City slippers: Northside Cork clubs confronting new reality

Glen Rovers' recent relegation from the Cork Premier Senior Hurling Championship ended a 97-year stay at the highest grade.

It was an unwelcome milestone for the club of Christy Ring, Jack Lynch and Patrick Horgan, who have won 27 titles and are only second in the roll of honour to Blackrock (33).

But the two-time All-Ireland champions' fall also ensured another unfortunate piece of local history.

Next year, for the first time in almost a century, no club from the north side of the Rebel City will compete in the top tier in either football or hurling.

Na Piarsaigh, home to the Ó hAilpíns, John Gardiner and Tony O’Sullivan, dropped out of the top tier in 2022 after 65 years and will play Senior A again in 2024.

2017 All-Ireland JHC winners Mayfield are in the fourth-tier Intermediate A but all the other Northside clubs, including former senior dual sides St Vincent’s and Brian Dillons - who the Glen split off from in 1916 - are playing Junior A hurling, which is broken down into divisional championships.

The Na Piarsaigh footballers are the highest-ranked city club in the third-tier Premier Inter, with St Vincent’s one below. St Nicholas are the football arm of Glen Rovers and the five-time county champions were senior as recently as 2019 but are now Premier Junior (fifth tier). The rest are all Junior A.

Diarmuid O’Donovan is a former player, coach and administrator at club and county level and the current Glen/St Nick's underage chair. The journalist and historian has lived most of his life within a kilometre of The Glen’s pitch in Ballyvolane.

"It’s a big change," he tells RTÉ Sport of the club's drop. "The ambition would have been at the start of every year for the Glen to win the county. Now the Glen aren’t going to be