New faces but similar outcome: Ronan Dwane delighted as Imokilly up and running

While the personnel may be somewhat different, Imokilly showed that they remain the team to beat for the Denis O’Riordan Cup with a good victory over UCC last Wednesday night.

A 4-26 to 0-19 victory at Clonmult Memorial Park in Midleton sent the east Cork side through to the final of the Co-op SuperStores Divisions/Colleges Hurling Championship, one game away from a place in the quarter-finals of the Premier SHC proper.

With Denis Ring, who guided Imokilly to the 2024 county title, having stepped down as manager, Ronan Dwane and Seánie O’Farrell are now driving the ship and it is one with an altered crew.

Many experienced heads have moved on, but such is the strength in depth that those taking their places ensure the team remains strong.

“We had nine fellas actually making their championship debuts,” Dwane said.

“We had six more fellas with county medals as well, so there was a good bit of experience through the team, but nine fellas who were making their first start for Imokilly.

“A lot of fellas have moved on, great servants to Imokilly, a lot of them fellas have four county medals, they gave amazing service.

“I suppose that's part of it, new fellas come in and you can't beat the bit of vibrance of youth as wel but we'd have been nervous about how they were all going to fit in and how they were going to go.

“We got a couple of goals in the first half which were great to get, and I suppose when we had the wind in the second half, we got some good scores early on, long-range scores, and we were able to control the game after that.”

As a new management team, Dwane and O’Farrell are not coming in cold in that they don’t know what they have at their disposal but there is naturally a sense of finding their feet.

“You’re familiar with them, but it's still a bit of a challenge coming in,” he said.

“Look, the fellas are keen, they're mad to play and they're really ambitious.

“We trained on Monday night after the games on the Sunday and we had 22 or 23 fellas togged out Monday evening.

“There’s always been a good attitude here. We still probably have a couple more that maybe could come back in, too.

“We’re happy just to be able to get back to it and move on to the next day.”

There are a couple of weeks between now and then but, for any divisional side, opportunities to gather together are few and that contributes to the growing situation where teams have been unable to field.

Imokilly do benefit from the longer campaigns of recent times, helping to build an understanding among players, but they face similar challenges to others. Nevertheless, the will is there.

“We've played two games,” Dwane said, “we played Ballygunner and we played Carrigtwohill as well.

“It's hard now with the clubs’ commitments and that, but look, there’s great buy-in from fellas, they just wanted to play.”