Division 1 league football stood to Cill na Martra in dogged first-round victory

IT was a memorable win for Cill na Marta in Macroom on Sunday when they got the better of fellow Muskerry team Éire Óg, 1-9 to 0-8, in the opening round of the Cork Premier intermediate football championship.

Kevin O’Sullivan guided them to intermediate success last year, and the same manager is leading the way this year. Needless to say, he was thrilled with the victory.

“We are delighted, our first time up in the premier grade and to get a win against Éire Óg is fantastic for us.

“We have been trying to get up here for the last 14 or15 years and we are finally here. We played very well today, we brought on three or four subs as well, who played their part.

“We started really well. Today was a big deal for us and the lads were up for it, they were in the zone. The scoreboard definitely didn’t reflect our dominance at half-time.

“We had two goal chances, but their goalkeeper made a couple of good saves.

“They got a few frees at the end of the first half and we only went in a point up.

“That was disappointing from our point of view.

“But we knew we had to keep working hard. Just because we left them back into it didn’t mean we weren’t going to dominate the second half.

“We base everything on work-rate. If we have to go through the hands and go short, we can do that; if we have to go long, we can do that as well.

“When you have players like Michael Desmond and Dan Dineen who can kick it long or short, you have options.

“We didn’t really care coming out in the second half against the wind. The one thing we did want to do was start the second-half quick.

“To be fair to Michael Desmond, we put him back inside into the full-forward line.

“He won some great ball. We got a couple of scores to put a small bit of daylight between us. We felt if Éire Óg got a goal or the first few scores in the second half, all of a sudden then you are chasing the game. Momentum is everything in this game and if they got in front of us at all, a team like Éire Óg will punish you with players like Daniel Goulding.”

Cill na Marta are playing Division 1 league this year.

“That is massive for us. The only thing is every day we go out we have to have everyone.

“We got a bit of a tanking off the Barrs one of the days and spirits were low after it, we were missing four players.

“We were missing two today. Anthony Cooney and Tadhg Corkery who picked up a serious facial injury training with Cork. When you are missing that calibre of players it is not easy replace them.

“Most nights we would have 35/36 training. We have 40 on the panel. It is a seamless thing. If a fella gets injured another fella comes in and we try and play the same system all the time.”