O'Loughlin Gaels celebrate their recent county final win over Glenmore.
By Kevin Egan
Over the course of the weekend, 40 teams will go into battle in the AIB championships across three provinces, with a Leinster senior hurling title as well as senior hurling, junior hurling and junior football crowns in Ulster all up for decision. For 39 of those 40 teams, these games will be the culmination of a year’s preparation and hard work. For O’Loughlin Gaels of Kilkenny, their story is a little bit different.
Those that have survived into the third weekend of December have certainly lived up to the tagline of the AIB All-Ireland club championships, as no-one makes it this far without showing that they’re one of #TheToughest sides going.
Only last weekend there was incredible drama in all four provinces, perhaps most of all in Tullamore, where reigning All-Ireland champions Ballyhale Shamrocks notched an injury time goal to send their Leinster semi-final clash with St. Rynagh’s to extra-time, and thus preserve their four-year unbeaten record in knockout championship matches.
The south Kilkenny club also needed to finish strongly in this year’s Kilkenny senior final against O’Loughlin Gaels to secure a four-point win. Knocking over Ballyhale was the driving ambition of every member of the O’Loughlin Gaels senior panel in 2021, so when the final whistle sounded in that game at UPMC Nowlan Park on Sunday, November 7, it seemed as if all their work was going to go without reward.
Instead, they found a new channel to divert the fitness, sharpness and cohesiveness that they worked so hard to accumulate.
Their road to Redemption came in the form of the Kilkenny Intermediate football championship, and success in that competition opened the door to the AIB Leinster Junior football championship, where they are now just 60 minutes away from a provincial final of their own.
Wins over Blacks and Whites, Glenmore, and Clongeen have set up this weekend’s clash with Offaly side Clonbullogue in Freshford. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of their journey is that while they will play just their fourth football match of the year on Sunday, the plan is that tomorrow (Saturday) the panel will meet for what will be just their second training session of the year in the big ball code.
They’re not exactly ‘fine-tuned’ when it comes to the sport, but don’t expect it to hold them back in the slightest, as their philosophy is very simple.
“If it’s worth togging out for, it’s worth winning” explains Mark Bergin, who scored six points in the county hurling final and is now hugely appreciative of how football has helped the group put that game behind them.
“Going into that Ballyhale match, we felt we were ready to give it a good shot and that if we could get to the last quarter with the game in the balance, we’d have a great chance”.
Mark Bergin gets away from Kevin Mullen and Adrian Mullen of Ballyhale Shamrocks during last months' Kilkenny SHC final.
Sure enough, after 45 minutes it was 2-14 apiece. That was where things went askew however, as Ballyhale shot 1-5 without reply settle matters.
“Of course it hits you hard, and to be honest for the next two weeks we just took a break”.
Normally, club football in Kilkenny is played in Springtime, with hurling taking over for the summer and Autumn. Covid-19 took spring off the table this year, so championship football was played as a knockout competition hot on the heels of the hurling championship, meaning that O’Loughlins – like many other clubs in the county – didn’t have much time to change gears.
“We got a bye to the county semi-final against Blacks and Whites, I think because we were still hurling up to the final, and then we just got a text the week of that game. Fairly quickly you’d realise you miss the routine of meeting up, so even just walking into the dressing room with everyone there is a good feeling.
“Once you’re out on the field then, it’s like you forget about everything else and the competitive instinct kicks in, and you’re taking it very seriously when you’re out there. Everyone in the panel is a hurler as well, maybe not all senior, but we all hurl, it’s the same management team (headed by club legend Andy Comerford) and to be able to go out there with a carefree attitude is great for the spirit of the lads” Bergin said.
“It’s not like we needed to get familiar with each other as a group all over again, or anything like that”.
County final opponents Glenmore were also involved in AIB Leinster club action at intermediate level, so the final was scheduled for midweek under lights. Again, that left no time for training so it was straight into the game, but for players like Bergin – who captained the Kilkenny senior hurlers in 2017 – and current Kilkenny defender Huw Lawlor, that competitive streak again came to the fore. Bergin starred in a key role manning the centre-back position, while Lawlor added a goal to a strong physical performance at midfield. Add in 1-1 apiece from full forward Anthony Forristal and club captain Eddie Kearns, and a 3-7 to 1-7 victory meant there would be a county title brought back to the St. John’s parish after all.
O'Loughlin Gaels also flew the flag for Kilkenny in the 2019 John West Féile Peil na nÓg, showing that the club is keen to bring along another generation of footballing talent.
“Obviously hurling is number one for us and for pretty much all of Kilkenny, but it’s nice to get silverware, and we would consider ourselves worth our place in the senior football championship. We got caught in the relegation playoffs last year, but in 2019 we took Mullinavat (county champions) to a replay, so we think we’re able to play senior. It was important to earn our place back, but now we have the chance to represent Kilkenny which is a novelty in itself.
“We’re still only meeting up at weekends because it’s been a long year, we would all have got programmes to work on early in the New Year so management is conscious of that, and the approach of let’s go out, give it a rattle and see where it takes us, is working so far”.
One game at a time, but still with the freedom to dream, of course. Bergin was part of the O’Loughlin Gaels team that reached the 2011 All-Ireland senior final against Clarinbridge, and three more wins would put them back in the same arena again, albeit in a very different competition.
“The result wasn’t what we wanted, but that was an incredibly proud day for me, to hurl for O’Loughlin Gaels in Croke Park. It would be fantastic to get there again, and just to be able to think about that and imagine it is a great thing to be able to do, coming up to Christmas”.
In the history of the Leinster junior club football championship, just three Kilkenny teams – Mullinavat 2004, Mooncoin 2008 and Tullogher-Rosbercon in 2018 – have reached the provincial semi-final. All fell at that hurdle.
Succeeding where those three clubs failed was not on the radar of Mark Bergin, or anyone else in the club, up until a few weeks ago. But now that they’ve come this far, as he said right from the very start; “if it’s worth togging out for, it’s worth winning”.
