Co Cavan GC make history with All-Ireland success

Golf

Co Cavan Golf Club made history on September 9 last when an 18-man squad claimed the coveted Jimmy Bruen All-Ireland title for the first time in the club’s 127-year history.

Co Cavan saw off Gowran Park from Kilkenny in the final at Shandon Park GC in Belfast, having come through eight previous rounds in an arduous campaign.

The Jimmy Bruen is a foursomes event made up of five pairs of players with a minimum combined handicap of 14 and no player off less than 3.5 and is regarded as one of the most entertaining events on the Golf Ireland schedule. It draws a huge entry from across the island each year.

Drawn in Ulster South, Co Cavan beat Scrabo, Blackwood and Mahee, Co Armagh, Lurgan, Belvoir Park and Warrenpoint in the provincial campaign to enter the All-Ireland series, where the Cavanmen saw off Dublin’s Beech Park in the quarter-final and Strabane from Tyrone at the penultimate stage.

Conor O’Reilly and county footballer Luke Fortune secured the winning point in the final.

Speaking moments after the win, O’Reilly said it was the culmination of hard work gone into the club.

“I’m a bit lost for words at the minute. We put in a lot of work this year. We had a lot of tight matches, especially in Belvoir Park and Scarbo. We’re ecstatic!

“It means so much to our club. We are 127 years old, and it was our first All-Ireland final. It’s been a great week for golf in Cavan. Leona doesn’t have a Jimmy Bruen though,” he joked.

Fortune added: “We had a lot of boys who have been practising all year. There were a lot of players that aren’t here today that tried to get on the team. It’s good to get the win for them.

“Everyone is delighted. We’re looking forward to bringing the trophy back to Co. Cavan. Golf is usually an individual game, but it was really enjoyable playing as a team, especially with Conor!”

The Co Cavan team was jointly-captained by Ed O’Hanlon and former Cavan footballer, Seanie Johnston.

“In the hierarchy of club team golf, it’s one of the more prestigious ones. At the very highest level you have the Senior Cup and Barton Shield which are competitions for elite golfers with plus handicaps but there aren’t a huge amount of clubs who can compete in those competitions,” O’Hanlon told the Anglo-Celt.

“With the Jimmy Bruen, almost every club in the country would have a team and as such is it extremely competitive”

Ed has been playing in the competition since his teens and along with his friend Seanie, decided to take over the captaincy this year.

Co Cavan had previously won the Ulster title in 1998 and again in 2008 (O’Hanlon was a member of the latter side) but had never before reached the All-Ireland decider.

“We got a big panel of about 35 together at the start of the year, more or less everyone who was eligible in the category, and then over the course of a few weeks, having organised a few golf outings we got to our final panel of 18 players.”

“Throughout the whole summer there was huge competition amongst the 18 panel members to make the team of 10 for any given match. We tried to have a systematic approach to picking the team and based the selection on current form; for some matches, we might have nine picked and we couldn’t decide on the last one so we would send two lads out to play a match and whoever won it got picked.

“The entire panel made a huge effort, which in the end was rewarded.”

The captains adopted a meticulous approach as they juggled their line-up thoughout the campaign.

“You have to think about matching personalities and also matching the handicaps. We matched fellas who got on well with each other. One of the interesting things that happened this year was that the team changed for every round, we chopped and changed the team depending on lads’ form as we went along.

“It was a great journey over the whole summer.”

The team really came of age in the Ulster semi-final against Belvoir Park, a very prestigious club from Belfast which have over 1400 playing members.

“That was the toughest match we had and the toughest I’ve ever had in the Jimmy Bruen,” recalled Ed.

“For that round we had three matches away and two at home, beforehand we were hoping to win the home matches and sneak one away win but extraordinarily having lost the two home matches we managed to win all three away games.”

“The lads that were playing away got word through with about four holes to go that we had lost our two home matches and at that stage, after 14 holes, the three away matches were all around level.

“Luke Fortune had just come into the team in that round and sank a 15-foot putt on the 18th which he thought was to win the match and then his opponent followed him in with a 12-footer. The match then went down the 19th, which on this course was a short par-4 of about 290 yards and Luke stood up and drove the green to win the match. If you meet him it won’t take him long to tell you the story!”

“Myself and Seanie then came up the 18th level and made a good par to win our match by the narrowest of margins. So, then it was all down to our last pair made up of Pat Hayes and Kevin Brady, a big crowd ran down to catch the end of that match and the lads performed brilliantly to win 16&17 and send us into the final. We jokingly have described the match since as the miracle of Belvoir Park!”

The All-Ireland quarter-final was relatively comfortable but halfway through the semi, it looked, said Ed, “as if we were goosed”.

“It was incredibly tight against Strabane. In the end, we won it 3-2. It all came down to the 18th hole, were we managed to hold our nerve to get over the line. That was a very competitive match, it could have gone either way.

“In the final it was a bit more comfortable; we won our first three matches”. If you look at the results, our second and third matches won well.

“But if we had lost the first match in the final, it could have been a lot different. Our pair was made up of Johnny Cawley and John Sweeney and the match was all square after 18 holes. Their opponents hit it in to six feet for birdie on the 19th and John Sweeney responded with a brilliant approach to about 12 feet. They went on to half the hole with birdies which showed outrageous character. They then went up the 20th hole, one of the toughest holes on the course, and made another birdie to win the match. The golf the lads played was incredible and gave us just the start we needed on the day.”

There were joyous scenes at the homecoming at the clubhouse and for the players, said Ed, “there is a great sense of achievement.”

The hope is that the win will provide a boost for the club, which has seen an increase in members over the last 18 months.

“We had a good GAA angle to it, a lot of lads given their GAA backgrounds were natural competitors and there was a great team spirit, everyone really gave it their all.

“The club has had a great influx of ex GAA players in recent years. Golf is a great competitive outlet for fellas who are finished playing football, we’d hope that this success would encourage more people to join the club and get involved.”