The UCC Sigerson bus is back on the road today. Spinning up the M8 is muscle memory at this stage. The tyres will be close to threadbare come whatever hour of Thursday morning they land home from Croker at and their mile-heavy campaign concluded.
This evening’s Croke Park decider is UCC’s third spin to Dublin in the four-week Sigerson sprint.
It was at Abbotstown where Ruairí Murphy and sub Cormac Dillon produced orange and white flags respectively to propel UCC from one behind to two-point winners over Queens.
It was at the home of DCU in Glasnevin where Tom Cunningham and Dillon, again, produced a pair of back-to-back white flags to deliver another two-point victory over the dethroned champions.
And before the bus ever went near the capital, there was a first-round expedition to Edenderry where a 3-18 to 0-15 win over ATU Sligo was chalked.
Paul O’Keeffe is the UCC manager. A GP by trade, it hasn’t always been feasible to be present on the team bus for the various midday departures up the country.
He’ll be on the bus for the big one today, his car “broke” from the many lengthy journeys this Sigerson run has entailed. Journeys, mind, that have brought together and bonded a group of Cork and Kerry footballing students from as far south as Renard and Valentia, way north to Duagh, across the border to Knocknagree, and down west to Clonakilty.
Instead of arriving into the Mardyke at 6.30pm for a game an hour later, and being gone again before 10pm, they’ve been spending full days in each other’s pockets.
“It’s been a proper Sigerson campaign for us. The lads have got the full Sigerson experience where they’ve been routinely going up the country and having to really earn their crust in tight, tough affairs. Any beers had on the way home were always well-earned,” O’Keeffe reflected.
“All those away trips have helped. It’s something the lads wouldn’t have experienced before. No question but those long journeys bring that bonding element, and because we’ve been winning, they’ve enjoyed every minute of it.
“Of course, had we been beaten in one of those away games, you might have been moaning about the fact that we had three games up the country, but thankfully the lads kept pulling through, and it was great then to get the semi-final down here. It seemed like an age since we had played in the dyke.”
The campaign in its last hour is O’Keeffe’s first at the helm. He first joined UCC’s Sigerson ticket back in 2009. Credit is laid at the doorstep of Dr Con Murphy for managing to get a Barrs clubman onto a sideline headed up by a Nemo legend.
“I don’t think Billy [Morgan] had too much choice in the matter from what I remember! Con weaved his magic. We have had a great run and I certainly have learned from the best,” O’Keeffe remarked of an 81-year-old who continues to serve in the college’s Sigerson set-up.
Billy, with Paul behind him in the role of selector, oversaw Sigerson silverware in 2011, ‘14, ‘19, and ‘23.
The last of those was at the expense of this evening’s Limerick opponents. There were three more final appearances in that time.
And yet O’Keeffe reckons the class of 2026, without a single standout inter-county name, is one of the strongest, if not the strongest, he’s worked with in his 17 years down the dyke.
“Normally, you’d be picking a panel of 35 and by the time you got to the 35, you’d be saying, ‘yeah, we just about have the 35’. But this season there were a lot of good footballers that were very unlucky not to make the 35. You’d feel gutted for them, but the competition was just ferocious.
“At the start of the season, we’d about 60 fellas out training. I remember one night in November out in Bishopstown and we had 42 guys training. You are thinking to yourself, ‘how am I going to train 42 fellas on a single night, and then try to weed out the Sigerson players from the non-Sigerson players?’
“I think the reason we came out of the long grass for a lot of teams is that a lot of the lads aren’t playing inter-county. But I’d always say with college teams, give it five years and see what you had. Guys will come through off the back of Sigerson that will go on to play for Cork and Kerry. When you look back in four or five years, you’ll say, ‘jeez, that wasn’t a bad team’.”
One final bus journey. One final spin to Dublin. One hour from a 25th crown. O’Keeffe steps back to take in the full surroundings.
“Ah, I love being involved. You get to see the cream of the crop coming through. It is great to see the lads progress on when you have seen that potential many years before.
“We have a very good crop of Cork fellas at present. The future is bright for Cork football, and it’ll be fascinating to see where these guys go after the Sigerson. We have a sprinkling of Kerry lads too that have huge potential, so they could be tormenting us in Killarney in a couple of years!”
