Manager Liam O’Keeffe credits senior players as Midleton’s U21s continue strong form

In the two-month blur that is an U21 hurling campaign, there’s barely time to plan, let alone perfect. It’s a competition wrapped in layers of uncertainty around timing and venues every season, but Midleton manager Liam O’Keeffe knows the drill.

He’s the latest to take charge of the Midleton U21 show, and just like Davy O'Brien before him, he’s turned a short window into another East Cork title, their third in a row.

And after overcoming Ballincollig in their quarter-final on Saturday, they’re two wins from winning back-to-back cuntry titles. But there has not been a repeat winner since Blackrock did so in 2014 and 2015. Midleton’s last completion of that feat was back in 1988 and 1989.

“We have completed the East Cork, we've won three in a row, that was our aim at the start of the year,” O’Keeffe said after the victory over Ballincollig. “It's a two month window you get with these fellas.

“We asked them today, that we had three more steps. We achieved one today, we know we've a bigger challenge against Newcestown next week, they were here watching us. And the astro does have an effect on the scoring, but we have trained on the astro below with the facilities that we have and they're first class.

NO EXCUSE

“We can train every night depending on the weather, there's no excuse that we can't train. We've kept this simple, we’ve done one night a week, as I said we played a couple of matches so that's basically it, and we knew we'd have a challenge against Ballincollig coming up, but we were quietly confident.” 

That quiet confidence certainly proved to be warranted. Scoring 4-25 is seriously impressive even with the astroturf, and it was no surprise that their top three scorers were Evan McGrath, Dave Cremin and Mikey Finn, given how influential that trio and full-back Tadhg O’Leary Hayes have been after the year they had with the senior team.

“As I said last week it was led by the senior players, they have been terrific,” O’Keeffe explained. “I'm not mentioning their names again, but it's a squad game, we used five today now [from the bench] and we could use another five next week again.” 

The five did have a big impact off the bench, none more so than Senan Carroll, who, for the second game running, came on and got himself on the scoresheet. This time it wasn’t a late title-clinching goal, but instead four points, all from play.

He will certainly have a part to play again next weekend, as they take on Newcestown in the semi-final for the second year running.

“I don't know much about them, I didn't see them last year, but we will know a bit about them.

“One thing about Newcestown, you know what they're going to do, they'll die with their boots on, we'll know what we're up against.” But this competition has been and is always about development, and Midleton have really honed in on that aspect over the last number of years.

“The seniors put in a fabulous effort, we just came short up against Sars again,” Liam said. “They're probably that little bit ahead of us but we are definitely closing the gap, this is one we want to win, we make no bones about it anyway.

“This is about development, we are Premier Senior, Intermediate A, and whoever is involved next year we need to look at that, we need to be back up Junior A in east Cork.

“We have plenty of numbers and this is all about developing players because this is what this club is about.”