Frank Flannery joins Midleton senior management for 2025 season

Frank Flannery will be part of the Midleton management team for their Premier Senior Hurling Championship campaign in 2025.

The move comes as Midleton look to replace the outgoing Alwyn Kearney and Padraig O’Shea, who have both stepped away from their roles as selectors.

Flannery joins current Midleton manager Micheál Keohane, who remains in place for a third successive year.

Liam Walsh has been promoted to selector, having been a goalkeeping coach with the team for the past couple of years and a star forward for the Magpies in the early 2000s.

The remainder of the backroom team is yet to be finalised.

The experienced Flannery has had a plethora of coaching success over the years and returns to management after a one-year hiatus.

His last role was as manager of his native club Carrigtwohill, a role which he left at the end of 2023.

That year, Midleton’s east Cork rivals were beaten by eventual champions Newcestown in the Senior A Hurling Championship semi-final.

The Magpies will hope that Flannery can help the team bounce back after last year’s one-point semi-final defeat to Sarsfields, who have since gone on to reach the All-Ireland club final.

Flannery’s most recent coaching success was in 2021, as he steered Kanturk to the Senior A HC title – the same year that Midleton last won took the top honours, winning the Seán Óg Murphy Cup.

The experienced coach was also integral to the success of Wexford outfit Oulart-the-Ballagh, as he guided the club to two county senior titles in 2015 and 2016. During his tenure they also won the Leinster SHC in 2015 – a title which had eluded them for four straight years between 2010 and 2013.

In 2018, Flannery guided Russell Rovers to their first ever East Cork Junior A HC title, before heading to Ballysaggart and leading the Waterford side to the Intermediate HC title in 2019.

It wasn’t his first intermediate county in Waterford either, having previously led Ardmore to that same feat in 2013.

INTER-COUNTY EXPERIENCE

He’s also dipped his hands in the inter-county scene in both the men’s and women’s games, coaching the Cork camogie team to the All-Ireland senior title in 2009, before helping Milford camogie secure back-to-back All-Ireland crowns.

Flannery has experience with the Rebels at minor and senior level, helping Cork to Christy Ring Cup and All-Ireland U21 B glory. He was also a member of Kieran Kingston’s Cork senior hurling backroom team for the 2016 season.

Now resident in Ballintotis, just outside of Midleton – Flannery is not the first Carrigtwohill man to coach a Midleton team either.

The iconic Willie John Daly, a crucial member of Cork’s three-in-a-row team from 1952-54, also did the same as he coached Midleton to their Intermediate HC title win against Cobh back in 1962. Now known as the Intermediate A HC, the east Cork club haven’t won it since.