BATTERIES recharged, Castlehaven are keen to bounce back after a disappointing 2025 season.

Haven’s bid to win three county senior football titles in a row came unstuck when the champs-in-waiting Barrs dethroned Seanie Cahalane’s team in a quarter-final on September 28th – the earliest Castlehaven have been knocked out of the championship since 2019.

But there’s a silver lining here.

The longer-than-usual break could be just the reset Castlehaven needed, coming off the back of two long and demanding seasons with no proper pre-season in between.

Their 2023 campaign ended on January 7th, 2024 when they lost to St Brigid’s in an All-Ireland club semi-final, and they were back in county league action on March 2nd. Castlehaven’s 2024 season then ended on November 11th after a Munster club quarter-final loss to Dr Crokes, so this group was on the road together for longer than usual – and that eventually took its toll.

‘The Barrs game was disappointing, and so was the Newcestown game,’ Seanie Cahalane says, reflecting on rare back-to-back championship losses, first to Newcestown (0-12 to 0-10) in the group stage and then the Barrs (6-11 to 0-19) in the quarter-final.

‘When we looked back on it, we seemed a bit flat. It’s hard at the time to put your finger on it. Against the Barrs it was one of those days – we didn’t play that badly, we scored 19 points, but the goals killed us, especially the last one that finished us up. They were better than us on the day too, no qualms about it.

‘We had been on the road a bit too, there was probably that bit of mental fatigue setting in. The lads put in a big effort last year, but maybe by the end we just ran out of steam a little bit.’

Castlehaven's Jack Cahalane in action in the 2025 quarter-final loss to St Finbarr's.

Back for a third season in the hot seat, Cahalane and his management team were acutely aware of the need to keep the players fresh last season, and it’s one of the reasons they struggled in the county league, dragged into the relegation conversation before eventually finishing seventh.

‘We saw it last year and we tried to tailor our training around it because we understand too that you can’t keep going to the well all the time,’ the Castlehaven boss admits.

‘Early last year we tried to structure our season with that in mind, and it probably resulted in a poor league campaign – we went back later because we finished up the previous season later, and we wanted to give lads that break they needed. But at the same time we had to train a bit for the league, even though we weren’t fully on in those early stages and you could see we were a bit off in the league.

‘The lads had been on the road a good few years so keeping them fresh was the challenge, but hopefully we won’t have the same issue this year. The longer winter break should help.’

The hope this season is that the extended winter downtime will lead to fresher minds and bodies as Castlehaven look to reassert themselves as a football force. Cahalane is encouraged by what he has seen so far as they get ready to kick off their campaign with a McCarthy Insurance Group Division 1 Football League opener away to Éire Óg.

‘We hope that the longer break can help,’ he says.

‘It was longer than we have had in the last few seasons so when the lads came back around the middle of January, they were fresh and eager. They have trained well in the last few weeks.’

Given their brush with relegation was a little too close for comfort last season, ideally Cahalane wants to avoid a repeat, but with the bigger battles to come later in the summer, his idea of a good league will be to win enough games to be comfortable while also unearthing a few players.

‘We were touching the relegation battles, so we want to avoid that,’ he says.

‘We want to develop a few players and get games into fellas – that would represent a good league.

‘The panel is more or less the same, we have a few minors coming through, like Danny O’Donovan (Cork minor last season), and Donal O’Callaghan is back from a cruciate ligament injury. There are a few more we would like to blood in the league, too.’

Cahalane must plan without his sizeable Cork contingent – including Brian Hurley, Damien Cahalane, Conor Cahalane and Rory Maguire – until later in the summer, but this is nothing new. They’ll be back for the championship.

A tweak to Cahalane’s management team this season sees former captain David Limrick, a selector in 2022, rejoin the set-up to replace Bernie Collins, who has stepped away. Like the players, the coaching group is eager to get going again and keen to show that last season was a blip for these serial winners.