SAFC: O'Donovan Rossa turn focus to Fermoy

Having found GOD, the footballers of O’Donovan Rossa didn’t want to let him go.

The manager of the club’s senior A team, Gene O’Donovan, has ‘Geno’ rather than his initials on his gear he has been a guiding light for the Skibbereen side in the past two years.

A semi-final appearance in 2022 was followed by the heartache of missing out on the knockout stages on scoring difference last year. That brought O’Donovan’s term to an end, or so he thought.

“We were gone,” he says.

“[Coach] Daniel Cronin and myself were only coming in for two years. The club is at my heart – I’m the coaching officer here as well and I’m back involved for the last five or six years, after a few years out.

“It was the players came to us and said that they felt there was unfinished business and they wanted to keep the group together.”

So far, the decision has proved to be a good one, as Skibb opened their 2024 championship campaign with a one-point point win over Fermoy three weeks ago.

Next up is a clash with Kanturk on Sunday in Kilmichael (4pm). Another win would put Rossa in a great position but O’Donovan knows all too well that it wouldn’t guarantee progress just yet

“We know from last year that four points isn’t enough, either!” he laughs.

“You have to watch your scoring. There was a stage in the Fermoy game where I’d have been quite happy with the draw, the way things were going, but once I saw the boys were finishing as strong as they were and forcing a couple of turnovers towards the end, I did get a bit greedy and say, ‘Right lads, let’s go for this one,’ and they did.

“There’s no guarantee that four points is going to take you anywhere but that’s all that you can collect from your first two matches. If you can collect three points in a group this strong, where the competition is so severe, that’s not bad, either – you don’t know what will happen between Fermoy and the Dohenys this weekend.”
Their Duhallow opponents also come in on the back of a win, having beaten last year’s defeated finalists Dohenys by 0-17 to 0-15.

In 2023, the Kanturk match was the only group game Skibb didn’t win but they were the odd ones out in a three-way tie that also involved Knocknagree. O’Donovan expects another challenging outing.

“They’re on a roll with the hurling and the football,” he says.

“They’re a big, fit unit and we’re under no illusions that we have a massive – not just big, but massive – day’s work to do on Sunday.

“That’s the one thing about this group of players; they’re very well-aware of what they need to do to win a game and I think that they proved that against Fermoy because they were a big, physical team as well.

“We’ll come with a plan against Kanturk and it’ll be a different plan to what we had last year, hopefully there’ll be a different outcome.

“We weren’t far off them last year, we had a few misses when we went six points up, but they’re dogged. Kanturk are making a name for themselves in both codes and it’s for a reason, because they’re a tight unit and fair play to them.

“But, on our day, we can be as good as anybody if we put it together. People are on about the injuries and this and that but, I said it before the last game, we will have 15 lads with O’Donovan Rossa jerseys going out on that pitch and there’ll be another 15 of them on the sideline and any four of five of them can come on and do a job.

“We’re quite happy with our panel the way it is and the injured players that are out, they’re around the place as well, doing their bit off the pitch with the lads as well.

“The unit is still together and that’s the most important thing.”