"Load the Magnum, fire the bullets but have none left coming off the field," - Cronin delighted with Cloyne effort

Winning with a 64th-minute goal is always sweet – though to get to that point requires 63 minutes that might feature uncertainty, discomfort and outright suffering.

Cloyne experienced all of this in Midleton on Sunday night, but they got the outcome they desired as Michael Cahill struck at the last to give them a 2-15 to 1-17 victory over Dungourney in the Premier IHC.

It was the first time in the whole match that they had led, having fallen 1-4 to 0-0 behind in the early stages and trailing by 1-9 to 0-4 at half-time. They refused to yield, though, and manager Killian Cronin was immensely proud of his players.

“This game was always going to be a savage, tough game against Dungourney,” he said.

“There’s history there – it’s actually 50 years this year, Cloyne beat them in an east Cork final outside in Castlemartyr.

“There was a bit of talk about that, but, look, Dungourney are a good side, Dungourney are going to be bang there at the end of the championship.

“We're delighted with the way our fellas fought – we had a poor start, poor first half, hit a few wides but look, great heart and they stuck in it.

“They trained for that, like. These lads have trained for the last 18 months for games like that, that we could keep going and keep going right to the end.”

It was an outcome that few would have predicted after Dungourney took control from the off, with Cillian O’Callaghan’s goal helping to put them into a commanding lead.

“We didn’t really come out of the blocks,” Cronin said.

“When you're playing Dungourney and they've good forwards, you try and set up to play against them and I just thought it took us a while in the first half to get to grips with the way we wanted to play.

“But I thought, once we stayed in the game, even at half-time eight points down, I was still happy enough, because I know these lads and there's great fight in them.

“I knew they'd come out and we'd fight, because that's the one thing we were saying – load the Magnum, fire the bullets but have none left coming off the field.

“I said that to them at half-time and, to be fair, they did that.”

Cloyne had operated a sweeper system, with former Cork star Paudie O’Sullivan in the quarterback role. Cronin admitted that there was a temptation to change to a conventional set-up when the deficit built up, but ultimately – like the players – those on the line kept faith and were rewarded.

“There is [a temptation], of course, there is, but you see there at the end, Paudie turned a good ball over.

“The danger is that you’re eight points down – ‘Oh my God, we need to go at this,’ – and the next thing you find yourself 15 or 16 down and they have the forwards to do that to you.

“That was the temptation but we stuck to it, we held our nerve and stuck to the plan.

“We knew the lads, if we could get a few balls and get a few scores, these lads would grow in confidence when they started coming back into it and, to be fair, they did.

“It’s great and there are more fierce tough games to come. They’re great matches – the east Cork championship years ago was one of the best championships in the country, there were great crowds and you see the crowd that came here today.

“But look, we'll enjoy tonight, we’ll come back down to earth, we’ll drive on and we'll go back to training.

“These lads are back training since last November, believe it or not. When Ballinhassig beat us, we literally went back nearly a month later.

“We went back, just doing a bit of strength and conditioning in the winter and things like that. I think, when it comes down to games like that, that helps you a lot.

“There's a lot going on there, there's a big backroom team and we've fierce backing from the club, which is great.”