Football momentum, hurling momentum – Ballygarvan are chasing both

Few outside Ballygarvan would have tipped them to topple St Catherine’s – finalists in each of the last two Premier Junior Hurling Championships.

But in truth, the result hardly qualifies as an upset. The fifth tier has become a dogfight, margins wafer thin, and Ballygarvan had history to draw on, too.

Their reward is a semi-final date with Kilbrittain. Another familiar foe, one that has cropped up with almost ritual consistency. The two met in the Lower Intermediate group stages back in 2020, and again in Premier Junior in 2023 and 2024. To Piaras O’Halloran, there’s no sense of coincidence anymore.

“Yeah, Kilbrittain are a very good team to be fair. Since I’ve been on the adult team we’ve always had them, and last year now, that was the first time we kind of got the better of them.

“They're a great team. They're well drilled,” he explains. “It'd be a tough one hopefully, hopefully we get over the line.” That edge of familiarity had already been sharpened in their quarter-final against St Catherine’s. O’Halloran said confidence came not from blind faith but lived experience.

“Catherine's are another good side now to be fair, but we kind of knew what we had as well, especially last year, because we only lost by a point, and we were five points up at half-time.

“We knew we'd have something against them, and we kind of stuck to our plan and our process and got over the line.” 

Over the line in Riverstown thanks to a late Kevin Lyons goal. Unlike last year, Ballygarvan had the final word. For O’Halloran, it is in those closing stages that the greatest strides have been made.

GAME MANAGEMENT

“We worked on a good bit with mentality and kind of game management, because there always seemed to be a repeat of us losing the game in the last five, ten minutes and that's kind of the biggest thing we worked on. That kind of comes with experience as well, but I think we’ve gotten better at managing the games and structuring it well.” 

Those late slips have hurt before. The Junior A Football Championship final last year ended in heartbreak – Inniscarra striking a goal at the death to deny Ballygarvan county glory.

Still, the dual road remains their chosen road. They line up against neighbours Ballymartle in Sunday’s South East Junior A Football Championship semi-final before switching codes once more for Kilbrittain the following week.

Dual calendars break some clubs. Ballygarvan make a virtue of it.

“It is doable, but it is tough and some people have different views on it, but I feel like we should we definitely do both, especially if you have enough players that want to do both, O’Halloran says. “We’re a 50/50 club, like we take one as serious as the other.

“Especially when we got to the county final against Inniscarra in the football last year, but we've hurlers and footballers, but we all play together. 

If the hurlers didn't play football, the footballers wouldn't play hurling. So we take both as seriously as the other.

New rule changes in football, welcomed by manager Stephen Moloney back in March, have only added to that sense of balance.

“I think the rules nearly suits us more, we’re well able to play, we have good footballers, so I think the element of speeding it up kind of suits us more.” 

Ballymartle, though, will test that theory. Knocked out of the hurling, their energy is now channelled solely into football.

“Ballymartle are another tough team, they’re all tough teams. Ballymartle will be a good test now, I know they’re out of the hurling so they’re probably putting full focus on the football, but we’ll be up for it anyway.” 

Momentum, O’Halloran insists, is portable. If anything, juggling codes can create rhythm.

“I think if you’re doing well in football, you're going to do well in hurling, if you're doing well in hurling, you're going to do well in football. We're all the same, everyone plays both. So the momentum shifts in both of them if you're going well.” 

For Ballygarvan, the games keep stacking up. Their mantra remains simple: take one seriously, take both seriously. And in that balance, belief grows.