Duignan's key role in Ballinamere breakthrough as final now awaits

Kevin Egan

Anybody who has picked up a hurl or pulled on a pair of boots in the last 20 years is probably familiar with Al Pacino’s half-time speech in Any Given Sunday, talking about “a game of inches”.

Let’s be honest – coaches love it, as at its heart is the idea that the next play you make, however small in the greater scheme of things, might be the one that makes all the difference.

But then, every so often, there comes the moment where you’re not looking to squeeze out an inch, you’ve a chance to take a full yard or more. Brian Duignan’s penalty in the championship semi-final against St Rynagh’s (the home club of his father Michael) felt like that moment.

Having started well and led by five points, goals in each half from Aidan Treacy and Eoin Woods meant that the men in blue and gold led by three points, with the clock winding down. Consecutive seasons that ended with defeat in their first round of knockout hurling meant that like it or not, people were unsure about how Ballinamere might fare in a tight finish.

When Duignan fired his shot wide and to the right, many of those people probably made their mind up about how this game was going to finish; except they would be wrong.

“I would confess that Dan (Ravenhill) is a better penalty taker, but he was after taking a seriously big hit so there was no chance we were going to put the pressure on him,” Duignan recalls.

“It’s not that I don’t want to hit the penalties, I’m happy enough hitting them. When I was setting up I saw Conor Clancy going the other way so I said once I hit the right of the goals I am all right. Then, when it went wide I just thought ‘Oh God’.

“A few of the Rynagh’s lads were letting me know about it as well, which is fair enough, that’s part of the game. But that would fire you up as well, so I thought to myself, there are ten minutes left and it’s not over so I’m going to try and do something.”

Of course, there was still time, and Ballinamere went on to play perhaps the best, and most important ten minutes of hurling since they joined the senior ranks in Offaly. Seven points in a row, three from Duignan, saw them through to today’s decider.

“We got a free underneath the terrace a couple of minutes later and I said to myself if this doesn’t go over there is going to be serious questions asked of me! But it’s the same as a free in the first minute. Go through your technique and do the same thing and you will more than likely get the right result. It went over, more balls were thrown out to me so I made up for it!”

‘Making up for it’ was something of a theme for the man that picked up a Joe McDonagh All-Star in Croke Park on Friday night of last week.

“The goal for the group was to stay up in the league and win the Joe McDonagh, but at the start of the year we all set personal goals and one of mine was to win a ‘Joe Mac’ All-Star,” Brian says.

“I set that goal at the start of the year because I was disappointed with how I played the season before with Offaly. I had injuries, but I hadn’t played too well for the whole season, and ultimately it ended in disappointment when we lost out to Carlow.”

Now, he’s hoping for a similar story in the green and gold of Ballinamere as they prepare for Sunday’s final against reigning champions Kilcormac-Killoughey. While younger players like Sam and Dan Bourke have come through from this year’s All-Ireland winning U-20 panel, Brian is part of this club’s golden generation – a generation that enjoyed success at minor and U-20 in Offaly, but where it took time for that to feed through to senior.

“We started off when we were U-14, that’s where the journey really started for the majority of that group. We would have been getting 30 or 40 point hammerings off the likes of Rynagh’s, Kilcormac-Killoughey, Coolderry and a few of these teams. We built up to be able to compete with them, won a couple of things at underage and got used to that winning feeling.

“But you are young and naïve, so you nearly think this is going to last forever. We won the Senior ‘B’, came up to Senior ‘A’ and we got a serious reminder the first year that this is not how it works in Senior ‘A’.

“It took us a few years to realise there is a serious standard here. You are not going to walk through to a county final so we had a lot of building up to do over the last few years but I think that has helped us.

"The journey we have gone on from getting to a quarter-final and losing, getting to a semi-final and losing, and finally getting across the line to a final makes it that bit more special to actually have a chance to play a county final,” Duignan added.