WE have two county finals and two West Cork finals to look forward to this weekend.

We hate to start with a negative – the 3pm throw-in for the Carbery junior A final on Sunday clashes directly with the two county finals at SuperValu Páirc Uí Chaoimh. I’m sure I’m among many football followers in West Cork disappointed not to be able to see both the West Cork final and the county premier senior final live.

Before that, on Saturday, Clann na Gael will meet Clonakility’s second string side in the Carbery junior B football final in Skibbereen at 3pm. We played both sides in challenge games with Ross juniors this year, and based on those games I will give Clon the nod. Challenge games are a long way from championship and this is the Scorchers’ bread and butter, so they will give nothing away easily.

On Sunday, the county premier junior final gets proceedings underway at 2pm. I expect Canovee to win against surprise packets Cobh, however Cobh did have a facile win over St Nick’s last time out which I didn’t expect so perhaps they will prove me wrong again. As a quick aside, my old Carbery Rangers team-mate Niall Hayes is the referee for this one. In a quirk of fate, my first cousin, a Blarney man also named Niall Hayes, will referee the hurling equivalent on Friday night. Best of luck to both.

West Cork people who venture to Cork HQ on Sunday will have phones and radios to hand to check in on the action in Castlehaven an hour later, when Barryroe and St Mary’s go head to head at 3pm. 2023 champions Barryroe have justified pre-season favouritism and will be seeking their second title, while St Mary’s will be hoping for better fortune than they had in losing the hurling decider just last weekend. The Ballineen and Enniskeane outfit also came up short in last year’s football final so they will be hoping to avoid that particular three-peat.

We have played St Mary’s twice in recent years with Ross’ juniors with both sides claiming a narrow win each. While we haven’t played Barryroe during my three years involved, we have come up against Ibane Gaels’ U21s several times in recent years so we are quite familiar with a good number of their players.

St Mary’s are a good side with some lively forwards and Olan Corcoran is a real handful on his day, however Barryroe were our pre-season selection and we feel they are the slightly more balanced team.

The Ibane experiment has borne fruit for Barryroe and young players like Ryan and Olan O’Donovan, Luke Murphy and Tomás O Buachalla have all developed well playing at a higher standard of football, with Barryroe now reaping the benefit. St Mary’s have joined up with their hurling conquerors Diarmuid Ó Mathúnas at underage also, but it is a newer endeavour and they have not had the same success as yet. I think Barryroe may well claim their second title this Sunday.

Teleporting now back to Páirc Uí Chaoimh for the 4pm throw-in between old rivals Nemo Rangers and St Finbarr’s, I am decidedly less sure of my selection for the biggest game in Cork football: the premier senior football final. Many neutrals are disappointed that a new side hasn’t broken the stranglehold of the big three this season, especially when both these sides have looked less than invincible at different stages this year, but no one managed to lower the colours in the knockout rounds when it matters most.

This will be the tenth year in a row at least one of these two clubs and/or Castlehaven have made the final, and only Duhallow in 2018 and 2019 and Clon in 2021 have made it to the big day.

This will be Nemo’s eighth final in that decade, and they had four wins in the bank before losing the last three years in a row. They will not want to make that four.

The Barrs will be playing their sixth final in that timeframe, with three wins and two losses to date. The two losses both came against Nemo in 2017 and 2022, before they finally reversed that trend last year. For the record, Castlehaven have been to three finals since 2016, claiming two wins in 2023 and 2024.

Both teams did taste defeat in the group stages, with the Barrs stumbling through despite two defeats against Mallow and Carrigaline. Carbery were very compliant opponents in the quarter-final before Clon provided a much stiffer test, which the Barrs passed primarily because of a strong defensive showing on the night and a pair of first-half goals. Nemo, for their part, have bounced back well after their opening defeat to Newcestown, accounting for St Michael’s, Valley Rovers, Castlehaven and Carrigaline.

If the Barrs made this final on the back of their defence and the powerful running of Ian Maguire and Bryan Hayes, Nemo saw off Carrigaline largely because of their experience and the quality of Kevin O’Donovan, Briain Murphy and Mark Cronin. Their best football this year came in the first half against Castlehaven in the quarter-final when younger players like Colin Molloy, Brian Hayes and Ross Corkery excelled. Their slick passing by hand and by foot carved Castlehaven open time and again as they clocked up 1-12 in the first half and 1-20 in total en route to a three-point victory.

Carrigaline pushed Nemo even closer and did lead in the last ten minutes, before a somewhat controversial penalty – I have watched it a few times since, at best I would say inconclusive – dispatched with aplomb by Mark Cronin gave them enough of a cushion to just about hold on, Carrigaline hitting the post in search of a late equaliser. Lucky or not, Nemo are an incredible football club and reaching eight finals in ten years, while consistently being dismissed as second rate by Nemo’s standards, is serious going. That said, they have come up short in the last three iterations, against Castlehaven twice before last year against Sunday’s opponents.

In almost any other club in the country, such consistency would see them considered their greatest ever, however winning is the only currency in Capwell and Trabeg and they are judged against teams that won multiple titles back-to-back and went on to win provincial and All-Ireland titles to boot. It is a club filled with legends, and they don’t have to look too far to see what is expected, they can just look around the dressing room to find Paul Kerrigan and his measly 11 county medals!

The Barrs are probably the only club that can come close to Nemo in the legends department – Blackrock and the Glen in hurling, granted – and they are hoping to atone for the disappointment of the hurling last Sunday and also for not securing a Munster title that was theirs for the taking against Dingle last year. The All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Kilcoo in January 2022 still rankles, too.

In truth, the rivalry has historically been very one-sided, with Nemo never having lost to the Barrs in a final until last year, and having only one other defeat to the Togher club on their record in my lifetime, which was in 2012. Nemo had beaten the Barrs in four previous finals (1993, 2010, 2017 replay and 2022) and were triumphant in several other clashes to boot. I tipped the Barrs in both the recent finals with a 50 percent success rate, and I don’t think I can back against Nemo in a county final again this year.

Both teams have room for improvement from their semi-final performances, and there are a couple of things that are causing me to tilt slightly in Nemo’s favour. Firstly, they have the slightly better form line with four wins on the trot since the Newcestown game, and they have been able to focus entirely on this game for the last two weeks while several of the Barrs squad were in hurling action last weekend.

Ciarán Doolin, John Wigginton-Barrett, Brian Hayes and William Buckley can all expect to start their second final in a week, with Jamie Burns also in contention after a strong showing from the bench against Clon. Cork U20 footballer Ricky Barrett came off the bench for the hurlers and will start on Sunday. It’s not a massive crossover, but it would still have disrupted training coming into Sunday. Those factors, and the memory of Nemo controlling the 2022 final and large spells last year, give me cause to change my tune from those clashes and give a very cautious vote to the black and green machine.

For that to come to pass, though, Alan O’Donovan and Briain Murphy will have to come at least close to parity with Ian Maguire and Hayes around midfield. They will also need someone to replicate the marking job Dan Peet carried out on Steven Sherlock. I think Nemo might do just about enough.