*Joe Cahill flanked by his two sons Diarmuid and Gearoid. Photograph: Burren Eye Photography
COROFIN’S SUCCESS in winning the intermediate hurling championship was not achieved overnight.
That was the immediate reflection of victorious manager, Joe Cahill and having coached a fair cohort of the players lining out in the final since they were aged six, he knows only too well how true that statement actually is.
Moments after guiding Corofin back to the top tier on the local hurling scene, Joe took time to reference the many people who have helped them to become a senior dual-club. “It is a surreal feeling at the moment. I’d like to think about the people over the years who kept Corofin going that have passed onto their eternal rest, men and women, by they keeping it going they gave us an opportunity to have a go at it, hopefully this win will excite the next generation. We’ve a thriving club up there, a small club in North Clare, now we’re a dual senior club and that is something that is not achieved overnight, there is a lot of hard work gone into it”.
When they were amalgamated with Ruan which led to their Minor A and U21A successes in 2019 and 2021, Joe was once again the man in charge and his time with many of the players dates back to the first time they held a hurley in Páirc Finne.
While he admitted to having a fine amount of intel on the players, Cahill was continually impressed with the ambition they display. “Someone said to me a half an hour ago that I know their dates of birth. You get involved with them and they are serious achievers both on and off the field, that is the most important thing, they want to do well in their careers but also in sporting terms. They are very easy to work with, the older crew who are 28 or 29 years of age, I worked with them this year and I got massive learnings from them, one thing this group do they demand high standards, we come to a management team coaching and we have to be ready for them, that happens from being on county squads. In 2017, we had five of them on a county minor team, they came back and set the standards”.
For up to twenty seven weekends in a row, Corofin had a sizeable amount of players lining out each weekend due to the club’s involvement in the Clare SFC, the level of fitness they had built up was a big asset in overcoming Sixmilebridge on Sunday, Joe felt. “My view on this is that match fitness is a different level of fitness, we have gained that match fitness, we had guys out there playing 27 or 28 games, playing games gives you an opportunity to go and be the best you can, they have seen it out and that is the most important thing”.
Also central to their success was a 0-9 return from freetaker, Gearoid Kelly. “He has been at it two or three years, it didn’t happen overnight for Gearoid, he is above on the pitch and he is practicing and trying to work on it, he is a great lad and a great leader among us. We had a meeting at the start of the year, we were going forming a leadership group with four or five of the players and we realised ten sessions into it we had thirty leaders, there was no followers just outstanding leaders, that is something that you either have or you don’t so I am just delighted for the group”.
In 1991, Corofin won their first intermediate championship, on that occasion Joe lined out at wing forward while this time round his two sons Gearoid and Diarmuid were in midfield and corner forward respectively.
Players like the Cahills won’t hold any fear when it comes to senior club hurling next season. “We’d to try and get up there, when you get up there it is an opportunity to go at it, for me it is about working hard, we’ve to go back and re-evaluate to see where we are, the league worked very well for us because we’d to win games, while we won it and we were delighted to win, we found twenty to twenty two guys that we could really call on and that is what it is about”.
Each outing on the sideline will see Cahill hold a folder in his grasp, while it doesn’t contain the dates of birth for all Corofin panellists, it does house considerable data on various teams and their own ranks. Notes on their opponents in the Munster club quarter-final Lorrha Dorrha have yet to be added to the folder.
“Today we wanted to get a licence to go playing senior hurling, it is great to get the Paddy Browne Cup going home but what I said to the guys this morning is we needed to get a licence to go play senior hurling, the only way we could that was by winning. We’ll look at Lorrha at the end of the week, we know the challenge of a Tipperary team and when you go down there you have to be ready to play”.
