Kiely: The culture of sport in UCC is fantastic

UCC are on course for a treble of titles in the Sigerson, Collingwood and Fitzgibbon Cups, and team captain Cian Kiely believes sport is the culture of the college.

Last night, under the guidance of Billy Morgan, UCC saw off St Mary’s from Belfast to land a third Sigerson Cup in the modern era. They also recently captured the Collingwood crown in soccer, and their second team are actually in the Harding Cup final this afternoon.

This Saturday their hurlers face Mary I in the Fitzgibbon Cup final, while the camogie team were recently beaten in the Ashbourne Cup decider by UL.

“The secret behind UCC is UCC. That’s it like it’s just UCC’s culture of sport. It’s fantastic,” said Ballincollig club man Kiely, whose older brother Seán was previously a mainstay of the UCC team.

“I mean, it’s fantastic for the soccer team. Fantastic win for them. For us, I think it was amazing to get the win you saw the panel. We have strength throughout the whole team.

“There’s still lads there who came on with two or three minutes to go and usually that’s a very hard thing to do in a high-intensity game.

“I’m not sure of the exact numbers, but there are boys who came off the bench who were hitting to have some boost for the team,” Kiely said.

Kiely believes that participation levels in the college are high across a range of sports.

“UCC is such a huge college so it’s so widely spread out. There’s huge participation in all sports.

“GAA would be high in UCC and it’s fantastic that we can get the numbers. Once we get a huge strong panel then it’s fantastic, you can swap lads in and out,” he said.

Kiely was also full of praise for the mix of counties represented within the UCC camp.

“It’s fantastic to mix. I’d say if you watched it from the outside, different players from different counties bring a lot of different things to the game,” Kiely added.