The road less travelled can be a challenging one, especially if tackling it alone, but Brian Sheehy knows the bounty at the end of such expeditions can often be greatest.
He will journey back across the river this Sunday as Kilmacud Crokes face Na Fianna in the Dublin senior hurling final at Parnell Park. It is a repeat of last weekend’s football decider at the same venue, which Crokes edged by a point.
However, while many of his team-mates from last Sunday will be in the stands shouting on their hurling counterparts, Sheehy, as Kilmacud’s only senior dual player, will be out in the middle of it all. The former Dublin underage hurler was an unused sub in last week’s football final but is expected to start in defence for the hurlers.
“It definitely has its challenges,” says Sheehy. “It would be helpful to me if I had a couple more lads doing it with me. But I’m lucky enough to have the managers in constant communication.
“It’s tough. If I’m the only one on the football team doing the hurling, they’re like, ‘I don’t want this lad ahead of me if he’s missing training and stuff.’ Same with the hurlers. You have to earn your respect, make it known why you are doing dual and that you’re fully committed to each team. It is tough at times but I enjoy it – I wouldn’t be doing it otherwise.
“In a normal week, I’d just do one hurling session and one football. If it’s a hurling weekend I do the hurling and vice versa. So I end up doing the same amount of training as every other lad who just plays one code.”
There are two Na Fianna players doubling up also, Conor McHugh and Donal Ryan will be togging out with the Mobhi Road side’s hurlers a week on from losing the football final. McHugh started for the footballers last week, while Ryan featured as a late sub. Sheehy, who was part of the Dublin under-20 side that contested the 2020 All-Ireland hurling final at that grade, was on the bench last Sunday and admits trying to balance both codes has its disadvantages.
“It’s very tough, especially in Crokes because the standard is so high with both squads.” he says.
“If you’re a young lad and you’re playing minor dual, you’re coming out and you’re thinking, ‘I want to start on a squad, on a team.’ Unless you’re absolutely exceptional, if you do dual you’re completely diminishing your chances by ... I don’t know how much, a good bit.”
Still, he is now just one victory away from carving out history as the only player to achieve the double-double with Crokes, following on from their football and hurling county titles in 2021.
“To be honest, last year I was kind of thinking, ‘Jeez, I don’t know if I’ll go again in both,’ because I was probably a bit disappointed with the football in terms of game-time,” admits Sheehy.
“But when you are on such a buzz with the team and you are reaching a club All-Ireland final, it is very hard to turn away from that then. For now I’ll keep on going, who knows what next year will bring?
“You don’t want to let anybody down. I would be conscious that I am the only dual player in the club, so I think it is important that young lads looking up, when I was younger I remember looking at Ross O’Carroll and seeing him playing football and hurling. I think if a young kid can look up and say, ‘look, he’s doing it so I’ll be able to do it in a couple of years when I’m older’, so I’m conscious of that.”
Sheehy can see benefits of the competition structure operational in Wexford, where rather than running the football and hurling championships concurrently, they instead schedule them separately – not starting the football until the hurling is finished.
Sunday’s game is not merely a repeat of the football decider, but the clubs actually met in last year’s hurling final too, when Crokes won after extra-time. So, considering the outcome of the football encounter last weekend as well, there should be no shortage of hurt in the Na Fianna dressingroom.
Between 2014-17, Na Fianna dominated the capital’s minor hurling championship only for Crokes to come along and claim three minors on the bounce between 2018-20.
“Na Fianna won four-in-a-row then and that team is probably coming to its peak now, around the same time our minor lads are coming to their peak so I’m sure it won’t be the last battle we’ll have. It just shows, if you put underage structures in place and you start winning minor championships, it will show at senior level,” says Sheehy.
– The Go Ahead Dublin SHC final between Kilmacud Crokes and Na Fianna takes place on Sunday at Parnell Park, 2.30
