Alan O'Connor on St Finbarr's title defence: We take nothing for granted and that includes the first round

Such is the nature of the extended club championship season that, unless they go to All-Ireland glory, even the defending county champions are coming in to the new campaign off the back of a loss.

For St Finbarr’s – who commence the new McCarthy Insurance Group Premier SFC with a game against Carrigaline in Ballinhassig tonight (7pm) – defeat in the AIB Munster Club SFC final to Dingle was painful.

For Barrs veteran Alan O’Connor, who is suiting up for a 16th season with the Togher outfit, it’s a case of not dwelling on the loss but still taking the lessons from it.

“I think when Jimmy [Barry-Murphy] spoke after the game, I actually thought he spoke very well about it,” he said.

“He basically said that you can't control decisions that go for or against you in a game, that's just the bounce of the ball and sometimes they're brilliant, sometimes they're not.

“We look back at kind of the areas that we could have done better. We were winning by a decent margin and we probably maybe left them kick more comfortable scores than we should have. We probably didn't take scores that we could have.

“We probably just didn't put the, we probably didn't put the final nail in the coffin ourselves and so I think those are the things you need to look at because, ultimately, if a ref makes a decision, it's completely out of our control.

Harsh lessons

“Whether you agree with it or not, it doesn't really matter and dwelling on that is ridiculous because there's nothing you can do to get better at, looking at refs' decisions for next year. But there is something we can do at stopping up other teams, being a bit more stout in defence, protecting a lead better, going for the throat, scoring a few more scores, capitalising on kick-outs, capitalising on breaks, not giving away soft frees, all this kind of stuff.

“I suppose we look at it as we should have been fair enough away that any decision wouldn't have mattered. We should have probably put the game to bed a little bit better ourselves and that's what we're kind of coming from.”

Last year’s county title, beating neighbours Nemo Rangers in the final, was the Barrs’ third in eight years, having gone 33 years without the Andy Scannell Cup before that.

The last time they went back-to-back was 1979 and 1980 and that is obviously the aim. However, as Alan and Lisa are currently learning with new arrival Fionn, it is literally a case of taking things one day at a time.

“Yeah, look, the goal is to win it again this year, don't get me wrong,” he said.

“It's not something that we've actually talked about, the back-to-back element, I think we take the year for what it is – everyone starts on the same amount of points and you've got to go out and prove it. 

I suppose, if you look back in years gone by, we got to the final again in 2022 after winning it in 2021 and we lost and we certainly don't take those opportunities for granted.

“Finals don't come around that often. There was a huge gap there when we hadn't really won one in a very long time, so we understand that capitalising on the group that we have right now is important and we take nothing for granted and that includes the first round.

“All of our focus is on that game and nothing else. Carrigaline are a very strong team and at senior football level, you don't get any easy championship games, so we just have to buckle down now and focus up.”