Falling through the Trapdoor

IN ALL FAIRNESS

For anyone that is involved in sport, the occasion when it hurts emotionally is when you know it means something. That’s what I have been feeling like since the weekend when Lorrha’s stint in the senior hurling grade came to an end with defeat in the relegation final.

There are no ifs or buts, Mullinahone were the better team on the day and deserved their victory. The only annoyance was the length of the grass which was the main talking point among the players, mentors, and supporters of both teams when they arrived in Templemore with some joking if there were a few sheep nearby to let them graze to shorten it before the game started.

The JK Brackens club are regular and good hosts of championship games. It is their pitch and are entitled to look after it as they wish to protect it, particularly at this time of the year as grass growth slows but doesn’t completely stop; it’s still October. However, for a game of this importance, a pitch should be prepared for hurling to allow the ball travel as fast as it can. If that cannot be done, it should have been played elsewhere.

This was in contrast to what the senior and premier intermediate teams enjoyed in FBD Semple Stadium with a virtual carpet for their semi-finals. Maybe, that’s what you get when you get sucked into a relegation battle, but that being said, it wasn’t the reason Lorrha lost, we just didn’t play well enough on the day, but did go down fighting with a strong finish but the damage had already been done.

Lorrha have gotten a lot of credit this year for the quality of their performances, even in defeat, but with six losses from six in championship, even if some of them were by narrow margins, you can’t argue when the trapdoor finally flings open.

It just shows the competitiveness of the senior championship where you can hurl pretty well in every game but come away with a defeat, including against Drom & Inch who went onto reach a semi-final. That was a loss we never fully recovered from; it was like a gut punch to the stomach to play that well and still not win. The frustrating thing is we played consistently better this year than last, but still got nothing to show for it, which highlights the rising standard of the senior grade which is only good for the county as a whole.

Staying in the senior grade is always easier than trying to win your way back into it, particularly with the dog eat dog nature of premier intermediate, the most competitive of the championships in the county. Next year, it will include the loser of the county final between Carrick Swan and Upperchurch/Drombane who will automatically be contenders. Then throw in Gortnahoe/Glengoole, and rising clubs like Boherlahan-Dualla, county under 19 champions St Mary’s, Moneygall, even Burgess who only barely survived in the grade, and have the potential to contend strongly for the O Riain Cup in 2026. Add in the confident and motivated intermediate champions Golden Kilfeacle or Knockavilla-Donaskeigh Kickhams, it’s a championship at all sixteen teams could win or be relegated from, it’s that even.

There is little between the bottom 4-6 teams in senior and the entirety of the premier intermediate grade. If you are off it a little bit, be it poor preparation or missing key players for whatever reason, you can both rise and fall pretty quickly.

This was my fourth year involved with the Lorrha team and has been some roller-coaster, initally the aim was to rise back out of intermediate and in the end we got much more than that, returning to the senior ranks for too short a spell.

This was also the sixth in succession that Lorrha ended up in a county final; 2020 – O Riain Cup final defeat v Mullinahone; 2021 – premier intermediate relegation final defeat v Burgess; 2022 - Intermediate final win v Moneygall; 2023 – Premier Intermediate final win v Thurles Sarsfields (after a replay); 2024 – Senior relegation final win v Templederry Kenyons, and then last Sunday’s senior relegation final loss.

A few more years of stability at senior level would have been nice but it wasn’t to be and in a personal view, you feel you have left the parish down by not staying up, the hurt of this loss is greater than the elation of any of the final victories. The commitment of the players couldn’t be questioned but the ifs and buts will linger over what would have turned the narrow losses into win. When you sign up to prepare any team from underage to adult, the buck stops with you when things don’t go well, you just take it on the chin and move on. There’s always next year!