*Kevin Keane. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
COROFIN’s footballers have “an immediate chance” to try atone for the club’s relegation from the senior hurling championship according to one of their dual players.
Crowned intermediate football champions in 2021, Corofin won the hurling equivalent in 2023. Stays in the top flight have been short-lived with the footballers relegated last year and the hurlers dropping down for next year.
Kevin Keane is wing back on the football side and wing forward with the hurlers. He said they are hoping to go from the low of hurling relegation to the high of football promotion. “Playing both is all we’ve ever done and it is all we know of. I know people will say in other clubs if ye stuck to one or the other ye would be great but it is all we know since we were five years of age, playing hurling and football, since we’ve gone into adult level it has been week on week off and that has been how it’s been, at times when they are both going well you feel on top of the world but in fairness for my career we haven’t had a lot of time where we have been going very well in both at the same time but it is lovely to have a distraction when one of them is not going well”.
He explained, “The year we won the intermediate hurling, we were in the relegation final for the football so when the football wasn’t going well we could pick ourselves back up for the hurling which again was a nice distraction, the same as this year the football has been a nice distraction six days after the hurling relegation we had a football semi-final so we hadn’t time to feel sorry for ourselves because we’re back in training with our season on the line again, it definitely can provide a good distraction”.
Keane told The Clare Echo, “We played nine championship matches last year between hurling and football and we won the eighth, last year was a very tough year when we were losing matches and losing bodies, mentally it was very tough. Management on both fronts deserve a lot of credit, the football management know the hurling result and vice versa so it is up to them to meet the players where they are at coming in. When you are on the back of a tough defeat there is no point flogging lads and assigning blame for what happened the week before, it is a completely fresh start, if lads are high and up after winning a game there is no harm to peg them down a bit, they deserve a lot of credit not just for this year but always, we’ve never really let one affect the other, we have been on winning runs and losing runs but it hasn’t been a negative one against the other but it can’t afford to be either because we’ve the same pool of players, we’ve one or two either way and that is all”.
Sunday’s final is “an immediate chance to put it right,” he said following their relegation from the senior hurling grade. “The thing it gave us last year no more than this year, it gave us an immediate chance to put it right, we played the hurling relegation final a week after losing the football relegation final, it was a chance, it obviously didn’t save our football year but as a club we’re all the Corofin club, it was a chance for us to keep the club up here in senior for at least one code, the same way we’d a six day turnaround from the Doora/Barefield hurling game to the Clondegad semi-final. I read one of the articles afterwards (Clare Echo report) and it said something like ‘Corofin don’t want to return to being a dual intermediate club’, we haven’t been intermediate in both for four or five years, I know we did a year of dual senior but when I was going to Corofin matches as a teenager when my two older brothers were playing, it was predominantly going to intermediate football and hurling so it was a big thing for us when we did eventually get to senior to try and hold that, it means a lot of effort has gone into it and a lot of time, as much senior football and hurling that we can play is the aim”.
Bouncing back to the top tier of senior football at the first attempt is their focus, the twenty four year old said. “We deserve to be where we after last year, we felt we weren’t the worst team in the championship but our performances did reflect us as the worst team, on paper we were not the worst team but games are not played on paper, we fully deserved to lose the game to Kilmihil, there was a good bit of hurt there, the hurling was a good pick-me-up at the end of last year but definitely it was our aim to get straight back up because you know the first year is the one to bounce back, if you get stuck beyond a year you never know how long you will be stuck down for, that was definitely the intent from the start of the year”.
Senior semi-finalists just three years ago, Corofin know just how easy it is to slip down the pecking order. “Time is a great thing to look back on but that probably came too early for us in a way, I wouldn’t say we got ahead of ourselves but we probably did think it was easier than it was, then we lost a few players. We won it in 2021, we kept the same team and added some new lads but since then every year we have lost a couple of players until this year which is the first year we got a few back”.
