Perpetual revolution the Newtown' way

MUNSTER CLUB SHC FINAL NEWTOWNSHANDRUM V BALLYGUNNER: Tom Humphriestalks to Ben O'Connor about the amazing rise to prominence over the last decade of Newtownshandrum as the Cork champions prepare for another Munster club final tomorrow

ANOTHER THURSDAY, another training session. Another paragraph in Newtownshandrum’s never-ending story.

They have their own all-weather field which has survived most of the winter and they have their own lights. Not too bad for a parish of about 800 souls. Then again, nothing in Newtownshandrum is too bad. Or even ordinary.

Ben O’Connor, more part of this place than the field or the road that runs through it, is talking about the town. This place sent out generations of fellas who always struggled. Now Newtown are synonymous with the game’s aristocracy, grafting a new generation’s expectations on to a recent past which hasn’t lost its lustre.

“It’s the way of the place. As soon as the young fellas in Newtown come into U-10 we are saying ‘that fella will be handy’, ‘this fella, we would want to watch him’. We have under- 10s and under-8s training three evenings a week. We have no football to bother us. We can go three evenings a week hurling and that keeps every fella happy. We have three fellas involved in every team at least. There is no problem getting numbers out to train teams. Lots of members of the senior panel are involved. Young fellas love to see that. Some lads are three nights out with the seniors every week and four other nights training kids the rest of the week.”

More characters. More chapters. This year they started in the mud of mid-January and will finish the year in the mud as well. In between, they added their fourth Cork county title this decade and tomorrow they may claim their third Munster title.

Ben O’Connor laughs and remembers that when they won the intermediate championship back in 1996 they hadn’t won a first round championship game for the previous three years and in 1995 they had been bounced out the door by St Finbarr’s second team.

In Newtown, humiliations like that stick in the craw. They went senior next year and pushed on with a distilled sense of purpose. By the time they won their first-ever Cork senior title in 2000 they were coming off the back of three-in-a-row at under-21 level. But they were satisfied. Craw cleared.

Then they left the county final of 2002 behind them so they had to get up off the canvas and show everybody again. They won their second county in 2003 and rolled all the way through to win the All-Ireland the following spring, a fairytale for the ages.

“My age group,” says Ben “we always believed we were good enough. The first boost for us was winning the county the first year. We went down to Mount Sion, though, a week after winning that county championship and we were winning with ten to go and they got a goal from a “21” and a couple of points and we lost by three points. We decided that next time we won it we would have a right cut. We wanted Croke Park.”

So it went. Wish fulfilled. They should have been done by then but of course they weren’t. They won the county again in 2005 and went on to take another Munster title (tomorrow’s opponents, Ballygunner, were the victims) and lost an All-Ireland.

And then at last it looked as if those who had shaken their heads in disbelief would have their way. Newtownshandrum were a castle built in the air, surely? What they had was not sustainable. They lost the 2007 Cork county final and the following September got beaten in the quarter finals in Cork, the first time this decade they hadn’t reached the semi-finals. The sky was dark with vultures.

Then this year! This year it was all about the county. Nobody looked any further or dreamed of any more. In Newtown this week there is some excitement building but nothing like the run-in to the county final when they realised their team wasn’t so much scrappage but was still motoring well.

“The county was in every fella’s head from the start. “ says Ben “We were wrote off. We went very poor last year, we had been going well and then Sars beat us in the quarter-final. Fellas’ heads weren’t right. People got stuck into us. They said the running game was finished. We don’t play a running game, we play a possession game. We will release the ball long if there is a good ball on long. We won’t just hit 50-50 balls all the time. We will hold on to it. Every other team is running but we just do a little handpassing. So they wrote us off. Even in the parish there was talk, ‘ah they are finished, they have a lot of miles up’.

“The media down here wrote us off too. We were always rated but this year they dug into us. Not able to do it on big day anymore etc. . Also-rans. That was a huge thing for us, proving all those fellas wrong.”

They wouldn’t normally have gone back training in the second week in January but they were hurting. Sars had beaten them in the 2008 quarter-final and given the Newtown boys the chance to read their own obituary.

