‘We’ll have to be at our best’ – Pearses hurling ace

By Kevin Egan

For the first half of the season, when his focus was Roscommon inter-county hurling, the games came thick and fast for Daniel Glynn. Then, when the local senior championship started up, Pádraig Pearses played four championship matches in the space of five weeks.

When Pearses face Four Roads in the final this Saturday (Athleague, 3pm), it will be ten weeks since the last of those four group fixtures, with just one competitive game – their championship semi-final with Oran – taking place in all that time.

It's easy to tell that Glynn is not comfortable in a ceasefire situation, and he’s worried that being out of the trenches for so long won’t suit anybody.

Glynn described the delay (a situation brought about the referees’ strike in Roscommon) as “far from ideal”, pointing out that October 9 was originally pencilled in for the final.

“It’s no disadvantage in the sense that it’s the same for both teams and you have to play with the cards you’re dealt, but overall, it makes it that bit tougher to hit the ground running and play the type of hurling that we all want to see on a big day like the county final,” Glynn told the Westmeath Independent last week.

Glynn, and every other occupant of the Pádraig Pearses dressing room, will certainly want to see a different type of game to the one that was played against Four Roads in the group stages, where a nip-and-tuck battle over the first 45 minutes gave way to a one-sided final quarter.

“They were good winners in the end, I think they won by eight points,” Glynn said.

“Four Roads are a very good team and you are looking at them to be within touching distance of winning the championship every year.”

Time changes everything, however. “It was a long time ago now, nearly two or three months. There’s been a lot of hurling done since then and if you are going off that form you would say Four Roads had an easy run-in to the final but Athleague gave them a good game. Oran did the same to us so.

“It’s as simple as this - Four Roads are going to be a tough task and we’ll have to be at our best if we want to have a chance of winning.”

Some in the club would argue that if a bit of luck had gone their way in 2021, they would travel to Athleague on Saturday chasing three-in-a-row. Instead, there is a sense of lost opportunity from last year that they have carried into this final.

“That was a tough one to take to be honest,” Glynn said. “We lost Shane Naughton in the first play of the game which was hugely significant. He’s one of our best hurlers so I thought we did well to weather that, but going out on penalties is never easy.

“There’s nothing you can really do except move on and that was probably in the back of our heads too going into this year’s semi-final; we didn’t want a repeat of that”.

And is the same sense of apprehension there now? “If you’re not nervous or excited, I’m not sure what’s wrong with you,” he replies.

“You’re in the wrong game if not, it’s a mixture of both. On the nights when you’re training, it’s excitement, but as you get closer to the game, more nervousness will creep in. Then you get on the pitch and the whistle is blown, and it’s the same as any other game really”.

So with all that in mind, will they win? "A guard wouldn’t ask me that!” he replied.

It’s hard to tell if that answer shows nervousness or excitement, but one way or another, it’s clear Daniel Glynn has been off the pitch long enough, and Saturday can’t come quickly enough!