Premier SHC: Blackrock remain on the goal trail

Blackrock surely won’t complain if their goals-to-games ratio continues.

In their three group games in the Co-op SuperStores Premier SHC this year, the Rockies scored three goals against each of St Finbarr’s, Newcestown and Fr O’Neills.

That trend continued at Fermoy on Saturday evening, as strikes from Alan Connolly, Fionn Coleman and Tadgh Deasy helped the city side to a 3-16 to 0-17 quarter-final win over Kanturk.

A semi-final awaits against Imokilly and Blackrock manager Jamie Harrington is grateful to have such a potent attacking threat.

“To be fair, we are hard to stop there,” he said after the victory.

“We have Fionn, Robbie [Cotter] and Alan inside. If you sit back, we’ll try to hurt you outside and if you push up, we’ll give in to them.

“It’s a great threat to have. It almost makes the half-backs’ jobs very easy – just get it in there.”

Coleman’s goal arrived when the second was just a minute old. After scoring the last two points before half-time to go in level, Blackrock held the lead thereafter, with Harrington welcoming the improvement after the break.

“It was a draw at half-time, 1-8 to 0-11, and we were fairly flat in the first half,” he said.

“We had been poor but we turned it around really well. In the first half, it was Alan Connolly versus them for a while.

“As a unit, we all found jobs to do in the second half and we played really well.”

They had to, as a Kanturk side competing in the knockout stage in the top grade for the first time put up a strong showing, albeit unable to breach the Blackrock defence.

Harrington was naturally pleased to have overcome such a stiff test.

“Oh, massively,” he said.

“Kanturk are really well-organised, really well-drilled. They hurl well; they’ve got good size, good speed, good unity.

“I thought that we’d have to be at our best to beat them and we fought really hard. We didn’t overly focus on out-fighting or out-battling Kanturk – in a quarter-final, everybody’s going to bring it.”
That’s something that Blackrock are certainly familiar with, having now reached the last four for the fourth time in five years since the introduction of the new championship format.

As they look to make a third final in that period, the return of Deasy to senior championship action was timely, all the more so as he marked with that third goal to clinch the outcome/

“It was great for him to get a senior run at this stage,” Harrington said.

“He was injured for a long time through July, so it’s great for him personally. He stuck the goal really well, he’s a great finisher.”

He will surely feature at some stage in the semi-final. Harrington is glad to be returning to SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh on Sunday week, albeit knowing that the East Cork divisional side will present another tough challenge.

“We’re looking forward to it,” he said, “it doesn’t really matter who it is at this stage, we’re just going to prepare.

“Today was probably the first time we’ve focused on a team. Through the group stages, we were just trying to improve certain things in our play.

“We feel that we have a lot of that done and this week we were focused on Kanturk. Now we’re looking forward to two weeks of straightforward preparation.”