‘It’s a learning experience, give them a couple of years’ says Mickey Foley

THIS was a defeat which carried with it the promise of better days to come for Kilgarvan hurling.

Bringing a young side to Tournafula to take on their hosts always had the potential to be a chastening experience for a young side given the way Tournafulla have been going of late and given their own relative lack of competitive action.

Of course it didn’t turn out remotely like that. Yes, the Limerick champions were the better team and sometimes threatened to really cut loose – Tour dominated in the middle third of the pitch – but Kilgarvan, with a young side held their own.

“Liam Twomey’s minor, he’s under 18,” Kilgarvan boss Mickey Foley explains.

“Donal O’Sullivan is under 18, Donal Casey’s under 18, Gearóid Fennessy’s under 19, Seán Casey under 19, Christopher Creedon under 19. They’re very young. It’s a learning experience. Give them a couple of years, you’ve got to be fair with them, they’ve got to get physically strong as well.”

The lack of competitive games is something Foley is keen to see addressed, however.

“There’s no question about that, we don’t have enough matches. We used to be in the Duhallow league before, probably have to get back into that again and you get seven matches.

“You’d have to see how the next couple of years are going to go [as regards getting a South Kerry team back in the County Senior Championship], there are players in both places, three places, but to get it with football that’s the big question.

“It’s the same players [with football], there’s only one fella who doesn’t play hurling and football, all the rest do.”

As for the game itself Foley was pretty satisfied with what he saw.

“We still scored 2-9 that still isn’t bad,” he says.

“The first half now we were close enough. It was the goal in the second half, up until then there was only three or four points in it all day, but when that came it put the gap to eight or nine and then John Mark [Foley] getting injured it wasn’t a help to things.

“We would have been happy if it had finished six or seven points, which it could have if things had gone differently. Ah we’re young and it’s a learning process for them, they need a year or two more and they won’t be too far off it in the next two or three years.

“They [Tournafulla] are a good side, no question about that, they’re all good hurlers and they’re strong, you’d know that they’re that bit stronger than us and closer to seniors than what we were.”

We are happy to report that the injury to John Mark Foley, which looked serious at the time, wasn’t as bad as initially feared. Apart from bruising and swelling, young Foley is in good health.

A final word for Kilgarvan’s stand in goalkeeper, their county board delegate Flor O’Brien who’s fifty years of age.

“Great saves,” Foley enthused. “But he had it naturally there was no teaching him. He’d just has an eye for the ball.”