AGHADA HURLING AND FOOTBALL CLUB

A nice crowd attended this years A.G.M, where 2007 was thrashed out in great detail. Chairman Jimmy O’Leary was re-elected for another term as were all the out going officers. Fergal Condon was appointed the new Premier Intermediate hurling manager, while a new management team for the senior football is to be finalized in the coming weeks. At the previous weekend’s dinner dance Stephen O’Keeffe was named footballer of the year, Conor Rice the U21 clubman, and Martin Day the hurler of the year. Congrats to all.

Club Shop

Robin Triggs has recently got into stock a new design of club gear bag. Also anyone who may be looking for a coat, jacket, polo shirt etc from the club shop for Christmas, would need to place their order very soon. For more information contact Robin Triggs on 087 2138780.

Juvenile note

Aghada Under 10 Hurling Tournament

Early August, the sun shining, hurleys and sliotars ready. It can all mean only one thing. All-Irelands may come and go but as usual the under 10 hurlers do battle in Rostellan.

This is a huge tournament with up to sixteen teams taking part including the local iomanaithe

These fellahs have been training and playing all over the summer and now they get the chance to play a tournament on their own home sod and in front of everyone. Win, lose or draw these players have been a credit to their trainers, parents, code and clubs.

We hope to see as many people as possible in Rostellan on Saturday. The response is always fantastic, so the players will get full support this weekend. A word of thanks to all the help shown during the year, between parents, organisers etc.

We hope that the players will enjoy themselves and that the standard of hurling will be as good as Pairc an Chrocaigh, Staid Semple or Pairc Ui Chaoimh.

Ar an Ath Fhada, bionn na h-iomanaithe is fearr ar an …..bpairc,

Games begin at ten past ten on Saturday morning,

See you there……

Sunday Independent article from the 16th of July – Eamonn Sweeney

LAST week I asked a friend if he'd been to see The Wind That Shakes The Barley. "No," says your man, "if I wanted to see Corkmen being tortured I'd go to the game in Killarney on Sunday."

The buck turned out to be overly pessimistic, but it did set me to thinking about the possibilities of a sequel to Ken Loach's Palme D'Or winner. All the ingredients are there. You have an oppressed group of young men who've been getting it in the neck from their nearest neighbours since time immemorial. Every time they've risen up they've been ruthlessly put down. But the day comes when they've had enough and they decide to meet fire with fire.

The men's leader isn't sure if he mightn't be better off settling for a quiet life. But his comrades persuade him into joining the struggle. "We have the brawn but you have the brains," they say. And so he commits himself to freeing his land from the tyranny of the historical oppressor. We could even name the film after him. We could call it The Wind That Shakes The Billy.

And if last Sunday's Munster final was Cork football's War of Independence and the draw was a kind of treaty, that means we're now at the point in the story where the Rebels have to decide what to do next. Do they go back to the old ways, bow down and swear an oath of allegiance to The Kingdom? Or do they go for broke and give it one more almighty rattle?

However it pans out, last Sunday in Fitzgerald Park was hugely significant for the future of Cork football. It proved, once more, that there are stupider things you can do than putting your hand in a pit bull terrier's mouth to win a bet. You can doubt Mick O'Dwyer and Billy Morgan for a start. Ten days ago the world and his wife knew that Micko would retire after Tyrone knocked Laois out of the championship. Mr and Mrs World also knew that Billy's days would be numbered following Cork's humiliating defeat at the hands of Kerry. (In fact, the telly pundits still knew this even at half-time in the games.)

But the secret of Micko and his Cork doppelganger's continued success is simple enough. They generally know what they're at, even if they're unlikely to send their players shopping for pieces of string to tie around their wrists or packets of chewing gum containing motivational tattoos. Once more they got it right and the soothsayers got it wrong.

The outlook is bright for Cork football because Morgan has unearthed a group of players who, for the first time in years, are able to match Kerry physically and have the determination and confidence to improve with experience. The potential is huge because Cork have rarely sent out such an untried team in a Munster final.

Seven players were making their provincial decider debuts last week, most of them unknown nationally and some of them not even particularly well known in their own county. Almost all of them looked to have the right stuff. So the question is; where the Hell did he get them?

It's a neck of the woods without the romantic resonances of West Cork

Two words. Carrigdhoun and Aghada. The first is a division, the second a club. Between them they provided six players, including almost all of the team's most surprising stars, Ger Spillane and Michael Prout of Carrigdhoun and Kieran O'Connor and Pierce O'Neill of Aghada. (The other two players were both from Carrigdhoun, keeper Alan Quirke who must have been surprised to find himself with so little to do and the consistently excellent and constantly under-rated Nicholas Murphy.)

