*Gearoid Cahill and Seán O’Brien celebrate. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
COROFIN are more than capable of competing in the top tier of Clare football having sealed their return to the senior championship for 2025.
After winning the Clare IFC in 2021, Corofin had three seasons in senior football including reaching the county semi-final in 2022 before they were relegated by Kilmihil last year.
A 2-14 2-9 win over Cooraclare on Sunday brings Corofin back to senior football for next year.
Club stalwart Peadar O’Brien answered the call when Corofin were struggling to get a manager for 2024. A long-serving selector, his first year as manager saw them relegated, had they not bounced back by winning the intermediate championship he admitted it would have been time to step aside.
Speaking following their five point win, O’Brien stated, “We were the management that brought them down so it is great to be the management that brought them back up. We’re delighted, we deserved it on the day, it was hard work and a tough battle so credit to Cooraclare they really wired into it, there wasn’t an awful lot it for long stages, it could have gone either way”.
He told The Clare Echo, “We think we have the players capable of playing senior football, we’re going to lose a few players that are going away but I think we have the players good enough to play senior football and we can compete with an awful lot of teams, at the very top end there is a bit of work to be done to get to that level but if we consolidate our status and stay at senior who knows but it’s great to come up. We were probably not going to be involved if we didn’t win today because there would have had to be change”.
Physicality and experience were big factors in Corofin’s win, Peadar felt. “We were possibly a little bit physically stronger and more of our better players played well, all of our full forward line were on top, Cooraclare were very dependent on Brian Mc, he had to do a lot more than you needed him doing but fair play to them because they really stuck into it, with ten or twelve minutes to go it was anybody’s game, we’re delighted to get over the line”.
Winners of the Waterford IFC will travel to Corofin on November 9th for the Munster quarter-final. Currently based in the Middle East as a teacher, Corofin’s Jamie Malone is unlikely to be available for the game but would be back if they qualified for a semi-final against An Ghaeltacht of Kerry. “We haven’t discussed that with him yet. We’ve prospectively have two home games, if we can get over the first game against the Waterford champions then we have our nearest and dearest friends from Kerry coming, if we have them in Corofin and we get them I’d expect we’d have Jamie for it”.
