Imokilly's Ronan Dwane: Very hard to see a way around fixture squeeze for divisional sides

St Finbarr’s are back in the Cork PSHC semi-final after once again swatting aside Imokilly in the quarters, but this one was far from the incredible takedown they produced last year.

Imokilly were without a huge cohort of players. Not only their retirees – Seamus Harnedy, Bill Cooper, Mike Russell and Lawtons Barry and Brian – but also Jack Leahy, Diarmuid Healy and Sean O’Donoghue. Cillian O’Callaghan was only able to feature for 20 minutes in the latter act.

It meant that from the start, the divisional outfit were going to be up against it. They kept themselves in contention until the fourth quarter, but joint-manager Ronan Dwane was proud of the effort his side showed, given seven had been in action the day before with their clubs and an additional two on Friday.

“The quarter-final weekend is a very tricky one,” Dwane explained. “There are a lot of clubs still in the championship, you’re probably hoping some will get the bye into the semi-final, which would be a big plus. But it is what it is.

“With the new championship structure, it’s hard to fit the games in. I was in the Cork County Board for five years, I know all about making fixtures and how tough that is. I’m fully aware of a lot of the problems that are there.

“But I’m just immensely proud of our fellas,” he said. “They gave it everything, you couldn’t ask any more of them. A lot of fellas have played over the last 24 or 48 hours. It’s very hard to see a way around that. But we’re immensely proud of the effort that they put in.

“As more years go on, I suppose having success as well, you get a huge buy-in when you have success.

“I mean Imokilly has won four counties in the last 10 years and two before that. So you can aspire to be successful, but the longer it goes on it's harder to get people to commit.

But this current bunch, I couldn't fault them at all. Their commitment is outstanding.” 

No doubt the debate around divisions and colleges will rage on.

Hectic

The Barrs march on with their own scheduling headaches, given their footballers will be playing next weekend, but their semi-final opponents Kanturk will be battling the same issue.

“I think we'll be much similar to Kanturk now in that we'll have the same level of training sessions done between now and the semi-finals,” Barrs’ manager Paudie Murray said. “I think they're playing football next weekend as well. Can't be an excuse on our side, so, let's see.” 

The Barrs got the contest off to a flying start – four points from play in less than two minutes – but once Imokilly settled the Togher club suddenly found themselves plagued with wides. They hit eight in a row during a 17-minute scoreless spell.

“I suppose in our first half, 21 shots, should be happy with that, but your conversion rate was poor,” Paudie added. “And if we're going to go further, we need to tidy that up.

“I thought our second half was quite good, to be fair. I think the wind in the first half probably made things a small bit awkward for us, but some of the wides, certainly won't do the next day with striking that many.

“When we started well, you expect to kick on,” he explained. “I suppose that's probably the disappointing thing about it, but from where we are, we'll take it, we're in the semi-final now.

“Obviously we'd want to be playing better than what we are today in patches, but I thought our second half was really good. 

Lots of energy there, moved the ball a bit quicker as well. I thought we were far more economical.” 

Eoghan Finn made his second championship appearance off the bench yesterday and was hugely influential, scoring 0-2 to go with the 0-1 he got against Newcestown in the final group game.

“He's got his range from a striking point of view, and we’re nursing him along. He had a bad injury, and he's getting better every game.”