Harry O’Reilly’s Éire Óg finding their rhythm with a focus on ‘positive football’

It’s been a turbulent few years for Éire Óg.

The Ovens outfit lost their way a touch in 2023. Last year they were relegated. Realistically they should have been good enough to avoid it.

During that period, they brought in former Cork star Paudie Kissane as manager. Unfortunately, the outcome was not what either party would have hoped for.

Their jump from premier intermediate to premier senior football in the span of two years was a remarkable feat. Key to the success in those years was manager Harry O’Reilly.

Now a trip to the grade below in senior A awaits. Carrigaline have set a blueprint for Éire Óg to follow, after their success last season. Their victory at the weekend marked their first in the three league attempts, but for returning manager O’Reilly – the sole focus is on championship, and getting Éire Óg back to premier senior.

“We’re not really pushed about the league,” O’Reilly began. “We’re missing a lot of players, we’ve four involved with the Cork teams and we’ve a number of lads out through injury so we’re down a lot of players.

“We’re building towards the championship, obviously we were relegated in the championship last year, we’re in senior A this year and we’ve a tough group.

“That’s what we’re building towards. We had two tough games, two of the better teams in the league with Clonakilty and St Finbarr’s in the first two games.

“We were targeting today [against Douglas] for getting points on the board and hopefully we’ll start to get players back and performances and results will improve.” 

It was Éire Óg’s first win of the campaign – and a deserving one. Their best performance to date, with the Muskerry side looking so threatening on the counter.

“We’re trying to really play a lot of positive football,” he said. “The new rules suit us, we have a lot of lively forwards and a bit of pace around the middle.

“We’ve been trying to bring that into our game and play an attacking brand of football.” 

COMMANDING

The most prominent figures in the middle for Éire Óg were Jack Murphy and Mark Griffin, with the pair central to every threatening chance created.

“Both of them were excellent,” O’Reilly said. “They’d be two of the lads that would get out on a lot of ball in the middle and they drive us forward.

“Ronan O’Toole didn’t start, but we were able to bring him on just after half time so he was a big help to us as well but there is a lot of pace there.” 

While clubs are all without their inter-county stars at this stage of the season, injuries almost seem to be that bit more common. Douglas felt that with four players departing with injuries.

“We’ve been lucky so far, a couple of our injuries are longer term but they’re all due back soon, in the next month or six weeks.

“We have been lucky with the injuries so far this year, that side of it is going well. We played junior B on Friday night, had a junior A game last night [Saturday], we had the senior game then today,” O’Reilly explained. “We had lots of players togged out for all three teams, so there are lots of players there and it’s a great chance to give lads opportunities to step up to the senior team.

“It’s difficult obviously being a dual club because you’re out every weekend. You’re trying to manage injuries and load and everything like that, but look it’s going well so far.” 

Current absentees include Dylan Foley, John Mullins, Jack Sheehan, and David Kirwan. They’re expected back within the next four to six weeks.

Things are heading in the right direction for Éire Óg. Whether they can make that count in the championship or not remains to be seen, but they’re playing with unity and confidence.