Perhaps it's not surprising that Cork fans looked askance on a team powered by such unlikely sources. Because Carrigdhoun is the acknowledged Cinderella division of the county. Not only has no club from the division ever won a county senior title, the divisional team's best ever showing was a hurling final appearance in 1945. Located in what sometimes gets called South Cork, in an area where the big towns are Carrigaline and Kinsale, Carrigdhoun is mainly comprised of places which used to be in the countryside but could soon be dormitory suburbs serving the nearby city.

It's a neck of the woods without the romantic resonances of West Cork, where the country rubs up against the accoutrements of the city. Michael Prout's club Shamrocks come from Ringaskiddy, best known for a ferry port and a Viagra factory. Ger Spillane's Ballygarvan is a few miles from Cork Airport. Carrigaline, where Nicholas Murphy has joined pottery as a famous export, was a country village a couple of decades ago before becoming a kind of southern Lucan and increasing 30 fold in population. Meanwhile, Aghada, a few miles to the east of the city, has Whitegate refinery on the doorstep.

The Carrigdhoun division and its clubs as a whole have made little impact at senior level. Ballygarvan reached county finals in 1888 and 1896 while Shamrocks had their big day out in 1916. What's interesting about those appearances is that they came in hurling finals. When Cork GAA people think about the Carrigdhoun clubs at all, they'd be more inclined to regard them as small ball outfits.

Aghada similarly reached a couple of county hurling finals back in the nineteenth century, withdrawing from the 1889 decider with Iniscarra due to disgruntlement about the match being fixed for The Polo Grounds. The Polo Grounds in Ballincollig that is.

When Cork footballers won their last All-Ireland, in 1990, Carrigdhoun had no-one on the team, Aghada had one and Carbery and the city had a combined total of eleven. But there's no need to even go back that far. When the Rebels played Kerry in last year's All-Ireland semi-final, Aghada had no-one, Carrigdhoun one and Carbery and the city eleven again.

The change in the geographical axis of the Cork team has been wrought almost overnight. Kerry and Cork wasn't the only draw last Sunday. The minnows of Carrigdhoun and Aghada tied with the city and Carbery, the traditional West Cork heartland of football in the county, at six apiece.

That lone 1990 representative for the East Cork team was Conor Counihan, to whom must go a lot of the credit for Aghada's transformation into a powerful footballing force. Counihan, it is fair to say, will be remembered for a certain steeliness of approach, and that style seems to have spread through the club. O'Connor and O'Neill are absolutely fearless and not inclined to stand on ceremony, attributes which apply to the Aghada team generally.

Last year the club reached the county semi-final and gave Nemo Rangers their best game of the year before losing by four points. This year they have reached the quarter-finals and nobody particularly wants to draw them. Carrigdhoun are in those quarter-finals too.

All the same, it's hard for players to be noticed when they're playing with a county's less fashionable teams. Spillane and Prout are junior footballers after all. But Morgan has benefited from Cork's insistence on taking seriously one of the GAA's forgotten competitions, the All-Ireland Junior Championship.

Cork's win in the final of that competition last year registered scarcely a blip on the radar but in the side which beat Meath were Spillane, Prout and O'Connor, half of a defence which would prove good enough a year later to hold Kerry to ten points. (Donncha O'Connor, left corner-forward for Cork today, came on as a sub that day so Morgan has garnered almost a third of his team from a competition many counties treat with absolute disdain.)

Spillane, man of the match at number six last week, was actually picking up his second All-Ireland junior medal last year, having been in the same position in 2001. He's taken a while to come through as has Prout whose short career has been so varied he's almost certain to be a staple question in future pub quizzes.

Man of the match for Ireland in the under 17 compromise rules series in 2000, Prout picked up an All-Ireland minor medal with Cork hurlers in 2001, playing at right half-back, beside John Gardiner. An All-Ireland intermediate win in 2003 seemed to confirm he was more likely to make his mark as a hurler. But in 2004 he was on the Cork under 21 football team which won Munster before playing a key role on that junior team last year. Aggressive, determined and like nothing so much as the second coming of Cahalane, Prout looks set for a long inter-county career.

Morgan wasn't so much making a leap of faith as thinking slightly outside the box

It's not the first time Morgan has been attentive towards the happenings at junior level. Of his great late eighties team, Counihan, Teddy McCarthy and Danny Culloty all came to prominence in the forgotten grade. Back then he had a name for giving a start to players from regions of the county previously overlooked, hence the strong West Cork influence on his team.

Perhaps it's his fanatical love of Nemo Rangers which makes him less likely to disregard club form than many managers. O'Neill was a complete surprise selection last week but he had an outstanding game as Darragh Ó Sé's anticipated dominance failed to materialise. A towering performance for Aghada in their club championship win over Anthony Lynch's Naomh Aban is believed to have earned him the nod.

