'Back Where We Belong' - Cuddy hails Castletown’s return to senior ranks

CASTLETOWN came out on top of a tough battle against Camross in their Premier IHC final on Saturday evening after a brilliant second half and the charge was led by their midfielder Tadhg Cuddy who was outstanding.

He chipped in with a flurry of scores and put in a massive shift around the middle of the field, leading to collecting the Man of the Match award.

While it was a comfortable route to the final for Cuddy and Castletown, he was under no illusions beforehand that Camross would be the ultimate test.

Speaking after the game he said, “It’s always going to be a struggle playing against Camross regardless if it’s their first team, second team or third team, it doesn’t matter you’re always going to get Camross the way you get them, and especially in a final.

“Camross are Camross at the best of times, but in a final then you see lads upping their game, I haven’t seen Darrell Dooley move like that in years!

“On a final night they’re different men.” Keeping their heads right in this year’s championship was a big test for Castletown having won games with a degree of comfort, but Cuddy said “We didn’t overlook Camross, you can’t do that.

“In fairness to Ger, our one focus this year was just to get back senior and Ger made a point to us last night, tomorrow last year is the day we got relegated.

“Less than a year later we’re back up senior where we belong, so it’s job done.” After their relegation from senior last year, Castletown have had a very positive 2026 by winning the PIHC, Junior A and reaching both the hurling and football Junior B finals and Cuddy praised the management team and his playing colleagues.

He said, “Everyone dove in behind Ger this year and in fairness to the boys when they regraded the players, they couldn’t have done any better.

“And in fairness to the lads, some of them could have thrown the toys out of the pram and not be willing.

“That was our best chance ever of winning a Junior A and them boys knew that going in, they won the Junior A and then four of five of them were able to row in behind us in the semi final and tonight to drive us over the line.

“Without the boys that came in there we wouldn’t have won tonight.” Things weren’t looking good at half time for Castletown at three points down, but Cuddy said they kept the heads at the break.

“There was a lot of positivity in there, no one was giving out to each other it was just lads telling one another to calm down and relax”, he said.

“We know we’re better hurlers than we showed in the first, we knew if we kept our heads right that things would fall for us.

“Them goal chances were always going to come and who better to have on the end of them than Kyron Cuddy and Jack Breen.” Cuddy was full of praise for Dan Whelan on his first year up at adult hurling with the young man coming in to score three points off the bench.

“He showed maturity way beyond his years, he knows himself he should be on the first team but he was held back and he knows what’s at stake, comes on tonight and scores three points then.

He’s played in two finals and won both, so he’s had a better year than all of us.” The Leinster IHC lays in store for Castletown, but Cuddy isn’t thinking about it just yet.

“We’ll worry about that in 14 days, we won’t worry about it tonight anyway. We’ll enjoy this one.”