Maynooth face mammoth task against awesome Naas
Rian Boran (Naas) and Cormac Nolan (Maynooth) tangle during last year's Senior Hurling Championship Final Photo: Sean Brilly
Ollie Baker has seen and done it all. Two All-Irelands as a player with Clare, two All Stars, a club All-Ireland with St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield. Club management with the likes of Kilmacud Crokes, county management with Offaly and as a current member of the Westmeath backroom team.
You wonder has the Ballinasloe-based Garda Superintendent ever faced into a big final with the odds stacked against him as much as he does on Sunday as his Maynooth team face eight-in-a-row chasing Naas in the UPMC Kildare Senior Hurling Championship final.
Baker slipped quietly into the Maynooth hot seat this year after Johnny Greville’s side came up short for the third time in four years when going down to the Naas behemoth in last year’s decider (3-15 to 0-16).
No doubt the challenge of taking down a Naas team whose omnipotence is approaching Ballygunner-like qualities held a certain appeal and living in Westmeath (his sons Tadhg and Senan were on their Leinster title winning side this summer), it is a relatively quick tip down the motorway for him.
It’s an almighty task though. Maynooth have certainly cemented their place as the undisputed number two hurling club in the county since making it to the 2022 final, their first in 79 years, but their three final defeats to Naas to date have seen them lose out on margins of eight, seventeen and eight points again.
Looking at the results of the two sides to date, the disparity in scoring and scoring concession between the two clubs suggests Naas if anything are getting stronger.
Coming into last year’s final (the last under Tom Mullally’s management, with another Kilkenny man Mark Dowling now at the helm), Naas had scored 183 points (25-107) in five games. This year, having played one game less, they have outdone that by six points on 189 (23-120).
Possibly more impressively, they have not conceded a goal in the championship to date and only 33 points in those four games. Last year it was 59 in the five games prior to the final. The clean sheet run in terms of goals now stretches back seven games to the second round-robin game last year when they conceded one against Celbridge.
Their dominance in the semi-final against Éire Óg Corra Choill was astonishing. While their opponent set-up very defensively for a knock-out game, limiting their ambition to damage-limitation it seemed, Naas simply peppered their posts.
They managed a shot-a-minute roughly and in one twenty-minute spell at the start of the second half Éire Óg literally only made it out of their own half on a couple of occasions.
If Naas are stronger than ever this year, a few factors may be contributing to that. No doubt a new manager will have brought a freshness, notwithstanding the outstanding job Mullally did with the team over his tenure.
Surely also the experience many of the panel gained playing Division 1B and Leinster Championship hurling with Kildare this year will have brought them on no end, both physically and in terms of their skill base. The stronger Kildare become the stronger Naas may become given the sheer number of players they have involved with the county.
The return of James Burke from injury is another factor. He was simply majestic in the semi-final. Charlie Sheridan is also back this year and flying up front alongside brother Jack. Those two and Burke are in a shootout with Maynooth’s Tom Power on Sunday for top-scorer in the championship.
Peter O’Donoghue, around the panel for a good few years and previously involved with Kildare, has been a revelation at midfield. The experiment with Darragh Kirwan, the county football star, has been a positive one, though injury may rule him out of Sunday’s final.
Indicative of the strength of the Naas set-up though, when Kirwan was ruled out of the semi-final, they were able to call on Cathal Dowling to fill his boots. Not a bad replacement. Cian Boran is another serious talent they have been able to cover for.
Looking at Maynooth, they have not been putting up scores anything close to those of Naas. While Naas have a +156 score-difference over four games Maynooth’s is +41. They only had three to spare over Éire Óg Corra Choill in the opening round and Celbridge were competitive in a ten-point semi-final defeat while Baker’s side were comfortable against Confey and Coill Dubh.
Personnel wise, Maynooth have had to make do without the talents of David Qualter in attack (injured) and Ciaran Flanagan at midfield (focusing on football) while county panel member Oran Byrne is only coming back to fitness and made a welcome contribution off the bench against Celbridge. Cathal McCabe, too, missed some of the earlier action through injury issues.
