Burke confident Na Fianna have learned lessons from last year’s heartbreak

Niall McIntyre

Na Fianna won’t pull up on Sunday until the cup is in the clubhouse.

Until there’s victory parades on Mobhi Road. Until they’re so sure they’ve beaten Kilmacud Crokes that, and this is only a slight exaggeration, they’re all side by side in the club or in the pub and they’ve watched the game back again.

You can never be too sure. No-one knows it better than them.

Because if you’d watched last year’s final, you definitely won’t forget it, at one point you would have said that Na Fianna were home and dry. With ten minutes to go, their name was as good as written on the cup.

They were nine points up at that point but then Ronan Hayes caught fire, Na Fianna lost their way and suddenly the game was in extra-time. They were beaten dockets then, and, as Kilmacud completed a seventeen point turn-around in just over a half an hour of hurling, Na Fianna ended up losing by seven points.

And their wait for a first ever Dublin SHC title went on.

To the team’s credit, something like that has to leave scars, they’ve bounced back and, less than a year on, they’re in the same place again. One game away from their first ever. And again it’s Kilmacud Crokes who stand in their way.

Donal Burke is now the Na Fianna captain and he says that, over the course of the year, they’ve focused on limiting the damage when a game goes against them. You would even have seen it in the semi-final – Cuala took over just after half-time but Na Fianna held onto their lead, and pushed on for a finish.

“Obviously at the time, it was a tough one to take,” says the sharp-shooting Burke.

“Sure we took the Christmas then, and we had the league starting then.

“Once the games started back, it’s a new kind of journey. Different lads come in, different players are there. You just have to move on and you can’t be thinking about the past the whole time. We just started a new leaf, turned over a page and we just went at it this year again then.”

“Yeah, we were delighted with the first half,” he says of the Cuala game, which they won by 2-18 to 0-17.

“The quarter-final kind of stood to us. Cuala, fair enough, they had the four weeks off. They were probably a bit rusty at the start, so we capitalised on that.

“And then Cuala are such a good team, they were obviously going to have a purple patch, and when they came, we had to try and ride the storm a bit.

“And thankfully then, we kind of … I wouldn’t say we got the momentum back, but we hung with them a bit and we held on in the end.

“There’s learnings in every game. That would have been a big learning for us, how to deal with that, and I think we’re still trying to implement it… It is tough to stop it. It’s very much an in-the-game scenario.

“The players on the pitch have to fight and claw the game back. So yeah, it’s definitely a learning we took from last year.”

It may come as a surprise that a club as big as Na Fianna, a club with almost 4000 members, have never won a Dublin SHC but hurling has never been as big here as it is now. Good Na Fianna Men like Joey Boland, Tomás Brady, Martin Quilty and Burke’s older brother Sean helped change that.

“You would have had lads like Joey Boland and Tomo Brady and even Martin Quilty, he was on that team that won Leinster in 2013. My older brother too, he would have been playing hurling as well so for me, hurling was always number one in the family.

“Personally anyway, as well, my skill level at football wasn’t the best so I would have steered towards hurling.

“I was just lucky that at my age group too. there was a good crop of lads who also just loved to play hurling so I just always remember bringing my hurl everywhere. There was always (for me) hurling and football down there. I’m not sure what caused it (the growth of hurling) but on the hurling side, lads like Tomo and Joey – we would have definitely been looking up to them.”

“It was surreal when you started playing with them then because you were looking up to them when you were 13 or 14 then next thing you’re 19 and 19 and playing with them but it was great.

Tomas Brady was a dual player for Na Fianna and Dublin.

And this final on Sunday is about lads like them, lads like Jimmy Gray who founded the club. Burke would love to do it for them.

“It would mean a lot now.

It would probably mean more to the club than to us. To me, it would be to win it with my friends.

“Lads I grew up with, that would be the most satisfying thing for me. But the bigger picture, I’d say it would mean a hell of a lot to lads like Jimmy Gray who founded the club, he’s still coming to all the games.

“Even the coaches, growing up all the people that were involved with my age group as well…The old teams, the people who are up on the wall that are still helping out with the club, cutting pitches and are still involved. It would mean a hell of a lot more for them. And that would be a big motivation for us.”