Cahair O’Kane: It’s been a year of varying successes but is Ulster hurling actually improving? Take Derry and Down doing well in the Christy Ring, it’s less than a decade since they were reaching finals and winning in that competition before the Joe McDonagh Cup was introduced.
Dominic McKinley: I think the standard of the middle tier teams has raised so much in the last few years – Carlow, Meath, Wicklow, Sligo, I was surprised at the way they’ve moved. You’re looking at it from the outside thinking you should beat those teams but at this moment in time, you’re not. The league we were in, people say we should get out of it – you get out of it when you’re good enough. In Derry you have limited clubs. You don’t see that changing in the next 10 years. You need more clubs supplying more players. You also have to put the dual player to rest, it’s going on this last 40 years. The way the season will be split now, there’s virtually no chance of those players being available to you.
Ronan Sheehan: Woody made a good point there that the standards are improving. The question is: is the gap closing to the elite teams? The standard of hurling among the different tiers is definitely improving. Go back 10 years, there’s no way you’d have seen a team in the Lory Meagher scoring 20 points; now you are seeing it regularly.
The difficulty is that the teams from Dublin down [geographically] are moving at a quicker pace and it’s making it harder to close that gap. If you look at the critical mass of clubs and players, Down and Derry are similar. The only one that could realistically, consistently close the gap is Antrim. We’re trying to be a Laois or an Antrim, they’re 10th or 11th in Ireland. No matter how much money we spend in Down, we’ll never be a Cork or Kilkenny. Antrim and Laois are saying they want to be Clare. This is where Gaelfast becomes so important. That needs to be a success because Antrim need to be competing consistently at U17 and U20 to build a base to compete at senior. If Antrim are competing consistently at the elite level, it gives a lift to everyone else in Ulster. The rising tide lifts all boats. The last time Ulster hurling was really on a high was when we had a competitive Ulster Championship, the three teams were pushing each other hard.
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CO’K: We’ve seen some progress from Antrim, but in terms of the longevity of that, your U20 teams, minor teams, school teams aren’t competing at ‘A’ level, that will be a real struggle to keep the senior team at ‘A’ level?
Neil McManus: Almost impossible. When I was minor and Woody was manager, we were having to nearly devise our own structure where I’d say we were over the border at least a dozen times that year, playing Dublin, Tipperary, Wexford, Waterford.
It took us a while to get to the pitch of that but at the end of the second year, I genuinely thought we were one of the top four minor teams in Ireland. That was 20 months of work and a lot of trips. There was no structure there. Sambo and Woody were probably influencing people to do that, because it wasn’t cheap. There has to be a structure whereby the Antrims, Downs and Derrys of this world can get that level of exposure regularly so they can compete at U15, U17 and then U20. I believe the strong performances we’ve seen from Antrim this year, maybe not consistently, have been borne out of the clubs and the level they’re operating at, to be honest, not the structures that are in place at inter-county level.
CO’K: How do you grow the game in the likes of Cavan and Fermanagh, and how much of the success of those counties depends on players coming in from outside the county at senior?
Ollie Bellew: I don’t know that it’s a necessity but it’s certainly a help. Like Ronan says, those boys come in and they lift the boats. Fermanagh have seen it with Barney McAuley, they built their team around him. Barney’s going in there after winning an All-Ireland with Loughgiel and bringing that with him. I think it’s almost imperative you’re allowed that in the weaker counties. Cavan has four clubs. One of the lads did an interview this week and said he didn’t start hurling until he was 28. It’s unheard of, so that needs to exist. Sligo have gone up three tiers of championship, winning every time. They’ve obviously got people in who are passionate about the game and have a bit of know-how. For me, the biggest issue is geographical isolation. Where do boys from north Antrim go midweek when they’re looking a competitive challenge game? I’m working with Tomás Mannion from Castlegar [in Galway]. He’s able to jump in the car and go to Sixmilebridge in Clare, or Adare in Limerick, and it’s all an hour away. But it’s not been a bad year at all for Ulster hurling.
