Goalkeeper Aiden Foley felt the Hill were ready to rise

Watergrasshill have certainly rebalanced the average in terms of championship wins.

Since the beginning of the Co-op SuperStores Premier IHC in late summer, the East Cork side have put together eight victories, encompassing silverware in the form of county and provincial titles.

They got in search of win number nine in the campaign in Sunday’s AIB All-Ireland Club IHC final against Galway’s Tynagh-Abbey/Duniry in Croke Park (2.30pm).

Across the previous two seasons, the Imokilly club had not won a single championship match. However, that statistic is given extra context by the fact that they had five draws and just one loss – goalkeeper Aiden Foley took a level of confidence from it as they faced into 2024 under Eddie Enright

“I saw it as a positive, to be honest,” he says.

“We played Aghada in a relegation final in 2021 and when Pat Heffernan came in to us in 2022 and 2023, he really brought that belief back into the squad that we could compete with the best.

“We drew with Castlelyons in 2022 and we weren’t far off Castlemartyr in the last game in 2023, so I saw it as a huge positive going into 2024. I knew something was brewing, that there was a good, young team there.”

Thirty-year-old Foley first dabbled in goal for Imokilly and Cork development squads in his teens, while continuing to play outfield for the Hill.

“Eddie’s first year, in 2018, I played out the field for a couple of years but I kept getting niggles and picking up injuries,” he says.

“When Darragh O’Callaghan went back to Australia, I went back into goal. I’m better off inside there!

“I’m happy enough there, though.”

Certainly, his excellent distribution is a major asset in terms of providing service for such a potent attack.

“As a goalkeeper, you have that split-second to make a decision, really,” Foley says.

“You just need to go with it, to be honest – you need to go with what you see. The big thing with me is that, if it doesn’t work the first time, it doesn’t really get into my head or whatever and I’ll chance it again the second time or the third time.

“Puckouts are huge, obviously, in the game of hurling these days, possession is so important.”
The Hill have been in excellent form all through the year and have improved as each level of challenge has grown.

“The couple of games against Carrigaline, the first match and the final, they were incredibly tough and tight,” says Foley, who works for Stryker in Carrigtwohill.

“Once we got over Carrigaline in the final, we said, ‘We’re in bonus territory here, we can really go for it.’

“There was a small bit of pressure going into the county final, having beaten Carrigaline the first day out. We knew they’d be gunning for us.

“We went into the Wolfe Tones game, six days after the Carrigaline match, and we said we’d go out and give it a rattle.

“We knew that we weren’t going to lie down and let them beat us on our own patch. It was actually probably our best game of the year so far, which is mad when you think about it.”

Now, the mission is to produce a bigger performance again, on the biggest stage, and Foley thinks they will embrace it.

“The management team, Eddie and the lads, are very good at playing down big occasions,” he says.

“Obviously, you’re going up to Dublin to play a game in Croke Park for your club, it’s the stuff of dreams and something wouldn’t be right if it wasn’t playing in the back of your mind, but the excitement is unreal.

“Around the village, it’s just class, it’s after lifting the whole place. We’re just going to have embrace it, really, and go out and do what we’ve been doing all year.”