That run to the semi-final in 2022 saw them overcome St Joseph’s Miltown in the group stages and Lissycasey in the quarter-finals in what was a real promotion bounce. “There was a real feel-good factor around the place because we had a good run in Munster, we got to the Munster final, the following year we won the Garry Cup, then we were coming into the championship full of confidence and the Miltown game was our first in the group, we were in a tough group and we still came out of it and beat Lissycasey, it was a brilliant year really. The next year we were the seeded team in our group, everything that came with that and it was the year we won the intermediate hurling so we went to the latter stages of that, we managed to win the relegation final that year but last year was just a frustrating one because we were fairly stretched with our team, by the time we got to the relegation final we had two lads who hadn’t played all year, we were really stretched and we fully deserve to be where we are now”.
Whatever the grade, there is no such thing as an easy championship game, the former Clare U20 hurler. “The games were a little slower but some of the games we’ve played have been proper championship games, the last day against Clondegad was as tough as game you’re going to get in the senior championship. A lot of it is mental too because lads are going playing teams that you are expected to beat, not even from ourselves but everyone is saying we’ll beat this team and you’re hearing it in the village, it is very easy to believe that these games are going to be easy but there is no easy championship game”.
Keane’s involvement in county finals is not just restricted to the intermediate this weekend. He is on duty as umpire for the Junior A decider between Killimer and Lissycasey at 4pm in Kilmihil on Saturday with his cousin Eoin the man in the middle. “We did the Junior A quarter-final and semi-final, we’ve the final now, he has a set crew. I’d be a lot more nervous going in to do umpire for a game than playing, there is a lot of pressure and I feel more sorry for officials since I started it, it is a split second decision and I’ve criticised my fair share of referees and umpires over the years, a team’s season can be on the line with your decision so there is pressure. I enjoy doing it, it is a good day out”.
A graduate of Mary Immaculate College, Kevin is a special education teacher at Tierneevin National School outside Gort. He had been based in Rathangan in Kildare for the past two years so he’s grateful to be closer to Corofin. “I was driving back once a week for training from February onwards, I was coming back on a Tuesday and it was a long two hour drive and I’d be back every weekend so it was tough enough. I’m back home now, it is a twenty minute journey, the only thing is you would have a lot of tourist cars on the road which could make it longer but on a clear run it is about twenty minutes which is great. I’m a SET teacher but a lot of the time I’m with Infants which is something new, I hadn’t done that before, I spend 9-11 every morning with Infants and then different groups throughout the day after that”.
Clare GAA this year opted with an approach of using the same match programme for the group stages of the championship. The pages indirectly were used as motivation for the Corofin footballers. “I’d say I was worse years ago for listening to what people thought but now you take it as it comes. As a team at the start of the year, we spoke about it and I remember coming into the Naomh Eoin game, the things that you don’t go out to see but you see them, the match programme everyone had their predictions made and only one of seven pundits had us backed, that was one we were delighted with but also one that brought a bit of hurt or disrespect, it has been an internal motivation in the team, you’re not going out to prove pundits wrong but you have an idea of what they think of you”.
Within the club, the ambition remains for Corofin to be playing senior in football and hurling. “We played our third year of senior football last year and I kind of thought we consolidated our status, we had the relegation scare the year before and if we managed to get over the hurling this year we’d have been heading into a third year at senior. Your aim at the start of the year can’t be to just avoid relegation, you have to target progression. It is tough, there’s rumours that more lads could be heading away, when you lose players it is very tough but that would be the aim regardless of what happens in two weeks time, the aim as a group of players and as a club is to be a senior hurling and senior football team”.
New and returning additions have really strengthened the side this season, he felt. “Jamie is a massive help, not even for what he does on the field but off the field he is a massive influence. Seanán Kirby is only eighteen but has brought a massive amount of energy for his first year on the panel. Colm Breen and Caoimhín O’Donovan have seen a bit of game time in the last couple of years but they have consolidated themselves as being here this year, it has brought freshness. A big one has been Diarmuid Daly’s return, he inadvertently ended up back with us, he was in Australia for the last twelve years, he was a Clare senior footballer before he left, he came back and tried to play with the Juniors but whatever way his transfer came he couldn’t get regraded so he inadvertently was training away with us, he’s been a massive boost to us, he is a good leader and on matchday he is very good on the sideline and in the dressing room”.