On the other hand, the two Forde brothers have been flying. They haven’t always had both available over the past few years, while the four Dunnes continue to make impressive contributions and Conor O’Grady is looking like a real talent for the future, not just at club level.
Baker will need to bring all his experience and motivational skills to bear on Sunday. The Clare side he played on had the requisite battling qualities in spades.
Much as we’d love a competitive thriller with everything on the line going down the home straight, it’s still next to impossible to see anything other than another Naas title.
PATHS TO THE FINAL NAAS Group B: NAAS 2-28 Ardclough 0-12 Group B: NAAS 5-31 Celbridge 0-6 Group B: NAAS 12-29 Clane 0-9 Semi Final: NAAS 4-32 Éire Óg Corra Choill 0-6 Total Scored: 23-120 (189) Total Conceded: 0-33 (33) MAYNOOTH Group A: MAYNOOTH 1-18 Éire Óg Corra Choill 2-12 Group A: MAYNOOTH 6-21 Confey 1-16 Group A: MAYNOOTH 5-23 Coill Dubh 1-12 Semi Final: MAYNOOTH 3-21 Celbridge 1-17 Total Scored: 15-83 (113) Total Conceded: 5-57 (72) THEIR PREVIOUS SENIOR FINALS NAAS Winners: 1951, 1952, 1994, 1997, 2001, 2002, 2019, 2020, 2021,2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 (13) Runners-Up: 1908, 1946, 1947, 1948, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2016, 2017 (9) MAYNOOOTH Winners: 1891, 1896, 1913, 1924, 1937, 1939 (6) Runners-Up: 1888, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1938, 1943, 2022, 2024, 2025 (10) TOP SCORERS NAAS: Jack Sheridan 4-24 (36), 3-10 (19) from play.
MAYNOOTH: Tom Power 3-23 (32), 3-9 (18) from play.
When Naas beat Moorefield in the UPMC Intermediate Hurling Championship semi-final last Tuesday night it not only put them through to a final with Leixlip but guaranteed their opponents a return to the Senior grade after a two-year sojourn in the second tier.
There’s still a trophy on the line in Saturday’s final but it’s a slightly irksome feature of the structure in Kildare that the strength of the Naas reserve team so often leaves us with something approaching a dead rubber for a final.
None of that preamble is to suggest that Leixlip are not worthy of promotion. They skated through the group stages with five wins from five, including a 1-18 to 1-15 win over Saturday’s opponents.
They didn’t get it all their own way in the semi-final, however. Broadford proved stubborn opponents and a huge surprise looked on the cards when they hit the front with nine minutes remaining.
Leixlip responded impressively though, outscoring their opponents seven points to two from there to the end to deservedly clinch their final place.
They had to wait a few days before their promotion was confirmed by Naas’ ultimately convincing win over Moorefield in their own semi-final last Tuesday night. There’s no other club in the county that could field the likes of Fionn Maher, Charlie Carroll, Tom and CJ Boran in their second team and they were instrumental in helping them to overcome a Moorefield side who were within three points of them midway through the second half.
Leixlip will carry the favourites tag into Saturday’s final but will know not to treat Naas lightly as they seek to put last year’s narrow and agonising defeat to Clane in the decider behind them.
Friday night’s Senior Hurling relegation decider sees Confey and Clane seeking to retain their top tier status at Manguard Park. It’s a clash that was well sign-posted in the group stages with the sides finishing bottom of Groups A and B respectively with three defeats from three.
Both sides showed battling qualities in their semi-finals. Confey trailed Ardclough by seven points at half-time but narrowed the gap to two by the three-quarter mark, only to lose out by five points in the end.
Clane, meanwhile, had a numerical advantage from the 46th minute against Coill Dubh but thirteen wides and an inspired performance from their opponents saw them suffer an eight-point reversal.
Clane have struggled to find their feet having come up from the second tier while Confey are renowned for grinding out wins when their senior status is on the line. The Cope Bridge men will go into this as slight favourites perhaps but it’s a difficult one to predict with any certainty.
