Ibane boss Dan Murphy takes positives despite U21 final defeat

While the result may not have gone their way in Sunday’s McCarthy Insurance Group U21AFC final against Douglas, Ibane Gaels’ Dan Murphy was proud of his charges’ efforts on Sunday and throughout the year.

The Argideen Rangers/Barryroe combination lostby 1-16 to 2-9 in Macroom on Sunday, the city side making sure of victory with late points after the game remained in the balance going into injury time.

Having won the Carbery title earlier in the year, Ibane lost their manager Donal Holland when he died suddenly. They carried his memory with them as they made it to the county final and there was no disgrace in finishing second-best.

“It's just hard to know, I suppose, when you go into the county, what you're going to face,” Murphy said.

“When you play Douglas, you know you're going to be facing an awful lot of class, and it's great to compete. It's great to be here, to go deep into the competition and get to the last game.

“It was there, probably, for us, I suppose. It's a little bit disappointing in the short term, but we'll just have to get over that.

“Fair play to Douglas, they came strongly at the end. It was a good battle.

“It was fine margins, but you'd expect that in a country final. 

We're thrilled that the lads have put in a good effort all year, fierce effort in the last couple of months.

“They've done themselves proud and showed that they're capable of playing against the best.”

With stricter rules in place from 2026 around the participation of amalgamated sides, it may have been Ibane’s last match at U21 level, but Murphy didn’t want to dwell on that.

“That's for another day,” he said.

“Just the same as Douglas, lads, on the sideline there - congratulations to Conor Buckley and those boys, I know Conor, he's a great lad - they’re above in Douglas, facing different challenges than what we're facing. 

They're doing their best and we're at the same below in Barryroe and Timoleague.

“We face challenges as well and we can only do our best as well for our lads.

“We lick our wounds, but at least we were training the last couple of weeks and we were playing today. We could have been sitting at home on our backsides and we weren't.

“Fair play to the lads, they put in a good effort and I'm really proud of them. They deserve a huge amount of credit, the players and so on.”

PUSH ON

Now, the hope is that they can push on and have an impact at adult level for Argideen and Barryroe.

“The same as any other club, fellas will go by the wayside and fellas will go travelling and all that kind of stuff,” Murphy said.

“The goal is that all these lads will play into their mid-30 and have a bit of success with their adult clubs. Sometimes that's a generational thing, it might happen once every 10 years.

“This was a bit of a run for us this year. A pity it didn't end up in silverware, but congratulations to Douglas.”