Bailieboro Shamrocks were fancied to make a speedy return to senior league and championship ranks in 2006 but it didn't happen. Kevin Carney asks three leading club officials what went wrong. From going oh so close to filleting the big boned men of Mullaghbawn in the Ulster senior club final of 1995, the Bailieboro Shamrocks have had to survive on scraps of comfort of late. In 2006 they found the intermediate hills too difficult to climb and were left really clutching at straws in striving to see some silver lining on the clouds above St. Anne's Park. Three people who have been influential and hard-working officials of the club in recent times, Benny Clarke, Brian Keegan and Fr. John Cooney are only too well aware that the road to recovery for their club is a painstakingly slow process. The trio are united though in believing that the experience of fighting tooth and nail to retain their intermediate status in '06 will stand to Bailieboro's premier squad as a new season looms large on the horizon. Outgoing county board delegate Benny Clarke has ploughed a lot of furrows on behalf of the famed Shamrocks but he feels that club supporters will have to be extremely patient as they await the return of the good old days or, at least, a return to the top flight. "We have a number of good young lads coming up through the ranks but it will take time for them to make their mark at senior level," the personable Benny opines. "The veterans on the team need to stay on for another while though to allow these fellas come through though. "Even with them around, I still think it will be a few years before we can expect to get back to senior and stay there." Benny says he personally had hoped that the east town side would have cemented a mid-table place in the second division in 2006 but, instead, the club had to draw on all their reserves to stave off the threat of relegation from both the league and the intermediate championship. Benny accepts that the club's intermediate side struggled to make things work in the past year. He genuinely believes the team's final placing in the league could have been improved had the Shamrocks had their quota of players available all year, been more efficient in front of goal in general terms and won a bevy of matches they narrowly lost. "There was a number of games the lads lost by a point or two and if those results had went the other way, our league status wouldn't have been under threat at the end of the year." Benny says it was a similar story in the intermediate championship where "the lads should have had things wrapped up at half-time." Benny says lessons have to be learned from what didn't go right for Bailieboro in 2005. "They will have to use the experience they got in 2005 to help them perform better in the coming year. "2006 was disappointing but we're hopeful things will go better next year." For his part, the Shamrocks' Public Relations Officer Brian Keegan agrees that the experience garnered by the Class of 2006 should count in a big way for the coming year. "I think the lads got a bit of a wake-up call last year in division two. "Maybe they felt at the start of the season that after coming down from division one, playing in the second division would be a lot easier but I think they were surprised at the standard of a lot of the teams in the league. "A lot of the teams are of a similar standard and it was an eye-opener for our lads." Brian reckons division two is "a very level playing field" and little separates the top teams from those at the basement - a position which the Shamrocks, unfortunately, found themselves for far too long in '05. "If the club can hang onto the more senior players and that added to the experience that the younger fellas would have picked up over the last year should mean we'll be a much stronger team next year," Brian says. "It's very important though that the seasoned players hang in there, at least for another year." Interestingly, Brian reckons that, in some regards, Bailieboro's relegation to division two may prove to be a boon for the club in the long-term but "I wouldn't like to see the team stay longer than for the duration of 2007 in division two." "It's a big town and the talent is there to get us back into division one," Brian adds. Traditionally there has been a bigger 'fall-off' of players in the bigger towns between the age of 18 and by the time they are ripe to step up to the plate at senior level. The Bailieboro club has suffered like others in that regard and Brian says the club obviously has to work hard at "limiting" such a fall-off. He maintains though that winning is a great way of keeping fellas' minds focussed on the next game, the next season. He fully expects that come January, February, March and thereafter, "the park will be full with lads training." And the year ahead? "The lads put in a good effort over the last couple of the months of the season to beat Butlersbridge in the championship and Drung in the last league game of the year and hopefully they will carry on that sort of commitment in the new year. "If the likes of Adrian Lambe, Adrian Coleman and Philip Clarke stay on for another year then the new management team will have a fair bit of material to work with. "There's some good plans in the pipeline for the development of facilities and it would be good if we could match progress made off the field with an improvement in things from the playing side." For his part, club chairman Fr. John Cooney mirrors Benny Clarke's view that league games might well have reaped two points instead of one which would have made a sizeable difference to the team's season. He fingers draws versus Ramor United and Kill Shamrocks as examples of what might have been. "I think the knack of closing out games eluded us in a few games during the year," the Killinkere native opines. "We were beaten by Kildallan by a point at home. "That was a game we should have won in particular because they hadn't been going too well before that. "But the team later did very well to beat Killinkere in a very important game in late August. "It gave us a good chance to escape relegation but it still went to the last game of the year against Drung before we were certain of staying up." In company with messrs. Clarke and Keegan, Fr. John says not having a full squad to pick from all year negated against Bailieboro's chances of finishing in at least a respectable mid-table position in the league at year's end. He's more than hopeful that better tidings lie ahead in the coming year. "I think players have already indicated that they're prepared to give that extra bit of commitment for 2007 and put in a more consistent effort during the year," says the popular clergyman who is in Bailieboro for the last eight years. As someone who, while based in Drumlane, was closely associated with nurturing the skills then of such young talents as Barry Corrigan, Fr. John dismisses the notion that more youngsters in Bailieboro are lost to the cause of Gaelic games after their teenage years than in any other gaeldoms in county Cavan. And he's hopeful that the cream of the underage crop of recent vintage will serve the club well in the coming year(s). "Killian Sheridan will be a big loss because he had so much natural talent but there are other young players coming through. "I think the squad we'll have in 2007 will be as good as any squad from any division two club." In the dog-eat-dog territory of intermediate ranks, Bailieboro will have to show the appetite for the many battles that lie ahead of them. Many of those battles will take the form of derby duels with the likes of Drumgoon, Shercock, Killinkere and Lavey lying waiting in the long grass. The Shamrocks will again be facing newly-promoted Cootehill Celtic, a team they lost to in the recent intermediate championship. The east Cavanmen will also be crossing swords with the aforementioned Killinkere boys who also triumphed in the championship when they clashed. Mention of the past IFC and Fr. John is reminded of the sleeves-rolled-up display by the Shamrocks in beating Butlersbridge in the semi-final of the relegation play-offs. "In fairness to the lads, they pulled out all the stops to avoid the drop in the championship and the league and if they can put in the same effort in 2007 that they put in in winning the games against the 'Bridge and Drung (league), they will go close to winning promotion." Tweet

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