Easkey/St Farnan's hope to take the final step

By John Harrington

In the last six years Easkey/St. Farnan’s have won six Sligo senior hurling championships and four Connacht Junior Hurling Championships.

Tomorrow, in Croke Park, they will contest a second All-Ireland Junior Club Hurling Championship Final in four years when they play Cork and Munster champions, Kilbrittain.

It’s been a fantastic run of achievement that is elevated to something really remarkable when you consider that it was only as recently as 2018 that they fielded an adult senior hurling team for the first time in 35 years.

Three wise men deserve the lion’s share of credit for the club’s emergence as the dominant force of Sligo hurling – Michael Gordon, Tom Evans, and Padraig Hallinan.

They nurtured this generation through the underage grades up to senior and players like Finnian Cawley will always be grateful for it.

“Those three were very far-seeing in fairness to them and they probably understood the scene, the level of talent that was in the area," says Cawley.

“A lot of them are very closely connected to the school, the secondary school there, Coláiste Iascaigh, which is where all of us have actually gone to school together.

"We're very tight-knit, we're very, very good friends, kind of like a brotherhood in a way.

“And they were like, well, if you're playing football together in school, why can't you do the same for hurling?

“We're forever thankful for those three men for starting it up. What we’ve achieved is a result of them just taking a chance on us and giving us the opportunity to show what we can do. So yeah, extremely grateful to those three.”

Cawley believes Easkey’s success is down to more than simply a generation of very talented young sportsmen emerged in the area at the same time.

For him, the character in their dressing-room has been just as important as the ability, and the support they’ve gotten from the wider club community has been vital too.

“I think when you have good men it results in a good team and then results come as a result of all that stuff,” he says.

“I think that's probably why success has come very fast and furious for us, not just because we had such an amount of talent.

“The support we’ve given has been key to it as well.

“Michael, Tom and Padraig started off, but others have driven it on, especially a cohort of women we have behind us in the club who are just incredible, what they've done for us as people has been unbelievable.

“Our team management and the club chairman Michael Conway, they'd go to the ends of the earth for you and it's a real kind of family community feel.

“We're so lucky I think in a small community to have those people because they don’t grow on trees. There's not a lot of them around, so we're just very, very lucky to have them all involved with us.

“Those women I mentioned, at every training they've food made afterwards and theyr’e always looking after us. Anything you ask, there's nothing too big or too small, they do whatever they can for you.

“I think a lot of that plays a huge part in success as well, having people that truly want to see you do well. I think that's kind of like the secret sauce, isn't it, really? People just wanting to see people do well.

“For us, it's been amazing and we're extremely thankful and grateful to all those people because they've made us the people we are in a way because we spend so much time with them and we're around them so much.

“They've been nothing but amazing. I cannot say enough good things about them.”

This group of Easkey/St. Farnan’s hurlers want to win Saturday’s All-Ireland final not just for themselves, but for all of those people who have given them the platform to be able to perform on this stage.

“It'd obviously be an amazing achievement for the team and stuff like that but there's so many more people it would be for,” says Cawley.

“I suppose that's the beauty about the Club Championship, there's so many more people that are behind the scenes that are doing such Trojan work and I think it would be a real jewel in the crown to able to get that for them, It would maybe be a bit of a reward for all their efforts and it might be a small little bit of a thank you.

“I don't think an All-Ireland will thank them enough for what they've done for us. They've done so much for us to develop us as humans and players so I don't think a trophy will be able to show that but it might do a small bit, you know.

“But yeah, hopefully, God willing on Saturday.”

Easkey go into Saturday’s games against Kilbrittain as underdogs, but Cawley hopes they’re better equipped now to win an All-Ireland title than they were when they played another Cork club, Ballygiblin, in the final three years ago.

“Our last experience in All-Ireland against Ballygiblin was probably not a really positive one,” he admits.

“Not that they showed us up that day, but they performed really, really well and we didn't really perform.

“So, I suppose we've reflected on that a lot. In the last two years we've lost the two All-Ireland semis to the eventual winners, which has obviously been quite difficult for us as a group to be able to take those setbacks.

“I think the main difference this year is we've reflected a lot on that and what we're doing wrong and what we need to adapt and change and I think that's been a huge positive for us to be able enable us to get back to another All-Ireland and hopefully we can right a few of the wrongs and go one step further this Saturday.”