Then again, close inspection reveals that O'Neill has shown form previously. When Aghada won the Munster Club League in 2003, beating Kerins O'Rahillys in the final, O'Neill outplayed the giant Michael Quirke, regarded as a live prospect for senior honours at the time. Valley Rovers 'keeper Quirke has had to bide his time behind Kevin O'Dwyer but back in 1999 he was winning a Munster club title with UCC, having saved two penalties in the county semi-final against Ballincollig that year. Morgan wasn't so much making a leap of faith as thinking slightly outside the box and benefiting from a little bit of assiduous detective work.

So there they are. The men from God knows where. There's only one problem. An oil refinery, a ferry port, an airport, a commuter town and a Viagra factory. How are we going to get folksy local colour out of that? God knows what Marty will come out with.

Billy rings in the changes O’Neill, Shields get debuts

by Barry O'Donovan Evening Echo
WE figured there would be changes on this Cork team for this Munster final and it turns out we underestimated just how many.
After a disappointing display in the send-final win, there are five personnel changes to the starting 15 and two positional switches for the clash with Kerry’ on Sunday.
lb get the housekeeping stuff out of the way first off, well there are two championship debutant heading out onto the field on Sunday, in the shape of Pierce O’Neill of Aghada and Michael Shields of St Finbarr’s, both of whom were tipped for starting spots over the last couple of days.
There are four players making their first championship start at senior level, you can add Michael Prout and Donncha O’Connor to the earlier two, and there are a couple more who’ll be facing Kerry for the first time, in Alan Quirke and Ger Spillane.
It’s as inexperienced a line-up at this level as Cork have put out in recent times.
Let’s go through it line by line then. Alan Quirke gets the nod as expected in goal having added another clean sheet to his tally the last day. Graham Canty stays in full-back; Kieran O’Connor stays in the corner and with it seems to have gotten the job to pick up Cohn Cooper, such a thorn in Cork’s last campaign.
Again. Predictably enough Ger Spillane is handed the number six jersey and Anthony Lynch goes back onto the wing after looking more comfortable there a month ago.
As it turns out, both Michael Prout and Michael Shields get to start the game, with Prout staying in the corner he finished strongly against Limerick and Shields lining out in the half-back line.
It’s Sean Levis and Noel O’Leary who lose out here Still, there’s a strong, snappy look about the defence, just like there’s been all year. Midfield has the usual twosome in Derek Kavanagh and Nick Murphy wearing eight and nine but its further forward things get interesting.
James Masters and Fintan Gould retain their number 13 and 14 jerseys and Kevin MacMahon stays out on the wing but otherwise it’s all change Donncha O’Connor from Ballydesmond comes in to grab the number 15 jersey and it’s a promotion that’s been coming. O’Connor has looked lively all year in training, trials and matches, he’s been in top form for Duhallow in the local championship, smacking seven points in each of their two wins and he showed really well on being introduced in the Gaelic Grounds, setting up two scores for James Masters.’ The half-forward line sees two changes Sean O’Brien takes over at wing-forward for his first start since 2004 and his first championship start as a forward for Cork — again on the basis of a good workmanlike ten minutes against Limerick, some good showings for Nemo and good form in the last month-And then there’s the judgement call, the wildcard at number 11. Pierce O’Neill, just back training with the panel again very recently is somewhat a surprise inclusion on the starting 15 though there was talk from the camp in recent days of his flying form making him a serious contender. O’Neill played with the TG4 Underdogs in 2004 when they beat Kerry down in Tralee and will be coming up against his midfield partner that night, Kieran Donaghy, on Sunday. He’s put in some powerful fielding performances for Aghada in the club championship in recent years around the middle and has impressed the Cork selectors in challenge and trial matches over the last couple of weeks. O’Neill may spend most of the game around the midfield area though Cork have had a preference for a big man at centre-forward all year by the way; it’s Conor McCarthy David Niblock and Kevin O’Sullivan who lose out in the forwards.
So, there certainly won’t be anyone calling it a safe selection for a Munster final but it seems the Cork management have called it to form for this one, form with a definite touch of taking a chance and seeing how it works out. But with both last summers’ loss to Kerry and the problems the team have in scoring, there were always going to be changes-

Cork team
Alan Quirke;
Michael.Prout, Graham Canty, Kieran O’Connor;
Michael Shields, Ger Spillane, Anthony Lynch;
Derek Kavanagh, Nicholas Murphy
Sean O’Brien, Pierce O’Neill, Kevin MacMahon;
James Masters, Fintan.Gould, Donncha O’Connor.

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