Ruairi O'Hagan, Cork's RedFM, presents the Rebel Og Award for September to Éire Óg's Daniel McCarthy, while Lord Mayor Cllr Kieran McCarthy presents the award to Finnan Gallagher, Douglas minor football team. Pic: David KeaneDouglas and Éire Óg were named as the joint winners of the Rebel Óg award for September yesterday.
Éire Óg won the Premier 2 football title as they defeated Bandon in the final.
Douglas meanwhile made it a two in a row of Premier 1 titles after beating St Finbarr's 2-11 to 1-9 in the decider.
The event was held at Clayton Hotel Silversprings, main sponsor. Cummins sport are the award sponsors, while Cork's RedFM and the Echo are media sponsors to the awards.
Éire Óg's Harry O'Neill told RedFM sport at the event that his squad deserve tremendous credit.
"We had a fantastic year between Under 17 and under 18. It's lovely to be invited to these awards and to win one is fantastic.
"As Michael [O'Mahony, Rebel Óg chairman] said there, Cork is a huge county with 110 teams playing at minor level alone, so to be at the top table and to win an award like this it's just brilliant.
"They're a lovely bunch of lads, it's my first year involved with them. We won the under 18 P2 Football and division 1 hurling, and we only had 5 lads on the age at 18. So it was mostly backboned by under 17s and under 16s.
"We knew after going well in that that we had a strong squad coming in to the under 17s, so we brought up a couple of under 15s to supplement them.
"The whole thing just sort of came together. We had a couple of okay performances earlier in the year, but in the couple of weeks before the semi final everything started to click and come together, and we played exceptionally well in the semi final and the final."
For Douglas boss Richard Barry,
"We're delighted to win the award along with Eire Og. I saw their final too, it was a close final for a good bit of it, like our own.
"We put in a lot of work. There was a lot of fellas missing early on, they were playing with squads in hurling and football, so we didn't have our full panel. It was hard to get a lot of work done early. But we tipped away with small numbers, and we built up as the year went on.
"Things came together then. We played Bishopstown in the first game, we were poor in the first half but we improved in the second half, and we built momentum from that.
"They're a united squad, they train hard and they have a bit of craic afterwards. And that's the key at that level, you can't take it too serious either."
