Change of approach led to success

FERMOY captain Darragh O’Carroll felt that a change in approach helped the team to get over the line this year.

“The last couple of years, we were a bit gung-ho, we were just kind of going at teams,” he said.

“It was working to certain extent but, when we met the better set-up teams, we could never break them down. We kind of took a step back this year and focused more on our tackling, dispossessing lads and breaking them. We’ve a phenomenal workrate, if you look at the team we have 15 athletes and five or six more to come on and we’ve lads who can play football too.

“I think, against Naomh Abán, we might have held the ball for ten or 11 minutes in the second half, when we were under pressure. It’s experience and focusing on game-management.”

In 2016, Fermoy had lost this final to Kiskeam as well as going down against Bandon in equivalent hurling grade. O’Carroll was proud of how the club had bounced back.

“Last year, I suppose we had a bit of a down year, to be honest, the lads had a bit of a hangover,” he said.

“We had been in the hurling final 2014, football 2015 and two finals in 2016, so a lot of lads had a lot of miles in the legs. This year, we said we were going to go at it again, we hadn’t long left and we were going to try to get the club up.

“We’ve a phenomenal underage structure and we felt that, once we could get ourselves up there, we won’t struggle at all up there. You can see what it means with all the support we have out there. It’s some club, it’s some town, it’s unreal.”

Leading the charge was Cork star Tomás Clancy, for whom O’Carroll reserved special praise.

“He’s outstanding,” he said, “he’s a hero to of us.

“He’s the same age as most of us, but we all look up to him. He’s unbelievable, he’ll pull the whole club up on his shoulders and we can all follow him.”

Going in as underdogs was a surprise to some associated with the team, but O’Carroll felt that it was a driving force.

“We’d beaten a lot of good teams,” he said, “we’d beaten Bantry twice, Naomh Abán and Kanturk. We did feel a bit disrespected, you wouldn’t look too much into bookies’ prices but 9/4 in a two-horse race is some price.

“I just think that, when we played Charleville here in the hurling a few years ago, we were written off and Cloughduv in the junior hurling, we were written off, but every time we’ve been written off, we’ve done it.” all