There's no way the Nicks are going to throw in the towel. After all, they have young talent at their disposal that's the envy of even the most illustrious clubs in the county. You have to admire St Nicholas' perseverance and application. Having failed in their quest to return to intermediate ranks in 2001, they kept their heads down and used the end-of-season Kevin Mullen Shield to good effect, blooding some of their younger players to the ways of adult football so that they'll be ready to fight the good fight next season. Long-serving player and all-round St Nicholas clubman Brian Pentony reflects on the events of '01 and outlines the Nicks' hopes and aspirations for the coming seasons. As a player, Brian Pentony has served the St Nicholas first team faithfully for the past eighteen seasons. He's a Nicks man through and through and is driven by a desire to see the club do themselves justice . . . every season . . . every match. His selfless ambition for the club explains why 2001 left a taste in his mouth that wasn't entirely agreeable: "It was a disappointing season," he says. "We had been relegated the previous season and hoped to get back up again, with two chances, between the league and the championship. We aimed to win one or the other but it didn't work out that way, so we were disappointed. "We didn't get the best of starts in the league. Usually you have the Shield first and we could have done with the opportunity to shake off the cobwebs but things had to be changed because of the Foot & Mouth. Unfortunately, we lost our first two league matches and were playing catch-up for the rest of the season after that. "Even though we made up a bit of ground, our season effectively ended within the space of a couple of matches. We were four points off the pace in Division Three when we lost to Young Irelands by two points. They then beat us by a point in the championship, with an injury time goal." That particular defeat is described by Brian as a "real sickener". The Nicks midfielder puts the enormity of it into context when he reveals that "it was the worst championship defeat I've ever experienced" - and this from a man who's been playing championship football since 1983! Such devastating defeats take a lot of coming to terms with. "You're better off to be well beaten or to maybe lose by a couple of points after coming back at the end, but to be virtually in the semi-final one minute and then to be gone with one kick of the ball is soul-destroying. "That result had major consequences for our entire season. The whole thing could have turned around; instead, the heads dropped. I felt that if we had beaten the Irelanders that day we'd have had a successful season. We hit the bar as well, and a post, but were also guilty of missing some handy chances when we were ahead. But we let them back in and got the suckerpunch. "It was disappointing because we knew at the start of the year that we had the beating of any of the teams in the junior championship and fancied our chances of moving up again." St Nicholas had been one of four clubs promoted to intermediate grade at the end of the 1999 season as a result of the wholesale restructuring of the Wee County's domestic competitions, moving up as league runners-up behind O'Connells. They narrowly failed to hold onto their intermediate status in 2000 and were then dealt a further blow with the departure of one of their most influential players to senior club football in Dublin. As Brian explains: "Owen Farrelly was our free-taker and is very accurate with anything from the 50-yard line in. He was always good for six or seven points a game and we depended on him quite a bit for scores. He played senior with Ballyboden last year and was a prominent scorer for them. Meanwhile, we lost a lot of games by two or three points and we feel that Owen would have made all the difference." A club of St Nicholas' status can't afford to be made do without its best players, for the simple reason that adult players of any description can be thin on the ground. The club draws from a small panel of about 25 lads - not even enough to also field a junior 2 side - and they count themselves fortunate to have 20 on duty on match day. The truly encouraging thing, however, is that there is an abundance of young talent coming through from the Nicks' well-oiled underage machine and, with this in mind, Brian looks forward to Season 2002 with confidence anew: "First of all, we're hoping that maybe we'll have Owen Farrelly back," he reveals. "We blooded some of our under 16s during the Kevin Mullen Shield and I think this is the way forward. "Over the years we've lost a lot of young players and maybe one of the reasons for this is that we've been over-protective of them and haven't introduced them to adult football soon enough. By giving them adult football at an earlier age perhaps we'll encourage them to stay with us. "Five or six of those under 16s were on the county team and they're fine players so it's no bad thing to get them blooded in quickly. If you look at what Sean McDermotts have achieved with such a young team, the conclusion you'd draw is that there's no harm in getting the young lads through as quickly as possible. "Outside of myself and a few others, the majority of the team are in their early 20s or younger, so we have every reason for optimism. Even Hugh Downey and Jim McQuillan who are over the team are both young men for management, so there's no shortage of energy or enthusiasm about the place." Pentony pays tribute to the remarkable work being put into the club's juvenile section and the tremendous strides being made at this level. "Felix Hackett and Willie Reilly have put a lot of work into it and they're having a lot of success. We're hoping that our first team will soon be in a position to reap the rewards of those efforts. "We were very strong last year, with a lot of the St Olivers team that won the Leinster Vocational Schools. Our U16s won the all-county league and got to the championship final, while the minors reached the Division Two final." There's never really been any shortage of young talent in the club but for some reason it never seems to spill over into the adult team. Where has it been going wrong? "From the age of 16 upwards, we tend to lose a lot of young lads to soccer. We've always had great young players up to that age but then lose them to soccer and other distractions." This is something they're determined to change: "Some of them were blooded at the end of last year and they got a few matches under their belts so hopefully they'll have been encouraged by that. It's never easy for one young lad to come through on his own because he mightn't really know anyone else on the first team, but we have four or five coming through together now which is a good thing." How optimistic is Brian? "We'll be giving it our all, but next year might be a bit early to be expecting too much. Still, there are some quality young players coming through and most of the rest of the panel are still young enough, so we should soon have a team to rub shoulders with the best of them." Now aged 34, Brian was playing gaelic football even before the St Nicholas club was founded (in 1977). He started with Ballsgrove Rangers and soon joined the new club, of which his late father Jimmy was a founder member and principal driving force. The Nicks won three U14 championships in four years - 1979, '80 and '82 - and Brian played on the first two of those sides. He has also won an old Junior 2 championship in 1987, Donagh Cups in 1989 and '90, a Macardle Cup in 1991, an Avonmore Shield in 1992 and a junior championship medal in 1994 as well as being called up for his county at U16, U21 and junior levels. But the Nicks have always been his first love. On an ominously positive note, he concludes: "We've just purchased our home in Rathmullen Park and we're now building an extension on the dressing-rooms and a wall around the pitch. It's all systems go and were determined to keep moving forward." Tweet

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