Charleville and Seoirse Bulfin off to good start

Seoirse Bulfin's start to life as Charleville manager could scarcely have gone better.

After three rounds of fixtures, the North Cork side sit top of Division 1 of the RedFM Hurling League on their own, with Sunday's win at home to Sarsfields following victories against Fr O'Neills and Ballincollig.

Last year's double winners Sars had been the only other side to win two from two but, despite the visitors leading by 0-5 to 0-1 early on at Dr Mannix Sportsfield on Sunday morning, Charleville finished the first half well to lead by 0-11 to 0-9 and Andrew Cagney's second-half goal was key in securing a 1-19 to 0-16 victory.

For Bulfin, who has succeeded fellow Limerick man Mark Foley as manager, it has been a good way to settle in.

“It’s good to win the first three games,” he said, “and to beat last year’s county champions is a big deal for a club like Charleville.

“The first thing is that six points will probably keep you clear from relegation anyway! Darragh Fitzgibbon is away with Cork, obviously, and there’ll be a few lads going away for the summer so you will be without guys every day you play for the rest of the league.

“Look, it’s nice to win as many matches early on as possible.”

A strong finish to the first half for Charleville, featuring five points on the trot - three from Alan Dennehy - helped to swing the momentum.

“I said it to the lads afterwards,” Bulfin said, “for me, that spell probably turned it in our favour.

“I know we only went in two up after playing with a strong breeze but, having been 0-5 to 0-1 down after ten minutes or so and playing with the breeze, it looked like it was going to be a long hour!

“But they worked awful hard – they’re a very honest bunch and a the goal made a big difference. There’s a lot of work to get done, a lot of fitness work to get done, as you can see, but I’m delighted with that, to get a result against Sars.

“We won’t get too carried away with it, they hit a lot of wides – some of them, to be fair, were down to pressure by us, and others were probably unforced, which is a bit uncharacteristic by Sars.

“At the end of the day, there’s one thing that those Sarsfields boys are gunning for and that’s championship in the latter stages of the year.

“They were short a lot of lads as well.”

Hailing from Bruff, Bulfin - who has previous coaching experience with Waterford, Clare and Wexford as well as managing Meath until recently - doesn't have too far to travel.

“It makes an awful difference for me, to be only travelling 15 minutes for training after the last few years!” he laughed.

“We often played them in challenges when I was playing and you’d be keeping an eye on them when they’re only ten, 11 miles up the road.

“They’ve had a great run over the last eight or ten years, some of the guys are still going and then you’ve some new lads coming through.

“Obviously, the big thing – it’s a bit of a disappointment but there’s nothing we can do about it now – is that we’ve a couple of last year’s Cork minors that can’t play with us because of this new bye-law in Cork.

“They can play with the juniors but they can’t play senior and they would be huge additions when you don’t have a massive panel. That’s like though, we know the rules before we start!”