Blackrock v St Finbarr's: Dual ace Jamie Burns targets hurling success
St Finbarr's dual player Jamie Burns. Picture: Eddie O'Hare
WHILE Jamie Burns is the holder of two county SFC medals, so far his St Finbarr’s hurling career has yet to yield any silverware, but he is hopeful that that can change on Sunday.
The Barrs compete in the Co-op SuperStores Cork Premier SHC final for the first time in 29 years as they take on Blackrock in Páirc Uí Chaoimh (4pm).
Thirty-year-old first played senior hurling in 2009 and the period since has encompassed ups and downs for the Togher club, featuring dalliances with relegation as well as appearances in the latter stages.
Having not got out of their group in 2020 or 2021, this year was initially about righting that wrong.
“Every club has a transition period,” says Burns.
“Sometimes you just have to hang in there and keep training away and bring through the young fellas and make small progress every year. You can see over the last three or four years, we have been making that little bit of progress.
“Last year, we probably should have got out of the group but didn’t. This year, we kept it very simple. We weren’t talking about county finals, it was about getting out of the group, and we reassess from there.”
“I had a few of them in there and you could see the talent was coming through,” he says.
“You could see them coming through and there was a lot of exciting forwards. They went on to contribute to the minor win two years ago.
“Good players can play on any team. But these lads, in fairness, have been on Cork development panels for four years so they have been exposed to high-quality training. It was something we were conscious of that as a collective and as a team, we haven’t played much together.”
Sunday’s game will be a repeat of the group game between the clubs, which the Barrs won as they learned to integrate on the job.
“When we played Charleville, that was the first time that team had ever played together and we were missing one or two,” Burns says.
“When we played Blackrock, that was the first time that team had ever played together. There is a process there. No matter how good individuals are, it does take a while to implement tactics and everything management are trying to get across.
“It is definitely something we were conscious of that we needed to be a little bit patient. You have to recognize that it will take time to gel, that is why our goal was to get out of the group. It wasn’t even to top the group, it was just get out of the group.”
After Sunday, the focus of Burns and quite a few of his team-mates will turn to the senior football final, in which the Barrs face Nemo Rangers. While there is some talk of the double, it has not been allowed to become a distraction within the camp.
“It doesn’t mean a while pile at the moment,” he says.
“People were asking me last week, what’s it like to be in the hurling final. I was saying I didn’t really get a chance to think about it because I had the football semi-final. Then people were saying after that, the double, but I was saying you have to focus on the hurling. It is all about mindset at the end of the day.
“All I can think about is the next challenge.
“It is something as a team that we addressed so that we could put it to bed and not talk about it because it is not worth talking about. If you were to be getting excited about something like that, it is just wasting energy.
“We are not in a position to get a tiny bit arrogant or cocky when it comes to a double because we have won nothing in hurling. We have no medals. We’d be very grounded that way. We wouldn’t be getting ahead of ourselves. We have waited so long to get to a final, never mind win one, it is not worth thinking about.”
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