Dessie Hutchinson of Ballygunner at the launch of this year’s AIB Camogie All-Ireland Club Championships and the AIB GAA All-Ireland Club Championships. This season AIB will honour #TheToughest players - those who persevere no matter the challenge ahead, giving their all for their club and community year after year. AIB is celebrating its 10th year as proud sponsors of the AIB Camogie All-Ireland Club Championships and their 32nd year supporting the AIB GAA All-Ireland Club Championships.
By John Harrington
Dessie Hutchinson says his Ballygunner team-mate, Stephen O’Keeffe, is the best goalkeeper in the country and would be huge asset to Waterford in 2023 if he came out of inter-county retirement.
O’Keeffe stepped away from the inter-county game after the 2021 season but newly appointed Waterford manager, Davy Fitzgerald, said recently he’d like to have him in his panel next year.
Hutchinson, too, has no doubts O’Keffe can still cut it at the highest level.
“Look, I think everyone in Waterford, myself included, would love to have SOK back,” said Hutchinson.
“To me he's the best goalkeeper in the country and I think a lot of people would agree on that.
“He has his own personal things at home. He's getting married over the next year I think, so he has a lot going on. I'm sure if he wants to come back there would be no issue there. But in terms of persuading him or anything like that, we probably wouldn't do that. He knows we'd all love to have him back.”
Ballygunner goalkeeper Stephen O'Keeffe saves a penelty from Austin Gleeson, 14, of Mount Sion during the 2022 Waterford County Senior Hurling Championship Final match between Mount Sion and Ballygunner at Walsh Park in Waterford.
It wouldn’t be a huge leap for O’Keeffe to return to inter-county hurling as the standards that reigning club All-Ireland champions, Ballygunner, set in their club are so high.
Not only did they win an 9th Waterford senior championship in a row this year, they also won the Intermediate title and reached the Junior Final. Clearly there’s now a deeply embedded culture of excellence in the club.
“Yeah, there is,” says Hutchinson. “That's exactly it, you've hit the nail on the head there. There's a really good culture there at the moment in terms of performance on the pitch and in the club. Everything in the club is set up to help players perform on the pitch.
“We're so lucky with what we actually have in Ballygunner. We've the best of facilities, the best of gyms, anything that's there we're making use of.
“As you said, our Intermediates won a championship this year and sometimes that's hard for management to be able to balance such a high number of quality players and to keep them happy, but the management team have done an excellent job of that.
“Our Intermediate team this year were unbelievable. A lot of those guys now are training with us full time and it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of these guys make a good impact in our Munster Championship campaign.”
The nature of their County Final win over Mount Sion this year underlined the undiminished appetite for success that exists in this Ballygunner panel. On a dog of a day against very determined opponents they dug deep and won well in the end.
“I suppose it's just young players coming into the set-up and giving it a bit of freshness every year,” says Hutchinson of their relentless ambition.
“I think we're really lucky at the moment that we have a really, really hungry bunch of players that want to achieve as much as they can. To be fair to the players they're the ones that are driving it every year to be successful.
“We know we were winning Waterford titles but we want to win more outside of Waterford and probably haven't done that to the extent that we would have liked to in recent years. That's what's driving everyone at the moment.
“We're fully focused on Kiruane now this weekend. We're always very good at taking it game by game but we want to achieve as much as we can.”
