By Eoghan Cormican,Irishexaminer.com
Copyright irishexaminer
Blarney didn’t wear senior clothes long at all.
They successfully fought off relegation in 2009, they unsuccessfully fought relegation the year following.
Mark Coleman holds a very black and white view on why second-tier escape for that Blarney group became little more than a short-stay senior vacation.
“When Blarney got up in 2008, it was probably three or four years too late for that team and we ended up getting relegated a year or two later again. We just didn’t have the age profile to keep going forward,” states the current club captain.
Blarney are once again banging relentlessly at the door of top-flight Cork hurling. Beaten finalists in 2023 and ‘24.
Semi-finalists this Saturday and 60 minutes from a third consecutive final involvement.
Year-on-year consistency in navigating a path to the business end is commendable.
The fear, though, is that their prime years could be spent — and squandered — attempting to escape the second tier, rather than rising a step on the ladder and seeing how they’d fare against the market leaders of club hurling on Leeside before any sell-by date is approached or passed.
For now, the age profile is good.
Going through the team from the recent quarter-final win over Na Piarsaigh, and adding 12 months to the respective ages listed in last October’s county final match programme, corner-forward Shane Mulcahy is the oldest outfield starter at 30.
He’s also the sole outfield starter in his 30s. Full-back Seán Crowley stands second oldest at 28.
Three of the starting six forwards — Denis McSweeney, Cian Barrett, and Eoghan Kirby — are aged 22.
Corner-forward Cathal McCarthy is a year younger, while the fulcrum of the attack, Shane Barrett, is only 24.
You get the point.
Even after two county final defeats, this is a team still with far more years in front of them than behind them.
“When you have the team, you want to be winning. The longer it goes on, the harder (promotion) gets because the age profile of the team starts to go up, as well,” said Coleman, 27.
“Now we do have a very young team at the moment, but if we were to go up Premier Senior, you feel like it is a good time to have a good rattle off it, that we have a good age profile. That is the aim, to get up Premier Senior while you have that age profile in the team.”
Coming into 2025 off the back of successive final defeats to Newcestown, after a replay, and Glen Rovers, it was impossible not to immediately fix the collective gaze all the way to the concluding Sunday.
Anything earlier than that was territory they’d already twice conquered.
The final became a distant dot when Bride Rovers put them back on their heels on the opening weekend of championship.
A seven-point setback. Every game thereafter held knockout status. A second defeat and they were gone.
How they fought out from the corner they were boxed into didn’t surprise Coleman.
“We do have high expectations of ourselves, which is natural when you get to two finals in a row. Last year was a bit of an anomaly in that it was Glen Rovers who were coming down. They were probably that bit better than everyone there. We felt we were the second-best team, when you look at it on the whole.
“That should give you confidence going into this year that you are probably there or thereabouts again.
“The first-round defeat, though, wasn’t really a surprise because we hadn’t won a League game since April, we had a lot of injuries, and you had Shane (Barrett), Paudie (Power), and myself coming back into the set-up. So things were a bit disjointed, there was no rhythm in the team. The defeat was a good assessment to where we were at and showed us what we had to work on.
“When your back is to the wall, it is easy get your work rate up. A lot of the players have a lot of experience from the last few years, so how we responded is what you expect from a team down the road that bit further.”
Castlelyons this Saturday, the team they conquered to win the Premier Intermediate crown five years ago. A higher peak they are now ready to scale.
