Harty Cup: Thurles CBS manager Buckley very proud of his young team ahead of Sunday's final

Thurles CBS and the Dr Harty Cup are synonymous with one another. This will be the mid-Tipperary school’s nineteenth appearance in the premier Munster schools hurling decider in the competition’s history.

Despite the fact that a Tipperary school has been in the final 30 times in the illustrious history of the competition, the 106th edition will, for the very first time, have two Tipperary schools battling it out for the title and Thurles CBS manager and former Tipperary senior hurler Eamon Buckley couldn’t be happier seeing his team in this landmark match.

“It’s just fantastic for everyone associated with the school,” he said.

“Anywhere you go around the place everyone is talking about it so it’s just going to be a massive occasion and I’m just so happy to be back in a final again.”

The CBS has easily been the most prolific team in this year’s matches having breezed through the group campaign, bagging massive scorelines, and that all comes down to the prowess of the forwards that have at their disposal; a fact which Buckley says comes from unselfishness and a real team spirit.

“Our lads have done well this year and the good thing about our forwards has been that there’s been different lads everyday stepping up to the mark,” he highlighted.

“We’re getting a really good spread of scores, and I think the lads are really good at giving the ball to each other.

“If there’s scores on they take the score, but equally if the pass is on that’s the option they take.

“Obviously Cashel has a serious set of backs and any team that can beat the defending All-Ireland champions are going to have to be a serious outfit.

“We know we’re going to have to perform by an extra few percent and hopefully we can get that and get over the line on the day.”

An incredibly tight quarter-final clash against Cork’s St Colmans Fermoy a few weeks ago meant that many a supporter and follower of the school’s fare would have expected a similar level of challenge for Thurles in their semi-final clash with Midleton CBS but nobody, Buckley included, could believe the ease at which the CBS booked their passage to the final.

“Nobody could have predicted the result of that match,” he reflected.

“A thing that we tend to forget sometimes is that most of these lads are 15 or 16 years of age and any chap that age can have their good days and their bad days and everything we hit seemed to go over the bar.

“Never in our wildest dreams did we expect to go down to Mallow and get a result like that.”

Buckley has been involved with this group of players since they first donned the blue and gold of Thurles CBS back in their first years at the school and he believes this structure within the school allows the management to really get to know their players which is a big benefit when the group reaches Harty Cup level.

“That’s the way we do it in school. You take on a group from first year and follow that team up through the age groups which means you really get to know the lads.

“We have a big panel there and it just shows the way the lads have stayed with us because we’ve used 29 lads over the course of the year so far, which is just brilliant for so many lads to experience this competition and that will hopefully stand to them later in their hurling careers.”

The school, and indeed the Harty panel itself, is peppered with intercounty players at either minor or Under 20 level and is no doubt a huge reflection on the work going on in the school over the years, especially given the young age profile of this team in particular.

“Even to see so many of our school involved with the Tipperary minors,” Buckley stated.

“Again, there’s a good few of them on the Tipp Under 20s and minors this year and we’re just delighted to see so many of our pupils, past and present, representing the blue and gold so well.

“We only really have five players that are 18 so the rest of the players are around the 16 or 17 mark. It is a new team this year and they’re creating their own identity; that’s what we asked them to do.

“When we met up at the start of the year we never talked about winning this competition. It was just a case of trying to top the group and go from there.”

Given the magnitude of this match and the pre-match furore it is whipping up amongst Tipperary GAA folk around the county, the decision to have it as a stand alone fixture in FBD Semple Stadium will make it a huge occasion for the players.

“It is going to be a great day out and is something they’re going to remember forever,” Buckley said.

“There’s going to be a massive crowd at it this week, where you’ll have neighbours shouting against each other which makes it unique and it’ll be something that they’ll never forget.

“I just think it’s brilliant with the two Tipperary schools in it that the game has been organised for Semple Stadium because every young lad in the county grows up dreaming of playing finals in there, and to have the Harty Cup final in there is fantastic for everyone.”

While the team certainly looks to have the personnel on the field to go all the way in this final on Sunday, they also have huge pedigree on the sideline along with manager Eamon Buckley, as recently retired Tipperary legend Padraic Maher has had a big hand in the teams progression to this stage, and Buckley was delighted he could get involved.

“We spoke to Padraic early in the year last year and he said he’d come onboard. But then, when I saw that he was getting involved with the Tipp seniors I was dreading looking at the phone in case I was going to get a phone call from him,” he laughed.

“But in fairness to Padraic, the first thing he said to me was look, ‘If I’m getting involved I want to get my hands dirty’.

“He was going to club matches over the summer watching all of the lads playing Under 17 and Under 19, wanting to get to know them all when he came in in September.

“So to have him involved is brilliant for us and his experience leading up to this game will be huge for the lads and we hope that they’ll benefit from him being involved.”

While it would be expected that Thurles CBS would be slight favourites due to their history and prestige in the Harty Cup, Buckley believes that history means nothing when two teams come together having never won the competition.

“They’re two new teams. We last won the Harty Cup back in 2015 but none of these lads were even in the school at the time, so it would be a great advantage if these lads had Harty medals in their back pockets but they don’t.

“No doubt we have a great tradition in this competition, but if you’re looking back over the years we have only won two Harty Cups since 1956.

“Of course there is a great tradition and culture in the school but it is a new team and I don’t see us having much of an advantage over Cashel in that regard,” he said.

“They (Cashel) are going to be a massive challenge.

“I suppose they’re probably a little bit older and a little bigger than us and a lot of their older lads would have big experience from being in county Under 20 panels over the last few years.

“They’ve been giving away so few scores in their games all year, so we know we’re going to have to try and up our game again.

“It just looks like it is going to be a massive, massive battle and we’re going to have to be ready to step up to that.”

“Every game takes on a life of its own.

“This match is going to be completely different to the last day, so all we can do is just focus on trying to get that performance up a few notches on the last day and hope that’s enough.”

A lot of the pressure and focus will undoubtedly be on the shoulders of the Thurles CBS players and management because of their history in the competition, but Buckley remarked that in the recent history Harty Cup fare, that doesn’t hold up considering they had a 53-year gap between titles up to the 2009 victory. “There was a huge amount of work that went into it at that time,” he recalled.

“We had actually gotten to the final in 2005 when Padraic Maher was playing and that was the first final we’d been in since 1987.

“The build-up and the excitement around the school and the town was massive at that time, but we were beaten by St Flannans in that final.

"We eventually got over the line in 2009 and you could just see what it meant to the people of Thurles because that connection between the school and the surrounding clubs to the Harty Cup is there. There’s a huge culture there in the surrounding areas of the town.

"Everyone you meet is always asking what sort of a Harty team we have this year so hopefully we’ll see similar celebrations after the match this Sunday,” he finished.