Ballinora's Mark O'Brien keen to build on historic 2025

Ballinora will play their first competitive fixture of 2026 this weekend as it now only sinks in that they are a Premier Intermediate football team.

The Muskerry club won the McCarthy Insurance Group IAFC title for the first time last year after defeating Ilen Rovers in an epic replay in the decider at SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

Willie Lyons’ outfit face Bantry Blues in their opening McCarthy Insurance Group Division 5 Football League game on Sunday in Bantry at 12 noon.

For forward Mark O’Brien, who impressed in his debut campaign last year, 2025 couldn’t have gone much better.

“At the start of the year we wouldn’t have been fancied to win the county at all,” he says.

“We knew we had a great team. We kind of really focused on getting out of the group first and worrying about the knockout stage later and we got a bit of luck getting out of the group with three points, some years that wouldn’t be enough.

“Once we made it into the business end, it just snowballed from there, beating Gabriel Rangers and Kilmurry to reach the final.

“I think Ballinora had been kind of craving a county title. We still had to perform on the day or two days as it turned out. The drawn game, we had to fight our way back to get level. In the second game, Ilen Rovers were down a nice couple of points. They fought their way back to get to extra-time.

“It looked like it was curtains for us right at the end until Kevin Werner scored a goal to win the title for us by two points. I couldn’t believe it when it went in.

“Kevin got a goal against Gabriel Rangers, which was a big goal, so he’s that kind of fella. He has plenty of confidence to be fair. Once the ball hits the back of the net, you don’t know where to look. I was running around, jumping around. You actually look at the video, everyone is running around, jumping around, it was an amazing feeling.” 

Ballinora will no doubt bring that feel-good factor from last year into the upcoming campaign, which is now only days away from getting underway for the Mid-Cork outfit.

“With the players that have been coming through over the last few years, the county title was definitely coming,” O’Brien said.

“We could feel it in Ballinora, probably a lot of people outside probably didn’t believe in us. But we always had the faith within the club that our group of players could win something, and thankfully we did.

“It’s all about building on it now and making sure we push on another bit again this year.

“We’re not going to be expected to do much up in Premier Intermediate, but we’ll probably take that as an advantage for us to go under the radar.

“It’s important from our perspective to have a strong league campaign going into the championship. You want to build up momentum. The league is great preparation that way. We know the championship will be tough, so if we can manage to get a few victories in the league, it will only be a plus.

“We have Naomh Abán, Nemo’s second team and Fermoy in our championship group. It’s definitely a tough group. There’ll be no easy game, but we’ll take it game by game. And as I said, focus on getting out of the group before we focus on anything else.

“All you can do is take it each game as it comes as cliché as that sounds. It worked for us last season. We had a positive enough Division 5 campaign last year, just missed out on promotion, and brought the positives into the championship.”