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Returning to senior hurling will benefit the rising starts set to join Scariff’s hurling panel in the coming seasons, midfielder Diarmaid Nash maintained.
Ranked as the second best handballer in the country, Diarmaid and Colin Crehan’s bid to secure a historic third All-Ireland doubles title in a row is on hold. In the interval, he has collected an intermediate hurling championship with Scariff while Colin will line out for O’Callaghans Mills on Sunday as they aim to win a first Clare SHC title since 1937.
Joint top scorer alongside Patrick Ryan as Scariff recorded a precious two point win over Tubber, Nash savoured the occasion of winning on the big day with his club.
“Handball is an individual sport, it is great to win in it but you win and you lose on your own, this is an amazing feeling to win together. I’ve won a few different things in hurling at college and county, my last club medal was U16 which was fourteen years ago and ironically it was also against Tubber, it’s a long time since I won with Scariff, it is great to be back up in senior and hopefully where the club belongs,” the investment analyst stated.
Nash is in the middle age profile of players on the Scariff panel but is firmly of the view that men of all ages made invaluable contributions as they returned to the senior ranks. “We have a strange mix, we have a couple of really old late thirty lads and a couple in their late twenties and then a lot in their early twenties. We really need the experienced lads and the nick they are in unbelievable, on a day like today when it isn’t a great hurling match and it’s about seeing it out that’s when you can’t beat the experience”.
He added, “This was our sixth year intermediate, for the last couple of years we’d been making semi-finals and we just snuck over the line last weekend against Killaloe so we were thinking it was a free hit and this is great. We have an awful lot of young lads coming through, a couple of county minors coming in next year and it’s great to have them up playing senior hurling”.
Celebrations will take priority for the coming weeks but Diarmaid is hopeful they can follow in the footsteps of recent intermediate winners Feakle and Broadford by making a mark in the top tier. “Broadford showed this year that they are well capable, I think the way the senior is having restructured it a few years ago, there are a few very strong teams and the bottom of the senior is very even and I think that is a good thing for Clare hurling because there are no unbelievable teams and it is an open championship. We’ll fancy our chances to stay up and after that you wouldn’t know what would happen”.
