Cork captain Shane Kingston pictured ahead of Sunday's Bord Gáis Energy All-Ireland U-21 Hurling Final.
By John Harrington
Cork U-21 hurling team captain, Shane Kingston, was in Croke Park last Sunday but found the All-Ireland Hurling Final hard to watch.
Losing the All-Ireland semi-final to Limerick still stings, and all the more so now after watching them go on to win the Liam MacCarthy Cup.
He is in no way begrudging of their success. He lauds the “bottle and great character” they showed to come back from six points down against Cork in normal time and then beat them in extra-time.
But he’s sick and tired of being part of Cork hurling teams that don’t quite climb to the top of the mountain and is now doubly determined to do something about it when the Rebels play Tipperary in Sunday’s Bord Gáis Energy All-Ireland U-21 HurlingFinal.
“We've won two senior Munsters and an U-21 Munster but at the end of the day they're only Munsters,” said Kingston. “You want to be winning All-Irelands, not just winning Munsters.
“We're not happy with just winning Munsters, I'm not anyway. We want to win an All-Ireland.
“From my own perspective I've had no underage success at U-14, U-16, minor, all the way up along.
“So it's definitely our last game at underage for the majority of us and we're just looking forward to the challenge and hopefully we can get over the line.”
Kingston admits this All-Ireland U-21 campaign has been "a blessing" because it meant he didn’t have time to wallow in regret after the All-Ireland SHC semi-final defeat Limerick.
Three days later he and six of his fellow senior panellists had an All-Ireland U-21 Hurling semi-final against Wexford to play and they channelled their hurt admirably by sweeping to a 22-point victory.
That result followed hot on the heels of a 13-point victory over Tipperary in the Munster Final, and corroborated the feeling on Lee-side that this is an especially talented generation of young hurlers.
Shane Kingston lifts the Cup after Cork's victory over Tipperary in the Bord Gáis Energy Munster U-21 Hurling Final.
They now face Tipperary once again in Sunday’s All-Ireland Final after the Premier County upset a fancied Galway in the other semi-final.
Not surprisingly, Cork are red-hot favourites to beat their neighbours for the second time this year, but Kingston is expecting a much tougher test to the one Tipp put up in the Munster Final.
“Yeah, 100 per cent,” he said. “There's no point saying otherwise, but Tipp weren't at the races in the Munster Final, everybody knows that.
“They didn't perform to the best of their ability and we played well. But that's a completely different Tipp side to now. We saw against Galway that they were different. They were a lot hungrier and a lot more determined.
“So, we're expecting a serious challenge and a completely different side to the side we played in the Munster Final.
“They're an extremely strong side, they just didn't perform against us. We're expecting a serious game on Sunday and we're just looking forward to the challenge.”
This is a hugely important match in the modern history of Cork hurling.
The sport is definitely on the up again in the county after many years in the doldrums, but it could badly do with the added momentum boost of a long awaited All-Ireland title.
“The last U-21 was 20 years ago, I think, which is a huge length of time for such a hurling county,” said Kingston.
“But we're not really focused on that, we're focusing on ourselves. There's no point looking back on the past.
“We weren't playing U-21 for the past 20 years so we're just focusing on ourselves and doing the best we can and looking to improve each day to get the best out of ourselves on Sunday.”
