Premier SFC: Cathal Maguire raring to go ahead of St Finbarr's semi-final showdown 

Cathal Maguire isn’t expecting anything different when Castlehaven and St Finbarr’s face off tomorrow.

The familiar foes meet in the McCarthy Insurance Group Premier SFC in SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh with throw-in at 4.15pm. It will be the fifth season on the trot that the heavyweights will lock horns at the semi-final stage as it’s finely poised going into this one with two wins apiece.

The West Cork outfit are reigning champions and Maguire, who has really blossomed in the Haven team over the last 18 months, and is currently on the Cork senior football panel, says his team are relishing this big game.

“It’s probably going to be the same as the last four meetings,” he says.

“Ideally, it will be a good attacking game of football but if we win by a point at the end of the game, we will take it. We are expecting a massive challenge. We know that we are coming up against one of the best teams around. When you have only 12 Premier Senior clubs, it’s going to happen where teams are meeting each often and it is what it is.

“We treat every opponent the same way so it doesn’t really matter who is on the other side, it’s a case of taking whoever they are and analysing them and trying to get our own game plan across then.” 

The team in blue and white are holders of the Andy Scannell trophy after ending 10 years of hurt last October. The hunger and determination to win back-to-back titles like the Haven did in 2012 and ’13 is strongly underlined by their performances and results in 2024. Castlehaven finished top seed after three comfortable group stage wins over Clonakilty, St Michael’s and Carbery Rangers. It couldn’t have gone any better to date.

“Our first goal was to get a direct route to the semi-final and thankfully we achieved that,” he said.

“We would be very happy with the results so far, three wins over three very good teams, but again there would be aspects of our performance that we wouldn’t be happy with. I suppose you're not going to get perfection every day. It was all about winning those games.

“It seems a long time ago when last season finished up in January. The team went away on a holiday and it was straight back to business really. If you're making a decision not to do that running session in pre-season, you know you're losing ground on serious teams. Everyone knows how hard it was to win the county last year, so it’s easy to motivate yourself. If you're not at it on any given day, any one of the other eleven teams in the grade can beat you.” 

Castlehaven haven’t played in four weeks since their last group game as a result of getting a direct route to the last four. On the other hand, St Finbarr’s came through a tough quarter-final tie with Ballincollig.

“It has been a few years since he actually took the number one seed,” Maguire says.

“It will be all judged after the game whether people will be saying Castlehaven were well rested or rusty. We are happy with our preparation over the last few weeks and had a couple of down days after the Carbery Rangers game to get the bodies right. We have been keeping it as competitive as possible. There is a massive emphasis on our training and that has been shown over the last few weeks.” 

In the previous four meetings between Castlehaven and St Finbarr’s, the first two games ended up going to a penalty shootout. The expectation is that there will be very little between the teams again tomorrow and could well go the distance again. What will be key for the Haven in getting over the line?

“There’s nothing between ourselves and St Finbarr’s in terms of the quality of the players. At the end of the day, it will come down to who performs better. It will come down to a break of a ball really. We are all looking forward to it.”