Bride Rovers eye first East Cork JAHC crown in 28 years

Back in the decider and back for vengeance, Bride Rovers will hope to overcome Killeagh in this Sunday’s East Cork Junior A Hurling Championship final to atone for last year’s defeat to Cobh.

In doing so, they will hope to win their first East Cork title since 1998. And it was the target set from the beginning, says manager Richie Cahill.

“We called a meeting at the start of the year. The players set out the agenda, essentially where they wanted to be at this time of the year.

“And we said we wanted to get to the East Cork final again and just try and make up for last year as such. They set out the stalls, they set the tone.

“And to be fair, we're after getting to the East Cork final, but that guarantees absolutely nothing,” Cahill explains. “On the day, I don't think there's going to be much between the two teams.” Years of fighting for the Senior A title finally yielded Bride Rovers’ breakthrough last year against Castlelyons after a replay. And, in their first season at Premier Senior, they gave a very good account of themselves.

“The main focus was to stay up,” Cahill says. “I suppose going into the Midleton game, we should have won it, to be perfectly honest about it. Missing three key players on the day.

“We finished the year on a good note because we know we can contest against some of the best. Midleton are up there, the top three or four teams in the county. So, it was a good end to the season, we survived, and we know we can compete.” The Junior As have been boosted by it too, particularly from the high standards in training, which forward Ed Cashman feels have benefited the team.

“The senior team is a massive help to us,” Cashman explains. “We’re all training with them, they’ve been flying the last few years, and got to semi-finals and finals. It’s massive to be training with the likes of them. It’s good, hard training with top players from the senior team.

“Last year was a very good year for the club,” Ed says. “It’s the furthest we’ve gone at Junior A in a long time, so we were delighted with that. This year we just wanted to build from that, and we’re back in the final where we wanted to be.” Cahill feels that while running both teams together has brought its own challenges – particularly around the split season – it’s a good problem to have.

“To be fair to the senior management, when we needed them for training or a match, there's no problem with releasing players,” he remarks. “But again, it can be challenging at times.

“We had a bit of congestion, I'm kind of concerned about player welfare sometimes. But this is the beauty of the condensed season. If you're getting to the latter end of the competitions where you want to be, there're going to be little conflicts here and there. There're going to be little crossovers, whether it be college hurling, or with the juniors, or with the U21s. There're a lot of factors.

“We'd have a certain amount of players who'd be on the senior squad,” Cahill says. “And then the rest that aren’t on the senior training squad, I'd be with them. It's definitely helped the senior team.

“There's a standard of hurling in East Cork. The Jamesy Kelleher Cup is at a very high standard. And it just helps the development to make that transition into be it the senior team or the intermediate team, whatever it is.”