Robert Brosnan sees U21 success a step forward in the 'long road back' for St Nick's

It has been a long road back for St Nick’s, and in the eyes of Robert Brosnan, it is far from complete.

Five-time Cork senior football champions, Nick’s have been sliding steadily since 2020, when a heavy 3-15 to 0-2 defeat to Bantry Blues consigned them to relegation from Senior A. Further demotions followed, and in 2024 they were clinging to the bottom rung, needing a narrow 1-11 to 0-12 Premier Junior relegation play-off win over St James’ just to survive.

That same year the scars were fresh. They reached the U21 B Football Championship final in 2024 only to be comprehensively undone by Kilmurry, beaten 0-15 to 1-2 in a sobering decider.

That is why this season, for all its imperfections, must be logged as progress.

Nick’s pushed their way to a Premier Junior county final – losing out to Buttevant – and returned to the U21 B final for a second successive year. This time, there was no repeat of last season’s trauma. Donoughmore were swept aside in emphatic fashion, 5-8 to 0-12.

The climb remains steep, but there is now something tangible to carry forward into 2026 – a county title and evidence that the foundations are beginning to hold.

“We've put an awful lot of work into our underage structures for the last number of years and you can see the fruits of that here now today,” Brosnan began. “We've got a big group coming through.

“We've another group coming through next year who will probably be P2 minor, so there's more bodies coming through now. There's a big future there, it's bright.

We're a long way down from where we should be in my eyes, and it's going to be a long road back, but that'll be the target. 

FRONT FOOT

Sunday’s win bore little resemblance to the limp display against Kilmurry twelve months earlier. This time, Nick’s attacked the contest from the outset, flooding forward with intent and forcing Donoughmore immediately onto the back foot.

“Last year, we felt we didn't really attack the game at all in the first half whereas that was a big focus for today.

“We wanted to really get off to a hot start and boy did we, we could have had four goals in the first five or six minutes!” Brosnan said. “We have a lot of good athletes and we just really went at them hard and it worked out a treat in fairness.”

Just as significant was their control in a contest that spilled over once or twice in the second half. Black cards were issued to both sides, yellow cards flowed freely, but Nick’s avoided the red cards that had crippled them in last year’s final – when they finished with two men dismissed.

“We're actually getting much better at that. Our discipline this year has been very good really, by and large,” Brosnan explained. “Obviously – it's always something – it's a work in progress with every team.

You want people to be aggressive, you want them to have to be on the right line of it.

“So in fairness tonight I thought we kept our composure, especially there when one or two fairly late hits were put in. They're not nice but, we're happy they've come out the other side anyway.” 

The old cliché that goals win games may be worn thin, but for this Nick’s side it continues to ring true. Eight goals in the Premier Junior group stages, seven more in a Division 6 league demolition of Aghinagh that sealed promotion to the fifth tier, and five again when silverware was on the line.

“On any given day it can work out better than others but we had a lot of runners off the ball today and with the pace and the power that we have when we do get that right, we're trouble for anyone.”