THEY MAY HAVE been team-mates at county and international level for the past few months but with Ciarán Sheehan and Aidan Walsh go head-to-head in the Cork intermediate club hurling final next week, the Eire Og club man will be focused on one thing, winning.
“Myself and Aidan have been best of buds over the last eight or nine weeks, growing up together and we always have been good friends. We played against each other all the way up at underage and it’s a different story when we go out on the pitch against each other.
“Obviously we give it our all for our clubs too and at the end of the day, that’s the most important thing to us. That’s where it all starts for every player.
“The club means the most out of anything to me. It was a great opportunity to represent the country but at the end of the day, the club is my number one goal.
“When you achieve anything with the club it’s extra special and hopefully next week we can do the job. Aidan might have a different view on that but we’ll go out next week and give it our all and hope for the best.”
The 22-year old does admit it might be hard to get his mind focused for the county final though, especially after the highs of Ireland’s record aggregate win over Australia last Saturday.
“It is about getting the head right for that now. Obviously it was a great occasion today and it was great to rack up the score that we did. Any time you go out and play in Croke Park it is a special time and we would be very pleased with the performance there tonight and the lads put in a fierce effort over the last eight weeks and they got their reward tonight.”
Indeed, Sheehan enjoyed his time with the Ireland squad so much, he’d definitely consider the trip to Australia next time around if he gets the call up.
“Yeah, definitely it was always great to represent your country and it being my first time it was an absolute pleasure. Again, we would hope that Australia would have a few better lads. To be fair to them, you could see that they were giving it their all and it was not a case that they had no interest.
“A lot of our footballing skills played out there today, we said we would play that game and it paid off. We got the goals but hopefully next year, and there was talking during the week about them picking their All-Star team, that there would be that much more competition but we are absolutely delighted with that tonight.”
