Looney still calling

Brian Looney is hoping to captain Dr Crokes to county SFC glory for the second time, nine years after the first

Is it nice to be captain for both the start (2010) and end of the decade?

“I haven’t thought about it in that way, but it is a great honour to be bestowed upon you, especially in a team that is full of great leaders. The captaincy doesn’t change my approach to games. That win in 2010 was the ‘monkey off our back’ after trying so hard in the late Noughties. South Kerry were our big obstacle at the time, so it was great to get over that hurdle.”

What’s the secret to sustaining success since?

“We don’t tend to look back too much on what we have achieved when we are in the thick of it because as the years progress, I think it gets harder and harder to win. We just take it game by game and focus on the present. The young players that have come through have kept us at the top since the All-Ireland win two years ago. If you look at any great team like Dublin, there are those one or two young players that keep coming through each year that keeps driving on the older fellas and creating a different dynamic. It’s important that they keep coming through and get the opportunities to do so as well. Generally, teams get them in peaks and trots, but the ‘young’ lads are a big part of our success I feel.”

How has the team dealt with the All-Ireland Club Final defeat?

“It was probably a bit of being critical of our performance while having to take our hats off to Corofin at the same time for how well they played that day. Corofin probably played as well as they did that day as 12 months earlier against Nemo in the 2018 final. If you want to improve on a day like that though you must be able to constructively criticise yourself when you look back on it. Unfortunately, that day we just never got going. We gave them the platform to play as well as they did. I’m not saying if we had played better that it would have changed the result, but we certainly would have been far more competitive. You must learn from defeats because if you don’t then you are bound to repeat the same mistakes another day. Individually and collectively we looked at our performance that day and sought to make improvements from there. We aren’t dwelling too much on it now six months later because it’s not a good sign if you are.”

Has the team evolved the way they would like?

“I think we have and given ourselves a good platform at that (evolving). We haven’t totally overhauled our style of play but worked on more subtle things like positioning. You will go stale if you play the same way over and over again. As they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I think the way we have played so far in the competition has served us well and thankfully we are now in a county final with another big day to look forward to.”

Has the county championship schedule been a problem?

“Ideally you would prefer not to have a replay especially as they