Relief for Tomás Mulcahy as Glen Rovers right the wrongs of last year

Glen Rovers have done it – and in many ways they made it look easy.

Their 10 point victory over Blarney ensures their return to the pinnacle of Cork hurling, but given they shouldn’t have ever really been relegated, it’s not the senior title they want to be celebrate.

There’s an air of relief for the club, and for manager Tomás Mulcahy.

“I’ve said it to the lads since the start of the year,” he began. “Nobody is going to hand you anything. You gotta go and earn it, and I think today we earned it.

“We had it, maybe, a little bit too easy, coming into the semi-final stages with some of our matches in terms of actually the nature of the wins by the margins and stuff like that as well.

“We got a real test against Castlelyons, to be fair to them. We’d no match for a month and we kind of felt then coming into Páirc Uí Chaoimh, playing that match, was going to bring us on a tonne. And I think you saw that today.

“The big thing is, now that we’ve got back up there, is to stay there. The omens are good, in terms of very good and successful underage structures.

“Three minor counties I think in the last four years as well,” Mulcahy added. “A lot of talented young lads coming through and keeping a couple of the older guys together maybe and bringing a couple of those guys together we should be up there, maybe challenging next year, again.

HURT

“Overall, the team performance, we couldn’t fault anyone in terms of our efforts and stuff like that as well. It’s been like that all year. Since the start of the year. We hurt so badly from last year.

“Maybe outside of Glen Rovers, people probably didn’t realise what it meant to us to go down. 

The hurt. It was probably my worst day in sport.

“To actually be relegated, to be part of the set-up last year that was relegated against Kanturk. There was never a worse feeling. It was absolutely horrible.

“Not just because we lost the match, but because of the history, and the tradition, and what it means to Glen Rovers and the northside of the city."

But for Mulcahy, there’s been a huge difference in how his side have held their nerve this season. Especially when they’ve been put under pressure after being in front.

“Against Bishopstown and in the relegation match, we were in control for a lot of it, then they came back, put us under pressure. Then they went ahead, and we just died a death,” he explained. “It was the same against Kanturk.

This time it was different.

“The Castlelyons match was a big bearing on that. Castlelyons came very, very strong. They went a point ahead, had two or three goal-scoring chances. Our goalkeeper Cathal Hickey was absolutely immense for us that night, but they showed something which I loved.

“They showed a bit of resolve, they showed a bit of fight.

“They never gave up. In a game of hurling it's incredible. You can talk about other sports, you can talk about your football, but in a game of hurling, you've got to keep going until the final whistle and they did the last against Castlelyons, and we got over the line. We took that in today’s final and we got our reward.”