{"id":581935,"date":"2026-08-03T15:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T15:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/581935\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T15:03:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T15:03:09","slug":"league-final-defeat-helped-midleton-to-learn-says-padraig-oshea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/581935\/","title":{"rendered":"League final defeat helped Midleton to learn, says P\u00e1draig O’Shea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday night\u2019s Co-op SuperStores Premier SHC game against St Finbarr\u2019s was Midleton\u2019s 11th competitive outing of the year.<\/p>\n

A 0-25 to 0-17 triumph gave them ten wins from those 11 \u2013 but the sole loss served as a valuable educational tool.<\/p>\n

That defeat came in last month\u2019s RedFM Hurling League final against Sarsfields and the lessons from that were put to good use against the Barrs at P\u00e1irc U\u00ed Rinn. Manager P\u00e1draig O\u2019Shea was satisfied with the response.<\/p>\n

\u201cI suppose we probably were disappointed with the performance in the league final,\u201d he said, \u201cbut, at the same time, we learned more from losing that game than we would have, even if we had nicked it and won by a point in the end or something like that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think we would have learned as much as what we did in defeat and it wasn’t so much the performance, it was just probably our attitude going into it. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo we took an awful lot from that loss and I think we brought it into Friday and I just thought, whatever about our hurling and everything, I thought our attitude was spot-on, the was excellent.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was probably the biggest positive we were able to take from today, the attitude was superb.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MidletonMidleton senior hurling team manager P\u00e1draig O’Shea. Picture: David Keane<\/p>\n

At half-time, Midleton led by four points, 0-13 to 0-9, but had played with a stiff breeze and the Barrs had shown signs to suggest that they would respond strongly. It didn\u2019t materialise though as the Magpies managed the game impressively in the second half.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, I’ll go back to the league final, one of the big learnings from that was just not to get too high or too low,\u201d O\u2019Shea said.<\/p>\n

\n In that game, we were two goals down after five minutes and, in fairness to lads, they plugged away.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, I suppose today we were thinking the same, no matter what happened. You’re obviously up against an excellent team with excellent forwards, they were going to get scores, we knew that, so the big thing was just not to panic, stick to the plan, if they get scores they get scores, we stick to our plan, we try to get back the scoreboard at the other end. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it worked, I think in fairness lads they managed it very well even when the Barrs came at us, we were cool, we didn’t lose the head at any stage, we were cool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leader<\/p>\n

Key to staying in front was the clean sheet.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, they probably had one chance at the end but the six backs were excellent, as a unit,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Tommy kind of came back in and reorganised the whole thing from the middle, but young Tommy Dunlea there making his championship debut, I thought he was really good. Ciarmhac Smith, just back from a hamstring, excellent again, and Tadhg [O\u2019Leary Hayes] was very good on the full-back line.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think all of them \u2013 Cormac Walsh in the half-back line, around a long time, loads of experience, hurled really well, so I suppose the back six probably gave us the platform that we needed going forward. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe two lads midfield, Mikey and McDermott, were excellent and the forwards just did what they did, they were accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RossRoss O’Regan of Midleton looks to challenge Rickey Barrett of St Finbarr’s.\u00a0Picture: Howard Crowdy<\/p>\n

Next up is a clash with Newcestown, who lost to Bride Rovers on Saturday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, we haven’t even given it much thought,\u201d O\u2019Shea said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly the last few weeks was all about the first fixture \u2013 the first game of the season is just important to get a win and just get a bit of momentum.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was five or six played football the last round, so managing all that now is all part of it, we’ll juggle it, we’ll manage it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want our footballers to do well as well, so we’ll try and juggle the whole thing and stay on top of the injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Friday night\u2019s Co-op SuperStores Premier SHC game against St Finbarr\u2019s was Midleton\u2019s 11th competitive outing of the year.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1964,61,60,112],"class_list":["post-581935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-cork-gaa","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}