Brendan's voyage ain't yet complete
December 30, 2009Having been involved in a relegation play-off for the past three years, I suppose there's only so many times you can mess with fire before you get your hands burned."
Sometimes the best quotes are those unrehearsed. However Brendan Nordon readily admits that he has had too much time in which to concoct the most memorable punch lines and complex anecdotes required from a persistant hack if need be.
Sean O'Mahonys' descent into IFC ranks over the past three years has been a slow-burning, agonising one.
For Nordon et al, it must have felt like death by a thousand cuts as they were forced to endure three SFC relegation play-off 'finals' in the past three years.
Sadly, 2009 saw the Quayside men get inextricably stuck in the cloying morass of the relegation places and stay there.
In reflecting on how the west was lost, the team's senior citizen refuses to douse the suggestion that the team appeared incurably devoid of the necessary consistency to ward off the inevitable drop down the chute.
"I think at the end of the year, a team gets what it deserves and we simply weren't consistent enough to get ourselves out of trouble again," says utility man Nordon.
"We did reasonably well in the league with twelve points out of twenty by mid-October, for instance, but we just couldn't replicate that form for the championship.
"We weren't up for the championship enough. In the league we beat Cooley, the Gaels, the Joes and the 'Brides and drew with 'Pat's.
"But after a great result in the league, we'd go into the championship and invariably put in a poor performance.
"Usually with teams, they'd have indifferent form in the league and rise it for the championship; with us in 2009, it was the other way around.
"I don't know the reasons for it. Is it that the other teams take the league less serious than us or are we not up for it as much as them when the championship comes around?
"Overall I just think we needed to be more intense in terms of our preparation for the championship games and in terms of our football in the games themselves.
"I think it's fair to say also that every player has to look at himself and ask the question 'are we giving all the commitment that we can.'
Nordon and co. may have played with the necessary intensity in getting down and dirty in the league but in the muddy confines of the dog-eat-dog relegation bearpit, their wheels were left spinning like a non-offroader.
Without proffering any excuses, Nordon does confess however that he's not a fan of the group system for the SFC.
But would it have changed things for a Sean O'Mahonys team that insisted on being serpent-like in the league but dove-like in the championship?
"Probably not," he demurs. "But the group system isn't condusive to bringing the natural fight out in teams.
"It was different when a team had only one game to prove itself otherwise they were out of the competition.
"I'd like to see the championship structures reviewed but that won't change what happened us over the past year."
At 31, the versatile senior player is convinced that his beloved club can begin to plot of revival of fortunes with no little confidence.
He enthuses about the youthful enthusiasm and exhuberance there is in the club's premier team and while he admits a dollop of experience would make for a more palatable 2010, he's quite content with the resources that are on tap:
"There are a lot of good young guys coming through who want to succeed and who want to help the club compete at the highest level.
"Fellas like Mickey Clarke, Kevin Brennan, Tiernan Kilcoyne, Tiernan Woods and Keith McLoughlin have all gotten a taste of senior action and will be much better for that in the coming year."
At the start of 2009, Nordon assures us, the plan among the gaels based around the Point Road and up as far as the Redemptist Church was "to finish in the top half of the league and work towards getting out of the group and into the quarter-finals of the championship."
What does he say to the suggestion (made admittedly from afar) that Sean O'Mahonys may have a soft underbelly when prodded by the cold steel of championship fare?
"I wouldn't agree with that assessment at all. Maybe we just took some things for granted going into the championship and approached it in the same way we did a league match.
"I think a look at the results from our matches in the championship would show that we didn't score nearly enough to come close to winning the matches we lost.
"There's no point in winning tons of possession and not converting it into scores but unfortunately we don't have anyone up front who'll get you 1-3 or 1-4 in a match like Aaron Hoey.
"We have Brendan Traynor coming through from minor level and he has a lot of potential but he's only 19 and time will tell as to whether he realises his potential."
The 2009 SFC pitted the O'Mahonys alongside the Dreadnots, Kilkerly Emmets, St. Marys, Dundalk Gaels and St. Pats.
The portents of some rough waters ahead were posted by the O'Mahonys opening round defeat (0-8 to 0-12) to the Dreadnots.
"Losing to the Dreadnots put us on the backfoot and wasn't what we had bargained on considering we were the senior team and match favourites.
"Looking back, it was probably all over by half-time 'cause we were losing by eight points and a man down. That was our worst game of the championship; we just weren't focussed enough and paid the penalty.
Victory (2-8 to 2-6) over Kilkerly next time out steadied the O'Mahonys ship. "That was a 50/50 game but we got a goal at the right time and then another one shortly afterwards."
A tempest lay on the horizon with a clash of oars with St. Marys destined to leave Sean O'Mahonys on the cusp of yet another excrutiating play-off.
"We were a point up on the 'Marys with under five minutes to go and had we won that game, we would have been safe. Instead we finished badly and they won by a couple of points (1-12 to 0-13)."
Thereafter defeats in August to Dundalk Gaels (0-9 to 0-12) and St. Pats (0-9 to 3-13) had the doom and gloom merchants practising their rendition of the last post.
"Against the Pats we missed a goal in the first half and then they went up the field immediately and tacked on a couple of points which helped give tem a nine-five lead at half-time.
"They're very strong at the back and we never really looked like getting the goals that would have given us a lifeline."
In a by-now familiar denouement, the O'Mahonys entered the last-chance saloon; a tete-a-tete with St. Brides.
The indeliable nightmare spawned from the loins of seasons 2007 and '08 would ultimately leave Nordon and co. punch drunk and out of the reckoning for the 2010 SFC.
The sudden-death encounter with the 'Brides produced a 'Smith must score' moment for our man Nordon (a Louth senior county triallist under erstwhile boss Val Andrews) too into the bargain.
"We went four points to nil ahead and then I went through on a one-on-one with their 'keeper but blasted the ball wide.
"Then later inside three minutes they scored 2-1 and the game was turned up on its head."
So any replays of that fateful miss in the interim?
"Plenty. I didn't think I had a vintage year although I've had worse all the same.
"You always expect more of yourself and I suppose my year was a bit like the team's in general - a bit too inconsistent."
Nordon is convinced that all belonging to Sean O'Mahonys in 2009 underperformed but he is wont to look at the glass half full as a new season beckons.
He tends to concur with the notion that it is easier to stay in the SFC than to win the IFC but, nevertheless, he is cautiously optimistic that he can add to the 1998 IFC medal he won by being part of another summit-making O'Mahonys team in 2010.
He believes that the likes of the O'Connells and Na Piarsaigh will represent huge stumbling blocks on the road to a possible IFC success next year but being happy with a semi-final place or even a berth in the IFC decider next year "is simply not ambitious enough."
Born and reared within a lengthy '45 of the O'Mahonys Point Road HQ, Nordon's dejection at going down to IFC ranks has definition and depth.
And yet, he is determined to help the club recapture its lustre of old.
He may be (along with David Dowling) the only survivor from the Class of '98 still engaged in lung-bursting senior outings but he ain't ready to be put out to pasture yet.
"I've been playing with the club since I was eight and I've still got the bug," he assures us. Tweet
