'Na Piarsaigh will keep fighting for as long as it takes' Mark Mullins vows after Blarney defeat
Mark Mullins, Na Piarsaigh manager. Picture: Larry Cummins
For Na Piarsaigh, the story is starting to read with the same weary refrain. Three years at Senior A, and three years where the glass ceiling has been the quarter-final. Twice they’ve reached it, and twice they’ve been halted.
On Saturday evening, Blarney were the roadblock. The margin, five points, might suggest a late sting was possible, but in truth that sudden surge from Na Piarsaigh never looked like materialising.
It has been a season marked by bumps and bruises for the northside club.
The first day out, they went toe to toe with Killeagh in an outstanding battle – a performance that would have beaten the east Cork side on most days – just not that one. Then came a limp showing against Carrigtwohill in round two.
They steadied themselves to beat Fermoy on the final day, but did so without their heartbeat. Daire Connery’s ACL injury stripped them of their talisman, and in the same game they lost Ciarán Flynn. To arrive at a quarter-final shorn of both was heavy going, but as manager Mark Mullins put it, fortune only stretches so far.
“Luck hasn’t been too kind to us recently, but you have to make your own luck too. It’s awful for Daire,” Mullins said. “He trains 110% every time, so I’m gutted for Daire.
"He is a game changer for us, and I wish him the best of luck with his recovery, he’ll be back as strong as ever next year.
“We have to keep building. No one has a right to go straight back up, so we have to fight tooth and nail. We have young players, older players, and we need them to stay on and keep going to get us back.
“There’s definitely more in this team. We didn’t get it out of them unfortunately, it didn’t happen, but it’s there. We have hope, and when there’s hope, you keep going.
“Na Piarsaigh will keep fighting for as long as it takes.”
That rotten run of luck could be neatly sketched in the spell just before half-time. At one end, Cian Barrett rattled the net. At the other, Ross O’Sullivan was felled for a penalty.
O’Sullivan himself stepped up – an All-Ireland U20 winner – who would bury that nine times out of ten. But this time he missed.
A four-point deficit with the wind would have been a manageable ask. Seven down was a mountain.
“Blarney took their chances well, to be fair to them,” Mullins said. We didn’t take our chances well. That’s the difference. That’s just the way games go.”
For Michael Barrett, the Blarney manager, the mood was different. Not euphoric, not getting ahead of himself – simply satisfied that his team had done enough to set up a semi-final with Castlelyons.
“Tonight is a quarter-final, it’s all about getting a result, getting on to the next stage,” he said. “They way we look at it is job done, plenty to work on.
“Clinical? At times I would say only,” Barrett admitted. “To be fair to Na Piarsaigh, you have to credit them, they made it very tough for us and stayed in the game.
That swing just before the break – Barrett’s goal and O’Sullivan’s miss, was, in his view, the hinge moment.
“It was a big moment in the game, we were playing with what was a very shallow wind I’d say in the first half.
“Came out in the second and it was a monsoon, whatever they did with it!” he said. “We went in seven ahead, we could have only gone in three or four, which as it might have turned out, may not have been enough against the wind in the second half.
“It was a big moment, you need a bit of luck, we’ll take it.”
But luck was only a fraction of it. There was nothing fortunate about the performance of Cian Barrett, who sparkled with 1-4 to his name.
“Very happy, very happy for him,” Michael remarked. “After coming back from a meniscus operation in January, first game of the championship was his first game back for us this year, so it’s good for him. Good boost for young fellas!”
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