Doubters silenced, now Charleville hope to keep neighbours quiet

Listening to Charleville’s Ben O’Connor and Darragh Fitzgibbon after Sunday’s come-from-behind Munster intermediate final win, it was clear that neither coach nor player felt the team had been shown sufficient respect throughout the year.

Doubters silenced, now Charleville hope to keep neighbours quiet

Listening to Charleville’s Ben O’Connor and Darragh Fitzgibbon after Sunday’s come-from-behind Munster intermediate final win, it was clear that neither coach nor player felt the team had been shown sufficient respect throughout the year.

O’Connor alluded to the detractors who had continually questioned the team’s bottle and poured scorn on their short-passing game.

The former Cork forward also took aim at those who, he claimed, had said Charleville “would be blown out of it” by Clare champions, Feakle.

Fitzgibbon hit upon a similar theme, insisting the most pleasing aspect of Sunday’s victory was the 13-point swing between the interval and full-time whistles as the team had once again silenced their doubters.

“Charleville teams, in the past, would have been questioned,” the 21-year-old All-Star midfielder began.

“When teams would have got on top of us this year, we would have been questioned as to had we the answers.

We’ve been proving all year that we have the answer to all these teams. When the questions were asked of us, we answered them all.

“We knew at half-time that we hadn’t played our game. We had played into Feakle’s hands by playing the ball long. We knew we had the wind in the second period and that we needed to make them pay as they did to us in the first half. Fair play to all the players, we did what we said we’d do.”

Fitzgibbon, who top-scored with nine points, with eight in the second half, was one of 10 U21 players to start Sunday’s decider.

He admitted their familiarity with one another was a key factor in clawing back a 10-point interval deficit.

“We’ve been hurling together since we were eight-years of age. We are a really close group and winning brings you closer again.”

Charleville captain Danny O’Flynn, the oldest player (29) in red to feature at the Gaelic Grounds, heaped praise of the team’s younger members.

“There was incredible resilience shown. These young lads are used to winning, they have been exceptionally successful. Some of those lads have boxes full of medals at home from their underage days. I have two underage medals,” O’Flynn explained.

They have a confidence from winning tight games. When you are young, you have no fear, but it was more resilience and character, than anything else, that was on display here.

O’Flynn, in his 12th season with the side, noted how the Charleville dressing room was remarkably calm at half-time, despite trailing 1-13 to 0-6.

“People said we must have been roaring and shouting at half-time. There was none of that. It was more about getting back to basics. Sometimes in a crisis, it is easier to focus on one or two things; we focused on our shape and attacking the ball. They were by far and away the best team we have played against, but we had faith in our own style of hurling. We got a couple of scores at the start of the second half and that gave lads confidence.

“I was conscious throughout the second half that we kept getting it back to five but just couldn’t bridge that gap. Once we broke the five-point gap, we just had to keep going. And we did. The last couple of minutes were a bit of a haze, a whirlwind.”

Fitzgibbon, who was to fly out to America yesterday to link up with the Cork hurling squad, had a special word for sub Darren Casey, the scorer of their 63rd-minute match-winning goal. “Darren [Casey] has been struggling all year with injuries. It is hard to get into a team when you are winning the whole time. To get that goal to win it for the team, you just have to be delighted for Darren.”

Having become the seventh Cork club to secure the Munster IHC crown, Charleville will now meet either Eddie Brennan’s Graigue-Ballycallan or Portlaoise on the weekend of January 19/20 in the All-Ireland semi-final.

O’Flynn makes no attempt to hide the collective ambition to replicate what neighbours Kanturk achieved at the beginning of this year, when winning the championship at Croke Park.

The county final celebrations were wild enough, I won’t lie to you, but this win is sweeter because it was probably gone from us at half-time and so was unexpected.

“It is going to be a great couple of months looking forward to an All-Ireland semi-final.

“We were very envious of Kanturk last year. They beat us twice and we probably felt we weren’t a million miles away from them.

“We’ll be looking to emulate their success. Once all that is done, we’ll focus on senior hurling.

“But our next focus is an All-Ireland championship and we want to try and win that.”

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