Beara footballers opt out of county senior championship

THE Beara senior football team will not compete in this year’s Bon Secours Cork Premier SFC – but the division’s chairman Michael Murphy insists they will be back in action in 2022.

After consultation with its clubs, the Beara board feels that the hectic schedule of club games leaves no room for the divisional team to prepare properly for this year’s county championship.

The divisions/colleges section of the Cork Premier SFC is scheduled to take place on two Wednesdays in July (14th and 21st) and Beara clubs will be in action in their own competitions then.

Five of Beara’s six clubs will have a busy June and July with Castletownbere and Adrigole competing in the new county league cups, Urhan in action in the 2020 Cork JAFC, Glengarriff in both the 2020 divisional winners’ JBFC and county open JBFC, while Garnish are also involved in the latter.

‘With the timetable that has been presented to us, there is no time and room to prepare a divisional team for a county championship,’ Murphy told The Southern Star.

‘When we do field a Beara team again – and we will – we want to do it properly with the right structures in place and to be able to get the team together before they play in the championship.

‘It’s with a heavy heart we have made this decision, but we want to give the Beara team a fair chance and not just bring the players together on the day of the game.’

Last season Beara had to concede their Cork Premier SFC game against Duhallow because they were unable to field a team, but new Beara chairman Michael Murphy feels there is an appetite within the division to get the senior team up and running again.

‘The players are willing and they want to do it right. The same goes for the board and for the clubs. All parties are very interested in making sure we do this right,’ Murphy explains.

‘The talent is there in Beara and we just need to bring it together. We want to create an environment that gives them the best chance of being successful. We have had good dialogue with players and the clubs and we all want the same goal, for Beara football to be successful.

‘Taking all the factors into account in the year that it is, unfortunately we couldn’t see a way that we could field a Beara team that would do justice to the players and the clubs.’