Imokilly v Sarsfields: Brian Lawton happy to have 'had another go'

Having played for Imokilly since 2008, winning three county SHC medals, few would have begrudged Brian Lawton if he had decided to focus on his club Castlemartyr in recent years.

Last year, the East Cork division were on the verge of an appearance in another final but a goal by Sarsfields’ Luke Elliott sent their semi-final to extra time, with the Riverstown club going on to win that and then regain the Seán Óg Murphy Cup.

For Lawton and other stalwarts, though, the resolve to go again was hardened if anything.

“When we got beaten last year, we went for a few pints after it,” he says, “and we were saying we'll have another cut off it.

“There was a general consensus that everyone was going back and having another go.”

Lawton will be 36 in December and so he was the perfect age to experience the good times the barony had in the 1990s – after losing the 1996 final to Avondhu after a replay, they came back to win the title in each of the next two years.

“I grew up watching Imokilly when they were quite good,” he says.

“I vaguely remember the wins of 97 and 98, we had a couple of clubmen involved at the time. I remember the years after that going to the games in the Páirc and just having a lot of interest in the division.

“It was always an ambition of mine to play for Imokilly, so once I got the chance then, I just gave it a crack. You could kind of see there would be a point when you would a have team that would compete.

“There were a lot of lads in college and the time was coming where they would be finished in college and were going to give it a crack with the division.”

That sense of something special proved correct as they won the championship again in 2017 and retained it for the next two years.

The reformatting of the county championships for 2020, creating a senior A grade, eroded the available pool of players but Imokilly remained competitive.

Even so, Lawton did fear that the good times had passed.

“I'd be lying if I said I didn't,” he says.

“Some of us were getting older and you're thinking, maybe we won't get a crack at it again. At the same time, you were thinking, you're never that far away. You are a score away from getting back there. Maybe we used up all our luck in 2017, 18, 19, and didn't get any of it after that.

“But you do make your own luck and there were instances where we took learnings out of some of the defeats. I know it is cliché, but we definitely did take learnings. Defeat doesn't just happen. There were instances where you weren't potentially switched on or we weren't set up right.

“Players, on the pitch, not making decisions for themselves, and we had to hold ourselves responsible for that as well. We had take the learnings from that and improve.”