*Corofin intermediate football manager, Peadar O’Brien. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
“INVOLUNTARILY” appointed Corofin manager two seasons ago, Peadar O’Brien is hoping to steer the North Clare club’s return to senior football.
Born and bred in Kilnaboy, Peadar has had a lifetime’s involvement with the club. Sunday sees him man the sideline of Cusack Park as Corofin battle with Cooraclare, the winner securing promotion to the Clare SFC.
Self-described as “a bad player, I was a Junior B player and not a great Junior B player at that,” Peadar has held a strong interest in both football and hurling.
He served as secretary “for too long”, holding the post for over a decade. “I was secretary from 2003 to 2016. It was getting very technical, ninety percent of it was emails and online correspondence, it was getting much more difficult and you nearly needed an IT specialist or someone with better knowledge of IT than me. I got out of it then and would have been out of it much sooner but nobody wanted to take it”.
Success was achieved with the first team he was a selector with, the U16 footballers of 1999 who had Dara Shannon, Darragh Clancy and Killian Neylon on the B championship winning team, all three went on to play senior for Corofin and played on different Clare hurling panels. “Both Dara Shannon and Darragh Clancy would have been U15 at the time but they were a talented bunch and good players, we were also beaten in the Minor B final in the same year by Doora/Barefield who had Fergal Lynch midfield for them at the time, we were well beaten by them”. Many of that team also went on to win the Clare IFC in 2006.
As years the passed, Peadar moved up the ranks. “We were struggling for a few years in the early 2000s and then we got relegated, I was a selector, I wasn’t a manager at any stage, Seamus Clancy came in as manager with Kieran O’Mahoney as coach in 2006, James O’Gorman was a selector at the time too God be good to him, we were lucky enough to win the intermediate championship and we got on a great run making the Munster Final against Ardfert and that’s a game we still have regrets over not winning. I’m more or less involved ever since, if I wasn’t selector I was bloody secretary”.
For the Douglas Hurley and Geoff O’Sullivan managed side that won the Clare IFC in 2021 and reached the Clare SFC semi-final in 2022, Peadar was by their side too as a selector. When they bowed out at the end of the end of the 2023 campaign, he “involuntarily” became manager. “When Dougie and Geoff left I was going, we were all gone, the club managed to get Mark Rafferty to come in and agree to coach, he wanted a manager and nobody would do it or get involved, after a bit of persuasion I agreed to do it and that is where I am today”.
Relegated in his first season at the helm, things are going better in year two as they look to secure promotion at the first attempt. “The faster you can do it if you can do it the better. If you stay in intermediate or whatever grade for too long then it is very hard to get out of it, players get used to a slower pace and there is always a team coming down but that will be more highly tuned to a faster pace and then you can get somebody that is playing historically better than intermediate and they could get a crop of players coming and you can get left in it very handy. Traditional clubs will always unless there’s a real numbers problem they will always have the players coming and they will improve whereas we’ve lads coming and going, they’re hurling one week and playing football the next, they won’t be improving their skill levels to the same extent as the single code player, they will come on more by and large, you can’t get stuck in it and we got stuck in it for a long time. Between 2009 and 2015, it took us six years to come out of it, we were beaten in a couple of finals but you never know, if you can come out of it quickly it is a bonus, we’ve a lot of lads who have played senior and they have fair ability and played underage with the county and a couple that played senior with the county. It is all about trying to get up”.
O’Brien’s second season has been aided by the return of big names like ex All Star nominee Jamie Malone. “The big thing was last year we were losing players as the group was going on, this year we’re at a lower grade but we’re gaining players, Marc O’Loughlin came back towards the middle of the group, Diarmuid Cahill came back towards the middle of the group, Diarmuid Daly came back from Australia and is a major positive influence around the group plus Jamie Malone being available was a huge plus, we didn’t have Jamie or Diarmuid Cahill available last year, you won’t win without forwards”.
Current Corofin players believe the club can manage as a senior dual club but it is not easy with such a high crossover, Peadar acknowledged. “It is very hard to be a senior dual club, in our case especially because our crossover is unbelievable. Cratloe at their peak would have been the closest to us and they may not even have the amount of dual players that we have, every player we have are either playing senior or junior hurling, there is nobody not, there was eight or nine last Saturday that played senior hurling and another three or four that came on or are playing junior hurling. Éire Óg and Doora/Barefield wouldn’t have that amount of dual players and Éire Óg have a good few”.
Aspirations on playing senior can only be fulfilled as footballers next season. “They want to play senior in something next year and they can’t do it in the hurling so they have two choices, go out and win the intermediate football and go up or else we’re a dual intermediate team instead of a dual senior team. We went down last year deservedly, we could have no complaints, if you don’t win games you go down and that is what happened us”.
Peadar told The Clare Echo, “You can’t compete in senior unless you get up there, that is the bottom line, the intermediate is about winning to get up to senior, most of them have one intermediate medal, there is a couple with two, it is brilliant for the younger lads Seanán Kirby, Colm Breen, Evan Doolin, Colin Fitzgerald, Caoimhín O’Donovan some of whom have won absolutely nothing in football up through the ages, they have been a major plus to us and we’re trying to give them a chance to play senior football, that is what it is all about. If we can get our players on the field and get to senior, we will be competitive with a good number of teams, Éire Óg at the moment are a mile ahead of everyone”.
Joint sessions where it would be forty minutes hurling and forty minutes football were trialled this year. “During the championship we’d do a joint session after the game, whoever was playing the following weekend got them the second night on their own. For the last number of years, we had done week on week off whichever a case it was, we tried the joint session this year and from our point of view it worked, whether it would work at senior level is another day’s work”.
Their second round sixteen point win over Cooraclare is “totally irrelevant” ahead of Sunday’s rematch according to Peadar. “A final is a final and it will take on a life of its own, they have improved a lot, Brian Mc is back too which is a massive plus, at the moment he is probably the best county footballer in Clare, they are a traditional football club who believe they are a senior team and will believe they are good enough to be a senior team again. It didn’t surprise me, it was a big surprise to a lot of people that they beat Kilrush but it didn’t surprise me because I expected it would be close, I didn’t think they would win by ten points but I half fancied them to beat Kilrush. The group game is irrelevant to the final, it is a different time of year, three months later conditions and everything will be different”.
