This article is from page 65 of the 2011-10-25 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 65 JPG
WAY back in 1980 Éire Óg hurling really started to roar as the mercurial Martin Nugent enjoyed his finest hour when bagging 3-3 in a senior county final win over the storied Newmarket-on-Fergus Blues.
Now, along with younger brother Tony, who was also a key member of that Éire Óg Dalcassians team winning team 31 years ago that ush ered in a great era for the game in the county capital, he’s brought the Townie roar back to life.
Who knows? Another great era, could be at hand!
All because such was the cacophony of sound that greeted this com- prehensive county final success, the enthusiasm and the language afterwards, you know this was just a start.
“We wanted to get Éire Óg back up playing senior hurling,” roared Martin Nugent above the din and beside the rolling maul – it would have done the All Blacks proud earlier in their World Cup final day in Auckland – that was just starting to gather momentum.
“We met in the Queen’s Hotel in January with all the guys. That’s when this started. We just laid out a plan that this is where we wanted to be – to be in the county final and winning it and to be back up playing senior hurling.
“They key for us this year was that everyone believed in one another. Everyone on the panel believed. We really believed and we kept the focus on hurling. It was hurling all the way, all year.
“We had to have experience with youth and that’s the way we set up. The likes of Fergus Flynn, Tadhg MacNamara, Marc O’Donnell, Barry Nugent had the experience – then the younger lads like Davie O’Halloran, Tommy Downes and more added a huge amount.”
Nugent wasn’t bothered by the change of venue from Cusack Park to Clarecastle that was confirmed just after 11am, something he revealed was drilled into the players all the week and something they were prepared for.
“It’s a game of hurling,” he said. “It’s on a pitch. It doesn’t matter where it’s played. This pitch is as good as Cusack Park and we didn’t mind where the game was played. We were ready for the game anywhere and that showed early on.
“We said it to them before the game that ‘we’re going to take it to Ruan from the opening minutes’. We weren’t going to wait for Ruan to start hurling. We were going to do the hurling and start well.
“We had that drilled into them, that we were going to determine the pace of the game we wanted to play. From the word that’s the way they did it. They did what we wanted.
“We have always said that we take our games in half an hour stages. The first half – we said ‘let’s go out and see if we can win that half’.
We got them in the dressing room and we said ‘let’s go and see if we can do the same’. We did that and it’s great to be back up playing senior hurling.
“There are a lot of people that need a lot of credit for this. You have the likes of John Russell, Colm Mahon, Deccie Coote – lads that were there before we came in this year. They were there and were unlucky not to get them up before this, but we’re up now and we’re going to enjoy it.”
They were enjoying it already.