St Mullins Martin Kavanagh pictured at the Leinster Club Championships launch.
By Cian O'Connell
St Mullins minds were focused after watching Mount Leinster Rangers reach an All Ireland Club Final. Martin Kavanagh continues to impress for St Mullins, who recently completed a three-in-a-row in Carlow.
Mount Leinster Rangers exploits ensured St Mullins realised what could be achieved according to Kavanagh. “Ah yeah of course," Kavanagh admits. "Seeing them get to an All-Ireland final you'd be sitting at home and it's not impossible like.
"Any team can get there if you put your mind to it and work hard and you keep focused. Rangers set the bar for every team in Carlow.
"It took us a long time to get to them, but thankfully we've got to it now after beating them in the last two finals, but they're after beating us in the last two years in the group stages so there's nothing between us like, it's all on the day. Thankfully it happened for us on the day of the County Finals."
That so many of Kavanagh's cousins are involved merely adds to the drama when the two Carlow clubs clash. “I was at all the games," Kavanagh says about Mount Leinster Rangers journey to Croke Park. "I have 12 or 13 cousins on the team. First cousins, like.
"My mother and their parents would be all brothers and sisters. Off the pitch and at Christmas and that we'd always be together so it was great to see them get to it like. Obviously when we go and play each other you leave that aside. Off the pitch we're pretty much brothers. We get on great.
“The Murphys. Denis, Jack Murphy. The Coadys, Richard, Edward, Paul, John, David and Dean Grennan, James Hickey, Willie Hickey so there's a heap of us. Look, we play county together and that. We're great off the pitch. We're the best of friends. There'd be no hard feelings. You just have to put that aside. That's part and parcel of it."
Colm Bonnar will manage Carlow in 2017.
The challenge now for St Mullins is a tricky away assignment at Cusack Park against Raharney. “A lot of us have played there with the county and club and we never won in it so it's a massive task.
"Raharney are a great team. We played them up there two years ago in the Club Championship and they beat us so we're just hoping that we've learned from a couple of our experiences and that we can put in a performance which we haven't done in the last two years. We're kind of hoping for a performance and hopefully that's good enough."
Colm Bonnar's arrival as Carlow manager is a source of encouragement too. “Yeah, talking to a lot of lads about it, a few lads, they can't talk highly enough of Colm," Kavanagh remarks.
"We're all looking forward to the county and hopefully get Carlow back to where it should be because the hurlers in Carlow are of a very high standard and getting Colm in is great, his CV just speaks for itself.
"He's been with massive teams, Ballyhale at the moment, he's won Fitzgibbons, been with the Wexford county team, he was with Tipp so it's great to have him in. Hopefully he'll get everyone in Carlow, that's been the biggest problem for Carlow – not getting all the hurlers in."
After suffering relegation Carlow will be involved in the Christy Ring Cup in 2017. “Obviously it was a massive disappointment going to the Christy Ring. Our aim as players will definitely be to try to get out of Division 2A anyway and win the Christy Ring and get back up to Leinster, that's the main one."
