more than Limerick.
And, while the Treaty may benefit from that extra momentum going into the game, O’Mahony points to how Cork have learned to mix up their gameplan when necessary, a development that could be key against John Kiely’s energetic team.
‘The idea of coaching is that you look at what is ahead of you and come up with a gameplan to suit what is ahead, and not take a template and put it on a team,’ he explains.
‘We don’t have the physicality other teams do, so we can’t play a game that is based on physicality and we play with a gameplan that suits the players we have in front of us. ‘Limerick have a mix. They have a very physical half-forward line and physical centre back and then they have key men like Graeme Mulcahy and fellas like that so the first battle to be won is the terms the game is played on. ‘Looking at the football game between Kerry and Galway (two weeks ago), Galway seemed to play the game on their terms and they won, so it’s a key battle, the terms the game is played on,’ he adds. Equally important has been keeping this Cork team hungry for silverware. Following last year’s Munster Championship win, SPORTSFILE their first in three years, when Meyler succeeded Kieran Kingston last October one of his biggest tasks was ensuring complacency didn’t set in.
With their Munster crown successfully defended, this weekend will again test how much Cork want to end their 13-year All-Ireland title drought as Meyler looks to take this team to the next level.
‘Coming in on the back of a successful year last year was a challenge for both the squad and the management, to create a new environment to push the thing on,’ O’Mahony continues.
‘We concentrated on a few things, one was character. We wanted to build the character of the team. We felt it was difficult year ahead and we wanted strong characters in the squad to deal with those situations and that’s what transpired.
‘Eight points down in a Munster final and (we) came back and won it, nine points ahead against Tipp, they drew us in but we still pulled a result out of it.
‘The character of the team has been very impressive and there have been a lot of curve balls thrown at us, and we have gotten to an All-Ireland semi-final.
‘Another key thing about the group this year is learning, it’s a learning environment, we learned from the positives and the negatives so, if we don’t win the All Ireland semi-final it’s not a write-off of a year, but it is a learning curve.
‘It takes learnings to win an All-Ireland final. We learned from last year’s semi-final (defeat by Waterford) and hopefully we can apply that this year, but it won’t be easy.’
You suspect that O’Mahony wouldn’t want it any other way.