'John Cleary should have a look at Diarmuid Phelan, he's an outstanding footballer'

As he brought in his players for the huddle after their win over Glanmire in the quarter-final of the McCarthy Insurance Group PIFC, Agahda manager Mike Kiely referenced how they set out to change the graph of their fortunes. With a semi-final against Uibh Laoire to look forward to, that graph is firmly on the up.

“Absolutely. We’d a very tough league. We got relegated, but we were trying different things. Our leaders in the team were injured at the start of the year. We battle every year to try and stay up in Division 3. It’s a tough division, a couple of Senior A teams there. 

"Last year we battled to the last game to stay up. Things went against us this year, but our graph is now on the rise slowly and steadily.” 

 As they celebrated this victory, the bond in the Aghada set-up was clear to see and Kiely had nothing but good things to say about his panel.

“They’re a very honest bunch of lads, they’re an easy bunch of lads to train. They’re hungry for success. You go down to training on the Tuesday night and they’ll just train hard. There are now heroes on the team, they’re just an honest bunch of individuals. It makes it easy for us as a management team to train them.” 

 When Glanmire came with everything they had to narrow the gap, it was Diarmuid Phelan who pushed Agahda clear, and Kiely was high in his praise of the former Cork U20 star as his presence in the middle third was vital for Aghada.

Diarmuid has been playing well. Against Aghabullogue, he was outstanding the last day. He’s our big player. 

"Diarmuid played Cork U20, he’s an outstanding footballer. As I’ve said before, I think John Cleary maybe should have a look at him, I honestly do. 

"He’s very physical, he’s a strong ball player and he’s one of the leaders in our group.

TOUGH

“Glanmire are tough and physical, and they’re confident as well. I watched their game against Naomh Abán, and they were unlucky not to get a victory against them, they missed a lot of scores. They were very powerful out around the middle of the field, we knew that was going to happen. 

"They’ve big guys and they’re an honest team as well. We won a fair bit of ball around the middle of the field, we won a lot of the breaks as well, to be fair. That’s a bit of a platform then in the modern game. Whoever wins midfield is supplying the ball into the forward line.” 

 They will hope to build from that platform once again when they take on Uibh Laire in the final four. The Muskerry men will be favourites, but that won’t bother Kiely one bit.

“You’d have to build Uibh Laoire up as favourites, and rightly so. They have fantastic players; Cathal Vaughan, Chris Óg Jones, Ian Jones and they’ve a couple of lads who played senior football with Muskerry as well. 

"We played them last year, we know what they are. They’re a very good and tough team. We’ll give it everything, we won’t be shy about it, we’ll tear into them and we’ll see where that brings us.”