Reilly: 'We'll need our A game'

SFC final preview

Paul Fitzpatrick

When Barry Reilly and a group of up to half a dozen other promising young players broke into the Kingscourt senior team, the Stars were enduring something of a famine.

The side had slipped out of Division 1 of the league and hadn’t really been competitive in the latter stages of the Senior Championship. And then, all of a sudden, it changed. A run to the county final followed; an ambush over a very strongly fancied Cavan Gaels ensued. Kingscourt were back.

“I was 19 back then,” Reilly recalled last week.

“We had a great core of players, the likes of Philly Smith, Tommy Wakely, Ryan McCormack, Gavin Sheenan, the list was endless. We also had an influx of youth, I suppose myself, Shane Gray, Barry Tully, Colm Smith, Phil Tinnelly, and we probably pushed the standards on at training because those lads I named were good footballers, it wasn’t like it took you a couple of years to get up to speed.

“We were after coming off the back of winning a Division 2 league, Dudley Farrell was over us, and after the league we kind of said ‘why not just go for this?’. We were 33/1 at the beginning of the year, I don’t think any of the players had us backed.

“We were playing the Gaels, obviously they were in their pomp at the time, they were a quality team full of county platers. We just said, ‘here, let’s just go at this’. I actually remember the parade, we were laughing and joking and acting the maggot. We wanted to be relaxed for all the games, we were young and carefree and we were just enjoying it.

“Keith McCabe is related to some of the Crosserlough boys and they were saying to him after, ‘we actually thought yiz were there just for the craic… and then yiz went and put on a display’.

“Ah it was great to get across the line that day, especially against the likes of Chesty and those boys. Yeah, fond memories.”

Time moves on. Kingscourt have been one of the leading teams since and, on Sunday, Reilly will play in his eighth county final, including replays, and seeks a third medal. At this stage of his career, he knows the importance of making these opportunities count. It replenishes the tradition for one thing, inspires the next generation – including his own children.

“It’s a privilege to be going into another county final, we have a lot of experience in the team.

“I’ve two young kids myself, I think Alan (Clarke) is the only other player with kids, he has three young kids. It’s cool to be able to maybe parade them round before a game or… I would have never put up a flag before any of the county finals but I stuck a few up this week, just to involve them in the culture of it. It’s an important part of it, to bring them up in a good footballing household.”

For young men breaking into senior football, it’s all new and exciting but real life tends to intervene. After a long number of years on the beat, is the motivation still as high?

“It is. I probably don’t love football as much now as I used to but it’s still great to get out. I’d be terrible at keeping in touch with friends so unless I go to football, I wouldn’t see them. That’s a big part of it. But also to get out of the house.

“My wife Brenda, she plays football, she won an intermediate title with Ballyhaise two weeks ago, she still travels up and down for training the best she can and it’s good for a relationship that the two of us are able to go and play our own sports that we’re involved in.

“I’m probably more nervous about games now because you’re coming close to the end of your career or whatever compared to how I would have been back in 2010 or whatever when we won our first title.

“When you have kids, you’re representing more than just yourself, you’ve an onus of responsibility on them or whatnot. Every decision you make in life now has more of an emphasis because it affects other people.

“I suffer more from nerves than I did when I was bloody 18 or 19…” he laughed.

It’s a cliché, with maybe a good degree of truth in it, that Kingscourt come alive when they make the business end of the championship and have an ability to leave earlier form behind them.

“It’s certainly not planned that way, we stutter and stumble through the group stages and it’s not for want of trying. But we’ve a group full of big leaders. We still have Toasty involved, myself, Padraig Faulkner, Paddy Meade, they’re all massive speakers at training, massive leaders on the pitch.

“Others too. Shane Duffy took the game by the scruff of the neck there in the second half and ran at Ramor… we know what we’re about, we’re going to have a tough task against Gowna but we’re looking forward to the challenge. We’re going to have to bring our A game, we saw how impressive Gowna were against Crosserlough but yeah, when we get to a semi-final or a final, we obviously want to put on a performance and get up to speed straight away.”

If he had to put a percentage on it, how would he rate Kinsgcourt’s form to date?

“After the games it certainly feels like I’m at 100, it might’nt look like it for the neutrals looking in! We’ve played in patches, 15, 20-minute spells here and there. We played quite well for 25 minutes of the second half the last day, any day you hold Ramor to a point from play is pretty good going.

“Even in the quarter-final against the Gaels, we didn’t play well that day, we stumbled across the line.

“We’ve put spells of good patches of football together, we know we’re capable of it, we do it in training, we’re just going to need to do it for 65 minutes against Gowna because they shot the lights out against Crosserlough.

“Especially that squeeze they put on the kick-out, we’re going to have to really bring our A game for that.”

Mention of Gowna whets the appetite for this clash between two of the heavyweight clubs, from opposite ends of the county and with their own distinct identities and strong pedigrees. When he thinks of Gowna and what they represent, a few things jump out.

“Dermot McCabe is the first name that comes to your mind. In ’97, I was Dermot McCabe out the back of the house kicking football. Then I heard my uncles and my father speaking about the Gowna teams even previous to Dermot McCabe; Joe Brady, Ciaran Brady, Bernard Morris, tough men, tough country men.

“They’re the first thoughts that come to your mind but football has changed, there’s no big tough men any more. The game is refereed at such a high standard now, there’s none of that tough hitting going on.

“Collisions happen and whatnot but we certainly won’t shy away from that end of it and I know Gowna won’t either. Hopefully it’s a good tough game on Sunday and we both get stuck into each other and put on spectacle, I suppose.”

Marty Morrissey’s immortal phrase beginning “There won’t be a cow milked in…” is often rolled out after seismic championship successes. Barry, a dairy farmer at home in Muff, is well acquainted with that job. If Kingscourt win, the celebrations will be long and loud but he’ll still have to be up to milk, he laughed.

“Someone will have to milk them alright, I’ve no help organised yet but I’m sure we’ll struggle through it. It might be a wee bit later than usual but we’ll get it done.”