Cork club hurling: Jack McKay looks back over his predictions
Darren Browne and Lorcan McLoughlin of Kanturk, Patrick Horgan of Glen Rovers. Picture: Jim Coughlan.
AT the start of the season, I took a shot at predicting how this year’s Cork Premier Senior Hurling Championship would unfold, and to label my predictions a disaster would be an understatement.
On reflection, I was certainly way off, but it is a hit-and-miss game. The beauty of the current format makes Cork hurling, and football for that matter, even more unpredictable.
Anything can happen, and this year’s PSHC has been a prime example of just how hard it is to predict these competitions.
I could not have got this one more wrong, but then again, at the start of the season, who would have known?
I went with Glen Rovers as my pick for this year’s title, and instead, they were relegated, stunning not just Cork, but the entire country in the process.
While it proved to be an awful prediction, I don’t think anyone saw their relegation coming before a ball was pucked. No doubt they’ll be back within a few years but seeing Glen Rovers go down a grade was shocking.
The other two names I mentioned as top contenders were St Finbarr’s and Sarsfields, and with the latter winning outright, I can say that apart from Glen going down, I wasn’t too far off.
Still though, I predicted that one of Midleton and Blackrock would go out in the group, and both made it to the knockouts.
I, like many others, went with Bishopstown to be relegated. I wasn’t that far off.
Yes, they avoided the playoff after their incredible two-point win over the Glen, but had they lost that one, I couldn’t have seen them beating Kanturk.
They had shown all year long both in the league and championship that they would struggle to stay up, and when star man Conor Hegarty was absent for the game against Blackrock, they lost by 29 points.
To be fair though, they did enough to stay up with the win over Glen, and you can’t say they didn’t deserve it.
For the dark horse I went with Fr O’Neill’s, and it certainly wasn’t that bad a call. While they didn’t when any games, they went toe-to-toe with Charleville and Erin’s Own, drawing with both clubs.
Their one loss was against Douglas, and a goal was all that separated the teams. They were certainly unfortunate not to make it to a quarter final, so this is looking like the only decent prediction I’ve made this year.
In hindsight, the dark horse title should have gone to Charleville. Few would have expected them to go unbeaten and top such an even group, but they did.
For the PSHC underperformer, I was torn between Midleton and Blackrock, and eventually went with the latter.
On reflection, I got this horribly wrong. Still, if I had Glen to win the county it meant one of these two would go out in the group and subsequently underperform.
I argued that Midleton had more strength in depth and would have enough to edge out the Rockies and make it through to the knockouts.
I also said Blackrock would be deflated after their final defeat last year and would struggle to come out of the group.
I wasn’t too far off, the city side were disappointing against Sarsfields in the quarter final, but they still made it out of a tough group and lost to the eventual winners.
The correct prediction would have been Glen Rovers here, but who would have expected a potential title challenger to get relegated instead?
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