Mullinavat are this weekend aiming to reach a first Kilkenny senior hurling final in 81 years – having dominated the county’s football championship for much of the last eight seasons.
They retained the Kilkenny SFC in 2023, which was their seventh victory since 2017, and during that period they even contested a Leinster club football decider.
The south Kilkenny outfit relinquished their grip on the big-ball silverware after a semi-final loss to eventual champions Dicksboro this season, but now find themselves just two wins away from what would be a maiden senior hurling triumph.
They face Thomastown in a county senior hurling semi-final at Nowlan Park on Sunday at 3.45.
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Mullinavat beat Erin’s Own 2-21 to 0-19 at the quarter-final stage last weekend with nine of the starting team featuring in the senior football final last year.
“There would be a huge crossover,” explains club secretary Tom Duggan. “Most of the lads play both sports. We just ran out of road this year in the football, I suppose time caught up with us, but we had a fantastic run with basically the same bunch of players.”
In 2019 they made history by becoming the first Kilkenny outfit to contest a Leinster club football final – playing Louth’s Mattock Rangers in that year’s intermediate decider. Along the way Mullinavat beat Dublin champions Ballyboughal and Laois kingpins Rosenallis, both in Thomastown.
“The Dubs arrived down on a double decker bus to play us, Thomastown had never seen the likes of it,” smiles Duggan at the memory of that provincial odyssey.
“But they went back out the gate with the tails between their legs because they got the shock of their lives, they didn’t expect us to be any good.”
Many of the club’s players attended Good Counsel College, New Ross – where the school teams regularly make an impact at provincial level in both football and hurling. The school’s vice-principal is former Wexford football manager, and highly regarded coach, Aidan O’Brien.
Still, at the outset of this season not many were tipping Mullinavat to be semi-finalists in the Kilkenny SHC.
They won the Kilkenny intermediate hurling title in 2014, progressing to win the provincial title at the grade that year too. The following season they advanced to the semi-finals of the Kilkenny senior championship but have not returned to that stage again, until now.
“I’d say it [this run] is a little bit unexpected, to be perfectly honest,” adds Duggan.
“But we’re in the last four now and we are not just clapping ourselves on the back, we want to win this game, but we know it won’t be easy. Thomastown are a really good side, All-Ireland intermediate champions, and they knocked the Shamrocks out this year in Kilkenny. They are a very seasoned young team.”
Several clubs have previously managed to win both senior hurling and football titles in Kilkenny – including Ballyhale Shamrocks, James Stephens, Dicksboro, Glenmore, Mooncoin, and Thomastown. Mullinavat are fifth in the football roll of honour in Kilkenny with seven titles – all claimed between 2007 and 2023.
But even getting back to a first senior hurling final since 1943 would be a significant milestone. They have only ever contested two senior hurling finals in their history – 1940 and 1943, losing both to Carrickshock.
“I don’t know of anybody around now that can remember that far back,” adds Duggan, who has two sons on the panel – Ian, who is joint captain along with George O’Connor, and Conor.
Just last month Mullinavat beat Thomastown in the Shield final, but the losers were without star player John Donnelly that day.
“I often say if we could win one championship I could die happy,” adds Duggan.
“It would be a dream come true. But at the same time getting to the final is not dreamland stuff, we’re grounded in reality, it is going to be a 50-50 game against a really good team so we have to perform if we are to achieve that.”
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