CO’K: Will there have been more progress in 10 years’ time, or are the structures making incremental improvement unrealistic? What needs to be done to help make that happen?
DMcK: The Gaelfast programme had started very well but then Covid hit and losing Paul Donnelly was a major loss for it. Hopefully it can recover. We [Antrim] need Belfast clubs producing players at a county standard. It’s started to happen. For a long time, four or five clubs have been servicing our county, and that has to stop. Our minors don’t get the chance to prepare properly – we choose a manager, he goes out the door and he’s not answerable to anybody. He doesn’t get much help either. He just facilitates a team playing matches. Sometimes they do alright, sometimes they get a caning. Under-20s need to be looked at seriously too. Times we were in charge of it, you just went and played the matches, you maybe only had three or four training sessions. We need to look at how other counties do it and bring that forward in a structured plan.
NMcM: Totally. That’s the key. Nothing will change – there will be one-off results until somebody takes hold of it and says ‘this is how we’re going to develop it from 11 years of age’. The perfect example is Kildare. Four or five years ago, they were competing at U13 and U15. Now they’re competing at U17 and U20. What will happen in five years’ time? They’ll be a serious contender in the Joe McDonagh. They have a better chance than any Ulster county of progressing. Antrim have a really good group now but they’re all in their 20s. It’s over like that. If there’s nothing coming behind them… There’s odd good players. We’re lucky we’ve such good clubs in Antrim, but we need more of them to be a serious Division One county, we need double what we have.
That huge untapped resource of 300,000 people in Belfast, we have to start getting something out of it. You’re asking how do you close that gap – you’ll regress. You won’t get closer. We continue on the strength of the clubs to make upsets and have times when we’re there, but it won’t be continuous unless there’s a proper structure in place the whole way through.
The massive positive for Down, the newer clubs that are coming to prominence of late, the likes of Carryduff and Bredagh, their numbers are massive. We need to get more out of that area, for Down and Antrim. We have some Belfast players, maybe 10 on a panel of 36, but that’s not enough when we’re dragging 26 out of the other small pockets.
RS: There has to be a plan for the urban areas to grow. I’d be friendly with Sully [Diarmuid O’Sullivan] and he always talks about the ‘Narries’, the lads from the north of Cork city, and how Cork never won anything without a few Narries. City players are a different type of player, they have a bit of arrogance about them. In Down, we have Bredagh and Carryduff but most of our players are still from the peninsula. We get the odd one from Newry. Newry’s a town of 30,000 people, Banbridge is out the road. If you look at where hurling’s strong in Ulster, with the exception of the Johnnies and Rossa and that wee bit in west Belfast, you’re into Dunloy, Cushendall, Loughgiel, Slaughtneil – all small parishes. We’re not tapping into where the big pool of people is.
What are we doing in the urban areas? Sometimes, I look out my front window and we have 12 or 13 houses on my street. My wee man’s the only one playing football or hurling. He’s living in Newry and he’s the only boy that plays football, never mind hurling. That shows you.
Standards will improve. Hurling is at a better standard now than 15 years ago. But the critical piece is the gap to the elite teams will not narrow, it’s only going to get bigger. Cork and Dublin are getting themselves organised, every other county is, and we’re lagging behind from an Ulster perspective. If we’re not able to compete at U15 or U17 or U20, where are we going? You’re not gonna turn boys into players that can step into the McDonagh Cup or the Liam McCarthy if they’ve been playing ‘B’ grade the whole way along.
If there was an U20 Joe McDonagh Cup, that would be the right competition for Antrim, Derry, Down to go into. If you won that, go into the ‘A’. There’s a lot of work to be done at underage and I’m not sure the structures, or the willingness, are there to put that work in. There’s plenty of good hurling people but it takes more than to put structures behind it.
NMcM: The year before I joined the county minor panel, we had a really strong team. We maybe could and should have won both years in the semi-final. Woody, what was the difference?