And so having beaten the Glen (twice), UCC and St Finbarr’s they faced Sarsfields again. A county final in the Park. Sars were the champions and, fairly or unfairly, seen to represent the establishment side of the previous winter’s strike. The bookies fancied them ardently. Newtown were the sentimental choice, from the other side of the trenches in the previous winter. Nobody wanted to see them humiliated or steamrolled.

“A lot of people made a lot out of the strike etc. It didn’t bother us at all. Sars were the team who had put us out in the quarter-final the previous year. That was all we cared about. On the day of the final we hit form. Sars seemed dead on the day. So it was a combination of both.”

Newtown went back to the north county with a famous 3-22 to 1-12 win in the bag. Another county title.

“Winning county titles is hard. This one we enjoyed it a lot. With 20 minutes to go it was all over. We were able to take in the occasion. Our boys can do that, though. It is a matter of getting everyone right. The whole 15 did it. Most days you hope 10 fellas will play very well and five will survive. We can do that from time to time. Cut loose. Hopefully Sunday will be another one of those days.”

Sunday. They are back in Thurles tomorrow. Back in the sights of Ballygunner, trained this time by Ger Cunningham and aided by Jimmy McEvoy.

They never thought that having digested Sarsfields they would have any appetite for Munster championship fare but they ambled back to training the following Friday night and decided here was a new competition and one they were capable of winning.

Since that night they have trained as hard as they did to win the county title. So they went and beat Thurles Sarsfields and Adare And here they are.

Only three survive from 1996, Ben and his twin, Jerry plus Philly Noonan. Somehow they have gotten a conveyor belt up and running in Newtown. Only seven of tomorrow’s team started against Ballygunner four years ago. The roll through of new talent, Jamie Coughlin, Mikey Bowles, Ryan Clifford, Jack Herlihy, PJ Copse, Seán O’Riordan and William Biggane is impressive.

Back in the day when they were on the long march from intermediate lightweights to county title winners they used to feel training harder just meant slogging harder. The more you punished yourself, the more your mortified your soul, the better you would become. They have learned. This year Dr Cian O’Neill from University of Limerick has been working with them along with his assistant, Will McCormack .

“We have the two lads in and with the selectors Phil Noonan, Ger and Patsy Morrissey, we have been doing the hi-tech stuff. We are doing what county teams are doing. The top clubs are all gone that way. Today we work hard but there is more of a method to what we are doing. That helps.”

For Ben it helps on those days when he has to drive the hour and a quarter from Cork out to Newtown and then make the same journey back again afterwards.

It helps but the spirit of the place and the team is what makes the difference. Like almost every other club, Newtownshandrum are big in debt. They were supposed to get a wheelbarrow full of euros from the lottery gods a couple of years ago but it never arrived. The committee have the endless grind of bingo and lotto and other fund-raisers.

No help comes from outside.

“It’s a parish thing, though. Everybody supports it. You are as well off to be struggling financially. It keeps everyone working and contributing. We are lucky in Newtownshandrum. No fella would ever look for a hurl from the club, say. Every player would buy his own. All the club has to worry about is the cost of running the club. No lad ever goes to the club for a penny. Any expenses that a fella can take care of himself he will look after himself . . .”

Ben himself was supposed to be in Zambia this month for a week or so working with a sheaf of his county colleagues building a school for the Alan Kerins project. The reasons for staying at home are instructive of Newtown’s ways.

“It didn’t suit . . . We won the county and I said I would go anyway but I was due to go the day after we beat Adare. I said to myself if I went for the week I would only be home six days before the Munster final. Might have been okay but if one of the boys here in Newtown did it, I would be giving out.

“To go would have been no sign of leadership. Since I started playing with the boys we never had a fella go away when championship was on, no fella has ever even asked when are we playing because they want holidays. So for one of the older boys to do it, for whatever reason. It would have gone down badly!”

So he stayed. And tomorrow Newtown take another step on the long march of their perpetual revolution.