Wayne Hutchinson of Ballygunner in action against Conor Prunty and Sean Whelan Barrett of Abbeyside during the 2018 Waterford County Senior Club Hurling Championship Final match between Abbeyside and Ballygunner at Fraher Field in Dungarvan, Co Waterford. Photo by Matt Browne/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
For the last decade Ballygunner have ruled the Waterford Senior Hurling Championship with an iron fist, winning 10 titles in a row.
They’ve beaten six other clubs along the way with the average winning margin in those finals a handsome 12 points.
Standing in their way of an 11th title in a row this Sunday are Abbeyside-Ballinacourty, who have never before won a Waterford senior hurling championship and are appearing in their first final since 2018.
Ballygunner beat them by a dozen points that day so they don’t need to be told the scale of the challenge that’s facing them this weekend.
Still, there’s always hope.
“Look, obviously Ballygunner are an exceptional team,” says Abbeyside-Ballinacourty club chairperson, Neil Moore.
“Everybody is asking will they ever be beaten, but all we can do is try to get our best performance on Sunday out of the lads.
“In fairness to Benji Whelan and his management team, they've really done great work this year. The players have really bought into it and we're delighted with the progress so far. The main thing is that we're going in there on Sunday to give a really good account of ourselves and hopefully that might be good enough on the day.
“If it's not, it's not. Certainly, Ballygunner are an exceptional club and have outstanding players and some very good leaders down the middle of the team.
“They keep their standards very high and it's up to all the other clubs in Waterford to try to reach that standard. You can't be hoping Ballygunner will drop back to the pack because that's not going to happen because the standards in their club are so high.”
Abbeyside, also known as 'The Village', is a townland of Dungarvan on the east bank of the River Colligan.
Abbeyside-Ballincourty have been straining to reach those very standards in recent years.
Their parish begins on the east bank of the River Colligan as it cuts through Dungaravan, an area that has seen a lot of residential development in recent years.
The club has worked hard to harness this population surge and their presence in Sunday’s Final is no real surprise considering how well they’ve competed in the underage ranks over a sustained period of time.
“Our juvenile section has been very active for the last good number of years,” says Moore.
“You have the demands of an increased population and we're trying to react to that as best we can.
“At underage level we try to field two teams in every age-group, especially up as far as U-15. It gets harder obviously at minor because there's a certain level of play drop-off. But where possible we do try to cater for two teams.
“Our Saturday morning Academy would be very busy, we'd always have very good numbers there and we're very grateful to our juvenile section who do great work coaching the kids there.
“Thanks to the work of our juvenile section down through the years we've contested several U-21/U20 Finals. We've won one of them but last the other ones, unfortunately. Ballygunner have beaten us in the last three U20 county finals.
“We’ve lost some very good players to emigration but the steady supply of really talented hurlers off those U20 teams has softened the blow.
“The likes of Wilie Beresford, Rian Walsh, and Charlie Treen are all very talented younger players who have come through. BIlly O'Connell only got his leaving cert results last week and he's another very good hurler.”
Charlie Treen is one of a number of talented up and coming young hurlers in the Abbeyside-Ballinacourty team.
Abbeyside’s run to Sunday’s final is all the more impressive considering they’ve done it without two of their best forwards, Neil Montgomery and Seanie Callaghan, who have been sidelined through injury.
Montgomery made his first championship appearance of the season in last weekend’s semi-final win over Mount Sion, but it would be asking a lot of him to be thrown in from the start against Ballygunner
Very much leading the charge on Sunday will be two other county stars, Michael Kiely and Conor Prunty, who have been in excellent form throughout the campaign.
They got into the game as massive underdogs, but their potent combination of proven leaders and exciting young up and coming hurlers means they shouldn’t be written off completely.
How would it feel if they could pull off one of the great shocks on Sunday by winning their first ever county senior hurling championship?
“It would mean everything to the club,” says Moore. “We're a dual club and have won a number of football senior county titles and we played in a Munster senior club final and were narrowly beaten by Nemo Rangers.
"Hurling means a huge amount to the people of Abbeyside, going back to the '60s even when we lost a county final. You had outstanding players then like Austin Flynn and Donal Whelan who won All-Ireland medals with Waterford around that time.
"And there were other great players down through the years like Pat Enright. All these players were outstanding but never got to win a Waterford senior hurling medal.
"So it just really would mean the world to the club if we could get our hands on the cup for the first time ever."
