Austin Stacks 0-15 Ballincollig 1-9 (After extra-time)
Those Indian summer days are still shining down on Kerry, and not just on Kieran Donaghy. If that magnificent late bloom with his county wasn’t already sweet enough it keeps getting sweeter with his club Austin Stacks.
Because after ending a 20-year wait for a Kerry title they’re now back in their first Munster club football final since 1976, when Stacks also won their only provincial title to date. For Donaghy - already named Kerry captain for 2015 - this could yet be the season to shine above all.
That they’ll face Waterford opposition, The Nire, in a fortnight’s time means even more expectation, although anyone who expected Ballincollig to wilt here under the weight of the Kerry champions weren’t long realising how wrong they were. It took extra-time before Stacks finally shook them off, and with perhaps a little more self-belief, Ballincollig could be enjoying a blooming great time of their own.
Indeed it was a victory built on the steady head of Stacks - and particularly of Donaghy, who abandoned his position at the stern to help steer the ship home from closer to the bow. The Cork champions very nearly had them cut adrift, leading 1-4 to a point after 20 minutes, with Patrick Kelly deftly finishing off their goal, on seven minutes. It also seemed they had the wind in their backs again, going into extra-time, after John Miskella fired over a brilliant equaliser, at the tail end of normal time.
It was no less than Ballincollig deserved, nor indeed Stacks - who fought hard to forge ahead early in the second half, but then seemed content to sit back, almost counting down the clock from 10 minutes out. Even though they were caught in the end, before managing to dig in again in extra-time, manager Stephen Stack had little doubt that was the tactic Stacks were forced to play.
“At the end of normal time, I actually complimented my players, for not giving away they ball,” said Stack. “Ballincollig were playing 12 or 13 men inside, while we had maybe five or six forwards in there, and so they had at least two players on them. So there was no point in kicking it in.
“And Ballincollig are also an excellent counter attacking team. You give them the ball, and they will run it, from one end of the field to the other. At that stage legs were tired, so it was important for us to hold on to the ball as best we could.”
Still, after going two points up on 48 minutes - David Mannix, Denis McElligott and Greg Horan fronting that charge - Stacks then laboured around their third of the field, and didn’t score again in normal time: they very nearly got away with it, but Sean Kiely, then Miskella, forced the extra 10 minutes, much to the delight of the large band of Ballincollig supporters who packed into the main stand as if it were a barn dance.
After that, however, Ballincollig’s seasonal efforts, such as winning a first Cork title in 130 years of trying, began to take its toll. Stacks hit them with the first three points of extra-time - substitute Darragh Long adding some weight up front - while Ballincollig didn’t score again until the 74th minute, when Miskella popped over his third.
By then the hearts were willing, yet the legs just weren’t, the ferocious and unrelenting play of the previous hour clearly catching up with them. Still, they performed less like a satellite village of Cork and more like one of the larger city clubs.
“Look, we gave it everything, and there’s a lot of disappointment in the dressing, a lot of tears,” said Michael “Docks” O’Brien, the Ballincollig manager. “Maybe we just ran out of legs, because Austin Stacks probably finished that bit better than us. Lads can’t even walk, coming off the field. You can’t ask any more than that. And I’m just proud to have managed them.
“And at the start of extra time they got two or three easy scores, and they were able to retain that, really. We’d also worked a lot on Kieran Donaghy being in the full forward line, and that worked well. When he moved out, they still had good forwards inside, who caused havoc, and I suppose we let them have the ball too much, didn’t pressurise them as much as we could, when they had the ball in that period, getting on top.”
Indeed Donaghy himself fisted over one of the security points in extra-time, although he was brilliantly handled by Stephen O’Donoghue for much of the first half, there was no holding his influence further out the field as the game progressed. He made one giant fetch in front of his own goal, and, as somewhat frustrating as it was to watch, also helped slow down the game over the final 10 minutes, as Stacks took their chances on holding out until the end.
For Stack, watching Donaghy perform is a less prolific scoring role was perhaps even more satisfying: “Yeah, we were slavishly kicking the ball into Kieran, and you have to give their full back credit, he played him very well. They put us under pressure, and fellas panicked a bit in possession. We had to be more patient.
“But we’ve won 16 games this year without Kieran, and we know how to play without him, but when Kieran came out the field he was brilliant. We also picked our passes a little better, to the likes of David Mannix, Shane Callaghan, and when we held on to it I thought we cause them problems.”
AUSTIN STACKS: D O'Brien; D McElligot (0-1), R Shanahan, B Shanahan (capt); C Jordan, F MacNamara, P McCarthy (0-2); W Guthrie, G Horan (0-2); M Collins, S Carroll (0-3, frees), D Bohan; D Mannix (0-3, 0-1 free), K Donaghy (0-1), S O'Callaghan (0-1). Subs: F Mangan for Collins (half-time), J Dennis for R Shanahan (32 mins), D Long (0-2, frees) for Carroll (53 mins), C O'Connell for Bohan (56 mins), W Kirby for Horan (59 mins); Horan for McElligot (extra time), Collins for Mannix (70 mins), Bohan for MacNamara (72 mins); Collins black-carded 76 mins (no subs left). BALLINCOLLIG: D Lordan (capt); N Galvin, S O'Donoghue, L Prendergast; JP Murphy, L Jennings, C Kiely (0-1); S Kiely (0-1), C O'Sullivan; G Durrant, P Kelly (1-0), N Allen; J Kelly (0-1), C Dorgan (0-3, 0-1 free, 0-1 45), J Miskella (0-3). Subs: P O'Neill for O'Sullivan (29 mins), C Moore for Prendergast (half-time), D Tobin for Allen (40 mins), I Coughlan for J Kelly (48 mins), D Kerstein for Murphy (56 mins), S Lucey for Galvin (extra time), Murphy for O'Neill. Referee: Rory Hickey (Clare).
