Premier SFC: Carbery keen to build on encouraging campaign

While Carbery’s McCarthy Insurance Group Premier SFC campaign came to an end with Sunday’s quarter-final defeat to St Finbarr’s, manager Gene O’Donovan feels there is potential his division and others.

The south-west side fell by 4-23 to 1-11 against a strong Barrs side. O’Donovan, in his first season in the role, is keen for the year to stand as a platform on which to build, allowing players the exposure to top-level football.

“It's a huge effort, not just here in Carbery,” he says.

“A good friend of mine, John O’Connor, is over Imokilly seniors and they're going into a winter programme.

“It's not the divisions let the championship down this year, it's the colleges let the championship down this year.

“There's only a few that don't want this competition and it's not the divisions that don't want it.

“We really want this competition for those boys, to put them on the stage, so they can play better football and then they’re better players when they go back to their clubs too, which is great.”

On Sunday, Carbery competed well but trailed at half-time by 0-12 to 0-8 having payed with the wind. Then, four second-half goals for the Barrs showed how ruthless they can be as well as illustrating the level required to make a mark in the top tier.

“You're talking premier senior footballers against junior footballers,” O’Donovan said.

“You must remember that seven of our lads played on Friday night. Matthew Sheehan covered something like ten kilometres on Friday night – I was at that game and he sent me on his data – and I'd say he probably covered the same thing down today.

“I'm not pointing a finger at the Carbery board – in fairness, the board were very, very co-operative with me, I must say, when it came to games and their hands were held to play those games. There's no bones about that, no grief about it.

“Maybe in a review of the season, we’ll get to talk about things. The more games we get, the better these guys will do.”

To that end, having a greater ability to convene for training would be of huge benefit to Carbery.
O’Donovan acknowledges the assistance of the divisional board in meeting requests, though a dedicated patch of land would be a major help.

“If we had more facilities,” he said.

“We actually struggled to get pitches this week. A lot of our lads were involved in championship, between the three intermediate teams that were knocked out last week – obviously, they'd still rather be playing but for us it was a blessing in disguise because we were able to get the lads out training last Wednesday night, but we only got three-quarters of a pitch.

“If we had more facilities made available, it would be a help. I have to praise Tim Buckley and David White, and the whole board – anything we’ve asked for, they’ve been 100 percent behind us.

“I would say a bad word against them, to be quite honest with you.”