Ex-Watergrasshill ace Shane O'Regan offered reminder of his quality with stunning Sars cameo
Shane O'Regan of Sarsfields shoots to score his side's second goal against Ballygunner. Picture: Tom Beary/Sportsfile
Danish beer breweries don’t do club hurling weekends, but if they did, they’d probably be like the one just gone.
Cork clubs completed the unlikeliest of clean sweeps by taking the senior, intermediate and junior titles over what was a historic weekend for Cork club hurling.
It was a momentous night for the village of Watergrasshill on Saturday evening as they bagged the Munster Club Intermediate Championship against Cashel King Cormacs of Tipperary.
If you had been told before the throw-in at the Gaelic Grounds that key forward Sean Desmond would fail to register a single score in the entire game and that the in-form wing-back Michael O’Driscoll would have to depart injured in the first half, then you would probably have feared the worst for Watergrasshill.
Adam Murphy’s display was particularly eye-catching. He contributed a staggering 1-12, in extremely difficult conditions, of the Hill’s tally of 1-20, with 1-5 of that coming from play. An illustration of just how important his score-getting was can be seen by the troubles Cashel had with their shooting just prior to Murphy effectively finishing the game with his 48th-minute goal.
They had a number of wides in the 10-minute spell before that goal, with a few of those coming from scoreable frees. These missed frees would have kept the Tipp men within reach of Watergrasshill, and it was noticeable that their heads dropped when Murphy rattled the back of their net.
It was not just the Murphy show, however, with their being huge performances all over the pitch. An example of this was the fact that it was Liam Foley who popped over the final score of the first half, a fine effort from over on the left-hand sideline, when he had just come on for the injured O’Driscoll.
To think that three years ago the club faced off against Aghada in the Premier Intermediate relegation play-off, where Shane Óg O’Regan’s 1-11 inspired them to a 2-15 to 0-11 victory.
They have come a long way since.
Their first match of this campaign seems a long time ago now. It took place on August 3 against Carrigaline in Ballincollig and they found themselves 10 points down as the game edged towards its final quarter.
Adam Murphy, unsurprisingly, got the ball rolling on the comeback with his expert free-taking, before Brendan Lehane, Sean Desmond and Liam Foley also pointed to bring the gap down to just four.
The Imokilly side were on the charge at that juncture and a Murphy point was sandwiched in between excellent goals from Desmond and Lehane, which propelled them to a fantastic 2-19 to 2-17 victory.
Seven wins later and they are Munster champions at the grade. They wouldn’t have managed that without that inspirational comeback against Carrigaline that got the train moving.
In the provincial Junior decider Russell Rovers won their second Munster crown in five years with a comfortable victory over Waterford champions Kilrossanty, as the twin strike force of Brian Hartnett (with 2-2) and Josh Beausang (with 0-7), again looked like cheat mode at this level. They will certainly be looking at going one better in the hunt for an All-Ireland this time around.
The big story of the weekend was probably Sarsfields shock victory over the reddest of hot favourites Ballygunner in the Senior final. A year ago the Glanmire side lost by 2-20 to 0-9 in nebbish fashion in the provincial quarter-final, but on Sunday they hurled like men possessed to win their first Munster crown.
His brilliant 2-3 cameo ensured that Ballygunner were too far away to muster a last gasp rescue act, with Sars bringing the O’Neill Cup back to Cork for the first time since 2009.
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