Kevin O'Flaherty hopeful Nenagh can handle step up

The dust has just about settled on Nenagh Ormond's celebrations following their historic first promotion to the Energia All Ireland League's top flight but captain Kevin O'Flaherty is determined his club holds their own with the big boys in Division 1A next season.
Much will depend on Nenagh's home form as they mix it with the established heavyweights led by newly-minted champions Clontarf and if the 2024-25 campaign was any guide, New Ormond Park will not be a venue away teams will relish visiting.
Back-rower O'Flaherty, the Energia AIL Division 1B player of the year, has now led Nenagh to successive promotions and this season's Munster Senior Cup. Their elevation to 1A behind title winners Old Belvedere was secured with a dramatic play-off final win at home over Munster rivals UCC in front of more than 1000 spectators, and he believes the backing of the wider community in a traditional stronghold of Tipperary hurling will be just as crucial for the step up in class as the club becomes their county's first top-flight representatives.
'That's the thing, our crest is a castle and we speak about ourselves that we need to protect our castle,' O'Flaherty told the Irish Examiner.
'So that's what we think about when we play at home, you never want to lose there and we're starting to do that. We only lost one game at home this year and that was against Old Belvedere who were deserving champions. We took scalps off the likes of Cork Con, Highfield, Shannon, renowned teams.
'The community itself, we're in the heart of hurling country but if you look at the play-off final, all the hurling teams were out to support us, and they had games that evening at 6:30pm but there was three or four parishes of hurling teams out to watch the first half and I think a good few of them got the end in too.
'In a small community it's all about everyone helping out each other, from businesses supporting us to families in general coming out to support. Getting people through the gate is a big thing.' The sense of community behind Nenagh Ormond was underlined by O'Flaherty's visit this season to Youghalarra National School.
'An ex-player of ours is principal and he asked me to come in with the Senior Cup, and it was amazing to just go in and see the amount of people that are playing rugby in a school which would be mainly a hurling school.
Our head coach (Derek Corcoran) did the same, went to his local school where he's a teacher (Nenagh CBS primary school) and the reception he got was exceptional and it's probably half the reason why he's still playing. He's 41 and he has coached us in every single promotion that we've achieved and I think he's played in every one of them as well. He's a credit to the club.' O'Flaherty credits back-to-back promotions for Nenagh to both the loyalty of local players and the work of the coaching team led by player/head coach Corcoran with assistants James Hickey, Dan Fogarty and S&C coach Colm Skehan.
'It was kind of down to a core group that stopped there for a lot of years. They've always been the ones to drive the standards but once the coaches came in they put more emphasis on the rest of the team to match that core. Everyone had to be working as hard as everyone else, it's the same as anything, like in defence, you're only as good as your weakest man.
'So we tried to make sure that our weakest man was one of our strongest and if you can guess a squad all playing off of that you're onto a winner, because you look other years, we probably had that main 15 and it probably let us down, like if you look at three years ago when we played in the Senior Cup against Young Munster. We were there or thereabouts with them for probably 60, 70 per cent of the game but once people got tired and once the bench came on it probably wasn't as effective as it has been this year.
'So we really put emphasis on getting as fit and as strong as we could. We knew if we could stay fit and keep going for the 80 minutes, you bring on subs and if they can do the same thing you're always in a good place.' That paid off in spades with their last-gasp play-off final victory over UCC, coming from 33-24 down with three minutes left on the clock to win 36-33. It capped a dream season for the club while O'Flaherty finished the week collecting the 1B player of the year award at the Energia AIL awards in Dublin.
'It's a nice accolade to get,' he said. 'It's a really nice way to top off the last few years and for me personally, I've been playing for 14 years so to get acknowledged is always nice.
'But if you look at the standard in 1B this year, it's been excellent. Like Calum Dowling (Old Belvedere), he was nominated and was very much deserving of it. Alex Molloy (Old Wesley), Conor O'Shaughnessey (Blackrock College), they'd be the same, but even going back to our team itself, you could pick any one of our players to be nominated for that, and they would have been deserving of it as well. So as much as it's a personal accolade, you're only as good as your team.
'As long as everyone can play to a high standard, anyone is capable of doing that and last year Willie (Coffey) who was in it for 2A, he was exceptional again this year, and there was no reason why he couldn't have got it.
'In terms of promotion, then, it's a pinch yourself moment, really. You're looking at going up to… and I was talking to (former Ireland international and Nenagh native) Trevor Hogan, he congratulated me after the win and he just said he never thought he'd see the day when Nenagh went up against Clontarf.
'I think for a lot of us, we celebrated the win but we're still in dreamland. Once those fixtures come out and we see ourselves playing against those big teams, all the Dublin teams coming down to Nenagh, that's when the fun really begins.'

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