By Shaun Casey

A LOT can change in just 12 months, as Middletown hurler Nathan Curry found out this year. The 2020 Armagh Club and County Player of the Year has saw his role reduced to an impact sub this season, but not through old age or loss of form.

The Orchard hurling captain received back surgery in May. Since then, he’s been happy to get back on the field and earn some meaningful minutes as Middletown marched to a sixth county title in seven years. Since then they have taken care of Castleblayney in Ulster and face
Banagher at Corrigan Park this Sunday.

“I was doing a lot of rehab from two or three weeks after my operation,” recalled Curry. “I suppose I was back on the field in mid-August. Light running was really the first thing, that was probably the toughest thing physiologically, getting running again, moving your legs.

“Into September I started into drills and stuff with the lads. Come the Cuchulainns game (in the first round of the Armagh Championship) I was fit for 20 minutes and that was my first bit of competitive hurling nearly all year. It’s a good feeling from where I was, lying in a hospital bed in Dublin at the end of May, thinking that your season was over.”

Like all county champions, Middletown missed out on a provincial campaign last season. Curry insists the club are excited to be back in the Ulster Championship.

“For a small club like ourselves, we’re a small rural village club, just to be competing in it itself, it’s fantastic as a player, it’s fantastic for our club and our club members.

“Credit to Middletown, they’ve their third pitch opened this year and there’s floodlights aimed to go up in January, so that’s three full-sized pitches that we have. The facilities are fantastic and it’s a credit to the club for providing the facilities for the likes of ourselves to be training on. It’s a big occasion to be competing at that level and to be competing against the likes of Banagher, the Derry champions, it’s where you want to be at this time of year.”

Curry, a two-time Nickey Rackard Cup winner with Armagh, will hope to feature at some stage this weekend in the Ulster semi-final against the Oak Leaf winners. The Middletown man is under no illusions of the task ahead and offered high praise to the growth of the Derry hurling scene at both club and county level.

“Derry hurling is certainly on the rise again this last number of years, they’d probably a wee bit of a lull for a year or two. This last number of years they have a good (county) management set-up back in with them, they’re competing back up at a high level in the league, 2A.

“They’re Christy Ring, they’re pushing on in that. That level of hurling will certainly stand to them lads and the Banagher club itself, Banagher’s always been well represented in the Derry county set-ups, which is a credit to them”.

The two sides travel to Corrigan Park for Sunday’s clash and the three-in-a-row Armagh winners have good memories of that ground. It was in the Belfast venue that they last tasted Ulster glory back in 2017.

“It’s a good venue, they’ve done a lot of work to it in the last year or two, since we played that final with the new stand going up. Four years ago, that’s the last time we played there and we’ve good memories walking off that day.”

Middletown overcame Castleblaney in this year’s quarter-final and the men from the Oak Leaf county have the advantage of seeing their opponents in the flesh.

“I’m sure, like any modern club management set up these days, they would have had somebody down watching the match” noted Curry.

“Of course, being able to go and watch the team that you’re about to play is certainly an advantage. I think we may have played Banagher a number of years ago in a challenge match. I remember playing them in Cookstown maybe four or five years ago, again fiercely competitive.”

“Any team that beats Lavey on their day in their county final says a lot about them. Lavey’s a great, great side, a team we actually played in a challenge match at the start of the year as well.

“They came out on the right side that day. To beat that standard of team, it says a lot about them (Banagher). I’m sure they took a lot away from last Saturday evening.”