Midleton's men in black honour departed colleagues

Former Cork U20 player David Cremin had number 30 on his back as he struck three points in Midleton’s win over Newtownshandrum on Saturday night.

Nothing hugely out of the ordinary in that, in that teams often make changes from the selected side – but Cremin was listed in the programme at right half-forward, just with 30 rather than the usual 10. And, rather than usual black and white hoops, it was an all-black jersey.

March brought sadness for the club, as 21-year-old Darragh McCarthy and two-time All-Ireland winner Ger Fitzgerald, who managed the club to win the 2021 Premier SHC, both sadly died. This year, Midleton have retired the number 10 and manager Micheál Keohane revealed after the 0-24 to 0-19 win over Newtown that the Magpies will more resemble ravens.

“We're wearing the black jerseys, and we've retired the number 10 for Darragh McCarthy and Ger Fitzgerald as well.

“The lads had won the U21 last year with Darragh wearing the black kit, so the younger guys said that they wanted to wear the black jerseys today as well, so we just said that was a nice gesture.”

The change certainly didn’t affect Midleton as they led throughout, though the Newtown challenge was never fully extinguished.

In a group that also features Charleville and Newcestown, Keohane knew just important it was to get off to a victorious start.

“Oh, we’re absolutely delighted,” he said.

“Like, you can't take anything for granted – you can see how difficult it is to get out of your group, not to mind to progress any further than that.

“The first night is just about winning, and doing anything at all that we can to just get over the line.

“We're really happy with parts of it, and then we've probably got an awful lot to work on over the next couple of weeks for Newcestown.

“We're in a positive mindset coming into training on Tuesday.”

As they look to build momentum, Keohane knows there are positives to take, but also areas to work on.

“If you look at what we were doing, a lot of our defensive last-ditch tackles, last-ditch turnovers, great blocks – that was some of the stuff that was actually keeping us in the game at times,” he said.

“So it was actually quite close; I don't think the scoreboard probably reflects how close the actual match was, especially earlier in the game.

“I think we went six and then seven up, but I don't think it was that cushion and we probably hadn't…I'm not saying we didn't deserve it, but we probably hadn't worked enough to get to that number.

“If you look at our inside forwards, in the first 15 minutes, every time the ball went into them, they won it, won it clean, and they look really, really sharp, really, really lively, but we just didn't manage to get that much delivery into them.

“When we look at the video, I'd say the supply into them dried up in the second half and the first half, certainly, and it's something that we just need to work on, get further up the field before we're delivering the ball.”