Cappataggle played their last game in August.
They lost in the last 16 of the Galway senior A hurling championship and that was it, season over. They were already put out of the league earlier in the year, they didn’t make it through the group stages so they had nothing else to play for.
Not for 2016 anyway.
The club still has a shot of glory though with the 2015 senior hurling league final only two and a half weeks away. Yep, the 2015 final.
To make it worse, Liam Mellows are already 2016 league champions. They beat Mullagh back in October 8 and they’ll defend their title next year.
#galwayhurling Galway SHL: Final: RESULT: Liam Mellows 1-19 Mullagh 2-14
— FlirtFMSport (@FlirtFMSport) October 8, 2016
Last season’s competition is still unresolved and, on Saturday 5 November, Cappataggle and Tynagh-Abbey/Duniry will lock horns to decide who will be crowned champions of 2015. Presumably they won’t get to take the trophy home, there’s already a new champion after all.
The problem started last summer when the Galway hurling board decided to divide the hurling championship into A and B sections.
It was decided that only 12 teams (of the usual 24 senior clubs) would form the A championship going forward from 2016 on so they used the 2015 championship to form that split. After the group stages of that championship, the eight clubs that qualified for the quarter-finals were automatically now A teams.
That left four spaces to fill with 14 teams remaining.
So they put those 14 into playoff groups – four groups (two groups of 4 and two groups of 3) and the four winners of each group would join the original eight to form the 2016 A championship.
“The real delay was the second round – seeding teams into A and B,” PC Loughnane, Cappataggle club secretary, spoke with SportsJOE.
“It wouldn’t be fully the hurling board’s fault that it wasn’t played. It was just when they decided to change the championship to make an A and B – that was really it.
“Because after we were beaten and had finished in the championship, we had to play more games to get to A. Some teams had three more games in those playoff groups, others had two. That was why the delay was in it and it just never really materialised between that and Christmas.”
It’s been a series of unfortunate events ever since Cappataggle emerged from the league group back in the spring of 2015.
They were due to play Beagh in the league semi-final but the pair would meet in their championship group in June so, between both clubs, they agreed to put a place in the league final on the line for that game, as well as the championship points.
Of course, as luck transpired, they drew that game.
Later in the year, in October, Beagh and Cappataggle were drawn in that same playoff group (with Tommy Larkins) to decide the fate of A and B championship clubs for next year. Once more, they put the league semi-final on that fixture along with the points for the playoff group and Cappataggle won by four to advance to the decider.
There, they’d play Tynagh-Abbey/Duniry. Still, they wait for the fixture.
“They wanted to get the final played at the end of May (2016) when there was a break but we had four lads playing with the Galway under-21s then so we wouldn’t have had them available,” Loughnane explained.
“So it wasn’t played then and that was it. It’s just been going on since and we’re trying to arrange a date suitable for everyone.
“We were beaten in August, we were beaten in a preliminary quarter-final, and our lads haven’t lifted a hurl since. We had four lads in the Galway under-21 team and they were playing in August – they played Dublin in a semi-final. That ruled out a lot of days.
“They played Dublin on August 20, then we were out in the championship the week afterwards. Then they were playing in the All-Ireland final against Waterford in the second week of September. Then when they finished with the under-21s, the footballers were in action.”
The footballers are still going. Cappataggle’s sister club St. Gabriel’s have a junior championship final this weekend so all the focus is on that for now. They’ve tried to schedule the league final (last year’s league final) for the bank holiday weekend but Tynagh would’ve been missing boys and so it goes.
For now, it is down for Saturday 5 November.
“We’ve never actually won the senior league because we were only promoted in 2014. So it would be an honour to win it.”
And, 18 months after they qualified for the semi-final, 13 months after they won the semi-final, four months after their opposition have stopped playing hurling, three months since their season ended, four weeks after the 2016 competition has been wrapped up, Cappataggle might finally get the chance and that honour to win their first senior hurling league.
They might.
Just don’t expect them to take the trophy home if they win.
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