Dec 02,2024
Fifty-two years after donating the Billy O'Neill Cup to the Munster Council, Sarsfields finally get to bring it home but the Cork club have no intention of stopping at a provincial title.
The Glanmire club picked themselves off the canvas after losing the Cork SHC final to Imokilly. With the divisional side precluded from representing Cork in the Munster club championship, Sarsfields lived to fight another day and capped a fine campaign with Sunday's shock defeat of four-in-a-row chasing Ballygunner.
Sars became the first Cork side in 15 years to win the title, reversing a 17-point hammering at the hands of the dominant Waterford champions at the quarter-final stage in 2023.
An All-Ireland semi-final in a fortnight's time against Slaughtneil is firmly in their sights now and defender Luke Elliott believes the Cork side have no reason to fear any side after that win in Walsh Park.
"I think Ballygunner have been the best club team in Ireland for the last six, seven years. If we can beat the best, why can't we be the best? Two weeks until the semi-final now and we'll give that absolutely everything. We'll prepare the same way we prepared for this game," said the wing-back, who scored two points.
"I don't think when you start out in February you're thinking of winning a Munster. That might be Ballygunner's plan but they're 11 years on the road. It's absolutely fantastic, we'd have loved to win the county but we're the best club in Munster this year I believe.
"Bigger and better for the next few weeks, massive, what else would you want to be doing at Christmas," asked Elliott, who said the team truly believed they could down the Waterford champions, provided they start the game with intent.
"If a team as good as Ballygunner get on top of you they'll stand on your throat and they won't let you breathe. I think that the intensity and ferocity we brought today right from the start, and we were able to keep it up throughout, that definitely gave us a good foothold in the game.
"The feeling about the game, the belief. The preparation was 10 times better, we were coming in with a different mindset.
"We're another year experienced, we're more mature and we set our minds on even performing and seeing where that took us. And it took us to a win, thank god."
Elliott's defensive colleague Eoghan Murphy (below) said to bring the cup back to Glanmire was "beyond our wildest dreams".
"The cup is actually named after a Sars man. Sars donated the cup to the Munster Council in the 1970s. So to make our first final and win it today is beyond our wildest dreams.
"I suppose after we lost the county final we could have downed tools or whatever but we said 'we're here now, we're going to give it everything we have'. It let us reset and go again," said Murphy, who echoed Elliott's message about taking the game to Ballygunner.
"We said there's no point coming up here and sitting off them as they're an unbelievable team. We said we're going to go at them, every man has to win his own battles. If every man won their own battle we said we wouldn't be far away at all.
"Ballygunner are obviously the standard bearers and we had an awful lot to turn around from last year. We knew we had it in us, we've played them a good bit in challenge matches in the last few years.
"It's not a bad complaint to have hurling into December," added Murphy. "It's what every child dreams of, winning Munster finals, it's not a bad complaint to have at all."
