Cork Hurling: Former Ireland international Dominic Foley enjoying Charleville job after 'falling into it'

We're on fairly safe ground when we say that, prior to this year, no former Cercle Brugge, KAA Gent or Sporting Braga player had taken charge of a Cork hurling club.

However, before Dominic Foley - who featured for the Republic of Ireland under Mick McCarthy and played for a host of English clubs, he was a talented GAA player as a teenager. He might have even featured more for the Cork U21s than he did except that a prospective trial at Liverpool involved the condition of focusing fully on soccer.

He rates that decision as one of his few regrets but, by and large, has been guided by a sense of adventure and meeting challenges rather than shirking them.

“I was always a believer in regretting the things that I didn't do rather than the things I did,” Foley says.

“The opportunities came up and I felt that I might as well be in Belgium or Portugal as be in England.”

Back in his home town for the guts of a decade and a half and working for Cavanagh’s, a similar attitude has led him to take charge of the senior team, who take on Newtownshandrum in an unmissable derby clash on Sunday.

“I actually fell into this job by default,” Foley says.

“At the end of last year, when everybody's looking for coaches and managers and clubs are starting back with their routines and their gym work and everything, I just kind of said, ‘Look, don't be in a panic to find somebody, I can look after them and do the fitness work with them.’

“I went in and started the fitness work with them and got things organised and then, all of a sudden, while you're there, you might as well stay!

“I had helped out with the junior team a few years back and I know all the boys – as I keep saying to them, I was their biggest fan for the last ten years, going to all the game.

“Being involved with them now this year, I can see the amount of commitment that goes into senior hurling now in Cork is crazy.

“It's like a another part-time job on top of their own job and it’s like that for those with me –James Kennedy the coach, Noel Hanley is a selector, my brother James does the goalkeeping.

“Then, we have Ozzy Lambert, Mossie Fitzgibbon, Michael O’Flynn and Kevin Owens in the back-room and Kate Liddy as the physio, so we've a nice team.”

Conversely, the fact that Foley comes from a background where sport was his full-time job means he is focused on working smarter rather than simply working more.

“We try to make it fun,” he says, “we try to make it relevant – not just doing things for the sake of it.

“I’d hope the boys would say that I don't bore them to death with talking to them, I'll only speak and say something to them if it needs to be said. I think a lot of people can overdo that side of things.

“My big thing with GAA over the last eight or 10 years is this whole thing about ‘looking big’.

Looking big is kind of beach-walking – hurling is the fastest game in the world and if you're a bit like a block, how are you supposed to be able to move?

“Muscles soak oxygen, so the bigger the muscles, the less running you can do.

“I did a little experiment with our boys in the gym in December. They were working in threes and when one is working, the other two are standing doing nothing, so I put on circuit-training for them then, where everybody is moving all the time.

“That was my one big thing, that I worked with them on, because you can get core fitness, leg fitness, upper-body fitness and aerobic fitness from doing one thing, rather than just getting big and bulky.

“We've less injuries and, when we hit someone, they feel hit, whereas if we get hit, we can take it.

ENERGY

“At this level you have to be able to run and running backwards, towards your own goal, is more important than running the other way – we'll always get the energy to go forward, but have you the energy to go back?

“We've put it on every player that every player has to work for the team. 

One of our mottos is to 'be the best at things that take no talent' and I stand on that, every night at training.

“It’s kind of changing our mindset and changing where we have been over the last four or five years.

“The boys have done what we've asked them to do, I feel they are fitter, I feel they are stronger and I feel we're in a better place than we have been.”

The win over Newcestown two weeks ago mean Charleville go in to Sunday’s clash in Milford with two points on the board, whereas Newtown lost to Midleton.

Trying to divorce the occasion - the first time the clubs' first teams have met in championship since 1992 - from the mission at hand is the task for Foley.

“For us, the Newton match wasn't mentioned until after last week,” he says.

“Obviously, because it's a local derby match, there’s noise going on in the background, but I'm kind of immune to this.

“We’ve been in three relegation finals over the last four years, so for us to get a win against Newcestown sets us up nicely for next weekend.

“You will have some people who say, ‘Oh, it's the local derby, we have to do this, we have to do that,’ but I feel that if you put that kind of pressure on a match, it can be counter-productive.

“As far as I'm aware, we’d get two points for beating Newtown and we'd get two for beating Midleton.

“Obviously, for the local pride and rivalry and so on, it would be nice to get the two points but we're treating it as the next game and the next game is always the most important one.”