DMcK: John McSparran was the chairman and he gave us 100 per cent backing on everything we proposed. We had probably 60 sessions a year, and 10 or 12 matches down south. People made jokes that if we weren’t going down the road, we were coming up it. That took funding. We had the clubs playing matches without yous because everyone took a keen interest in it, that it would become something of value for everyone. Our senior team was backboned by that for 10 years. Then it was back to square one. If our minor team now would train 20 times and played three or four friendlies, I’d think we’d be lucky. As Ronan says about U20s, have a Joe McDonagh minor competition even and the winner goes into Leinster or Munster, and bring back an Ulster Championship and even bring the likes of Carlow and Laois into it. You don’t want to go in too deep because all our teams at minor and U20s got serious hidings at the next level. I honestly believe if you got the proper time and preparation with an Antrim minor team, they could close the gap. But we facilitate a team, not prepare them. That’s sad. That’s the way it’s been for a long time.
NMcM: It is. I know Paudie Shivers and Arron Graffin who were involved with U17s and ran into so many problems, they were hamstrung in so many ways. They were coming at U17 to try and start something, but they should be inheriting a group of players who have already been well prepared and trying to roll them on. You and Sambo had to start something, but it’s nearly too late to start something at minor. Alright, it nearly worked for us, but it has to start earlier.
DMcK: No doubt. It takes serious funding to look after teams, and then you’re looking at Post-Primary schools, getting coaches in there, getting teachers to buy in. It’s back to the overall package of what’s affordable for our county. That’s something we need to look at.
OB: Take that back a step to the clubs too. You could turn away experienced football coaches, but if you take a hurling team at U11 and U13, you’d be afraid to hand them over at U15 or minor. The quality of person to take that forward isn’t there. You’re asking about the city clubs and what’s wrong - resources to accommodate and coach them properly don’t exist. There’s been one Belfast club has won the championship in the last 30 years and that will continue for another 30. Quite often now in St Gall’s, if you take a minor team, you’re nearly training them like an U11 team. You’re stripping them back to the start. That’s a watered-down version of the county setup. If it gets to minor, you’re getting handed something you nearly need to start back at the start with. In the city, they’re so obsessed with winning U13 league matches instead of developing the kids. I’d worry seriously about Belfast hurling for the next 30 years, that’s the truth.
RS: I’m on the Games Development Committee in Croke Park for my sins. I’m saying to them we need a serious review of where we go with hurling in the ‘developing counties’. You could put £10m into Down hurling and it won’t get to Cork or Kilkenny’s level. That’s not me not working every day I can to improve it, but that’s reality. You have a number of counties that are really on the cusp of improving – Antrim, Laois, Carlow, counties like that. They’re the critical hubs. No real structure or help from Croke Park exists. Gaelfast is welcome but they’re almost looking instantaneous results, but there won’t be any. It’s gonna take time to build and progress. We have a fantastic facility in Abbottstown in terms of playing pitches, but are you gonna come from north Antrim to play a match and turn back up the road? If there was some facility there where teams could stay overnight, you could have two matches for the price of one – the team plays on a Friday night, stays down, plays again on the Saturday. It wouldn’t take a lot to do that.
Geographical isolation does matter. I’m going down home to Cork this weekend and within half an hour of where Banteer is in Mallow, they can get any number of games with senior clubs. They can go into Tipperary or Waterford. That just isn’t feasible up here. We have four or five ‘superclubs’ in Ulster, sprinkled between Antrim and Derry, but ultimately that isn’t enough of a critical mass to bring Ulster hurling to the next level. It needs big investment, not just at schools level, but to allow an U15 game to go down south. That’s where you really learn. It’s gonna take money, and there’s not a lot of it floating around the GAA at the minute after Covid.
In Monday’s Irish News: Part two of the discussion in which Neil McManus, Ronan Sheehan, Ollie Bellew and Dominic McKinley discuss the merits of a Team Ulster, whether Antrim needs to look at its own role and where they see Ulster hurling being in 10 years’ time…
