Premier JFC final: Alan McCarthy and St Finbarr's aiming to atone for last season

LAST season St Finbarr’s second team and Kilmurry were two grades apart, but this Saturday they meet on an even keel in the Bon Secours Hospital Premier JFC final in Páirc Uí Chaoimh at 3pm.

The fact St Finbarr’s got relegated from the intermediate A grade in 2022 was extremely unfortunate. Due to the restructuring of the grades, teams that finished bottom of the championship group stages in intermediate A last season would move down and the Barrs finished joint bottom with Ballinora and Dromtarriffe with scoring difference proving the Barrs downfall by just two points. Fine margins.

On the other side, Kilmurry romped to the Muskerry and county JAFC titles so both teams came into the new premier junior grade in contrasting moods, but for St Finbarr’s captain Alan McCarthy, he isn’t surprised by how well his team have done so far in 2023.

“Look, getting relegated last season wasn’t nice, we had designs of doing well in the intermediate A grade in 2022,” says the 25-year-old.

“Given it’s our second team it’s very hard to know who you will have from one game to the next. You could lose players to the first team and so on. A new management team led by Eddie Kelly came in at the start of this campaign and the mantra was just game by game, I know it’s a cliché that is used a lot, but it has worked for us to date. The management has brought a freshness to the set-up, a new pair of eyes and it has helped us. There are probably a lot of people surprised by our run to the final, but we wanted to make up for what happened last year. It did hurt getting relegated.” 

The odds were stacked against St Finbarr’s when they were drawn with two of the fancied teams in the championship group stages in the shape of Cobh and Buttevant, and add in a city derby with St Michael’s second team and it was a challenging group. But, to win all three matches and book a direct route to the semi-finals was a fair achievement.

“It helped that people were writing us off, “ says the sticky defender.

“But to be fair you could see the logic in it as we were in a difficult group. Beating Cobh the first day out gave us serious momentum and belief, we won by a point. We then beat St Michael’s by two points, and as it turned out, the last group game against a strong Buttevant side was basically winner takes all. We won 3-9 to 1-10 I think it was, and that was despite losing three players in the second-half through injuries.

“We are the second team in the club so it’s always going to be a challenge, but as I said at the start, it really has all been about the next game and not worrying about anything else. Maybe we took the eye off the ball last season, but we certainly haven’t done that in this campaign.” 

Normally as second teams progress deeper into the championship, their side gets weaker depending on how well their first team is doing. In the Barrs case in 2023, it has actually been the opposite, the team has got stronger helped by players returning from abroad, injuries clearing up and so on and the city side recorded a big scalp against Urhan in the semi-final winning on a scoreline of 0-10 to 0-8 played in the heart of West Cork.

“Urhan was always going to be a difficult game especially playing them in Rossmore. They brought a huge following to the game, but we managed the match well, and even though we won by just two points, we felt in control of the game. The experience of Denis O’Brien and Michael Shields helped us cross the line. Ciarán Doolan came off the bench as well and made a difference. I say it was the first time this season we had a big panel to pick from.” 

So, it all comes down to Saturday, Kilmurry will be hot favourites, but it’s something that won't bother McCarthy and the Barrs one bit.

“Kilmurry are a quality side, make no mistake about it. We have been underdogs in nearly every game this season, so we will just go out and focus on ourselves.”