Like any team that makes its way to the final of any competition, having plenty of leaders within the ranks is absolutely imperative. When the chips are down, when the pressure reaches boiling point, when you have to go into the trenches and fight, you need a steady supply of individuals to step up to the plate.
allyduff have more than their fair share of these inspirational warriors – from the Boyle brothers, to Eoin Ross, to Paud Costelloe, who has bounced back from a lengthy period on the treatment table, to all the developing youngsters in the squad like Kyle O’Connor, Kevin Goulding, Adam Segal, and many more.
However, at Austin Stack Park on Sunday (3pm), only one man will be wearing the captain’s armband, and leading the men from the Cashen into battle against near neighbours and, fierce rivals, Causeway, in the 2022 county senior hurling championship final. That man is Daniel O’Carroll.
A pivotal presence at the helm of Garry O’Brien’s side all season, the wearer of the number six jersey has led by example. The hugely versatile 25-year-old is understandably proud of where he finds himself right now but, as exemplified by the names and faces that he sees when he looks around the dressing-room, he really only has to concentrate on his own game. The captaincy takes care of itself.
“It means a lot to be captain," he says.
"But the likes of the Boyles have been playing with Kerry for about 20 years, in both codes, so you don’t need to captain them. You don’t need to tell them what to do at all. I just do my own thing, and everyone is the captain of the team really. You can have a different leader every day. That’s the way it’s been going so far, let’s keep it that way.
“It’s a serious honour. I used to be a water boy on Ballyduff teams when they were winning championships, and all I ever wanted to do was to be a Ballyduff senior hurler. My uncle was captain years ago, Mike O’Carroll, my father was selector on the team for years, he was chairman too, and it just means a lot to be part of that.
"The great Pat Moriarty as well, I am his nephew, he won the four-in-a-row with Causeway, so we will leave him with that.”
Positions and numbers don’t mean a whole pile in the inter-changeable brand of exciting hurling that Ballyduff have been producing up to now. They are not making it easy for opposing teams to figure them out. Sunday’s skipper might well find himself domiciled in the forward line, as he has on several occasions already in this championship. O’Carroll just wants to do a job for the team.
“I’ve been playing wing-forward for all the games really. I’m wearing number six at the moment, I was centre-back all the year in the county league, but things changed with players coming back. You do what you’re asked to do at the end of the day. If they want me to play wing-forward, and work as hard as I can, that’s what I’ll do, and chip in with a few points if I can and help the team.
“The last couple of years haven’t been great, we’ve been knocked out in the first round last year, the quarter-finals the year before, the few years before that weren’t great either. So just to be back in a county final, everyone is feeling good. It’s back to where Ballyduff belong really.
“It was a massive disappointment last year. You feel like you are letting your family down, letting yourself down, letting the club down. You really need to be getting to the final stages if you are Ballyduff, going on the years gone by.
“Every final, no matter who you’re playing, is going to be a tough game. It’s going to be a battle down to the last minutes. It depends on the day, who performs, and hopefully it will be us,” he added.
An added dimension to Sunday’s extremely intriguing local derby will be the presence of the TG4 cameras, with the Kingdom’s county hurling showpiece being broadcast live for the very first time. A sign of the increased respect for the small ball game in the county, according to O’Carroll.
“Kerry have been in the Joe McDonagh final for the last three years in-a-row. They haven’t got past the finishing line yet, but I think it just shows where Kerry hurling is going at the moment, that they are going to show the county final on TG4. We played Wexford as well this year, and that was a big achievement to get there too.
“You have to try and enjoy every moment because, as I said, in the last couple of years, we haven’t got to county finals. When you get there, you have to enjoy them, because they don’t come around too often.
"You need to take everything that people say with a pinch of salt, and just move on. All you can say is that we will try our best and see how it goes.”
