Veteran Coyne gives perspective to Tooreen semi-final heartache

“There’ll be no sour grapes from me,” assured Stephen Coyne after Saturday’s gut-wrenching loss. The Tooreen centre-back has been around long enough to know that an odd disputed referee’s decision here or there wasn’t the reason behind his side’s narrow All-Ireland semi-final defeat, more like a couple of self-inflicted wounds in an otherwise superb display against Munster’s intermediate hurling champions, Castlelyons of Cork.

Six Tooreen players had scored from play compared to just one for Castlelyons when a 48th-minute goal by Anthony Spillane nudged the Cork side into a lead they were never to relinquish. Tooreen had led by three points early in the second-half but the margin could easily have been double, such had been the dominant nature of their first-half performance.

“We were coming up today really confident in our set-up, we had our homework done on these boys, they’re a right good team but we were backing ourselves all day long,” reflected Stephen Coyne afterwards.

“We’ve been down this road the last couple of years and we knew that if we put in a performance that we could come away with the win. And only for a few small things on the day, small margins, a soft goal and not getting a few more scores, particularly in the first-half, then maybe we could have seen it out. But it wasn’t to be.” 

Castlelyons had started brightly but five shots inside the opening nine minutes yielded only a brace of points for centre-back – and former Cork senior – Colm Spillane. After that they were entirely reliant on the placed ball expertise of Alan Fenton until Spillane’s softest of majors, where ‘keeper Jack Barry’s booming clearance landed just yards from the Tooreen goal.

“The ball just bounced lovely for one of their lads to run it in and kick to the net. I think we recovered well after that, we got it back to a point, but it was a blow to us at that stage, especially in a low-scoring game like this. A goal was a big score,” conceded Stephen Coyne, who has two decades of senior hurling under his belt with Tooreen.

“The emphasis today was just to take the fight to them from the very first whistle.

“The two things we tried to focus on was our work-rate and the efficiency of our shooting. Our work-rate was top class, I couldn’t fault any of the lads. I felt the ref gave a few harsh frees against us in the first-half but I’m not blaming him, Castlelyons won on the day and the best of luck to them. It’s just disappointing at this stage.” 

Featuring a total of three defenders to have hurled for the Cork seniors – Colm Barry, Niall O’Leary and the aforementioned Colm Spillane – Castlelyons were asked some serious questions by Tooreen but crucially, the Connacht champions never really looked like scoring a goal, as the Munster outfit oft times took to cynical means to halt the galloping Fergal Boland, particularly once getting their noses in front down the home straight.

“Listen, as a defender I would probably have done the same myself,” admitted Coyne. “But at some stage the ref has to see persistent fouling, pulling the same man down every time. I think they were lucky not to have a man sent-off but again, there’ll be no sour grapes from me. At the end of the day they were up on the scoreboard when the final whistle went and we just have to take it,” added Coyne who even amidst all the immediate hurt and disappointment, was able to focus on the bigger picture.

“It might not be much solace today but this club went ten years without even winning a county final, from 2003 to ’13, so where the club is at now, I think it’s in a really good place. A lot of these lads are just in their prime now and there’s more young lads coming through, so next year we’ll dust ourselves down and just go again.” 

Tooreen had lost to St Patrick’s Ballyragget (Kilkenny), Fr O’Neill’s (Cork) and Naas (Kildare) in 2017, 2019 and 2021 before finally crossing the semi-final threshold against Liatroim Fontenoys (Down) this time last year.

“I think the journey of the past five years has really helped us because we’re consistently playing against good teams and we’re at a level now where we really believe in our own game,” explained Stephen Coyne.

“We’ve had some really good challenge matches against senior teams from stronger counties and other teams have come wanting to play us as well, so it’s really helped us as a team to develop.”