LET’S start with the title – director of hurling. It was in September 2019 that the post was created, with Neal Peden the first incumbent. Fifteen months on, the Belfast man still winces slightly.
“The name didn’t appeal to me,” he says.
“I didn’t like the name, but I saw the challenge that is there. That’s what appealed.”
After a rollercoaster couple of decades, the challenge of helping reinvigorate Antrim hurling is not one for the faint hearted. Best laid plans have been put in place before, only for familiar hurdles to get in the way.
As part of the management team under Terence McNaughton and Dominic McKinley, and boss in his own right for a spell, Peden knew as well as anybody the extent of the job required. But he also saw the potential, in the people and the players, to make things better.
Getting former Tipperary goalkeeper Darren Gleeson to come on board in a coaching capacity was a significant first part of the jigsaw, his experience of “high performance sport” under the likes of All-Ireland winning boss Liam Sheedy crucial in pushing Antrim forward.
But there is more, so much more, needed to ensure the progress made is built upon and doesn’t just fall off the edge of a cliff as it has done in the past.
“In 2017 we got promotion [to Division 1B] but then came straight back down. I was part of the management set-up then, and you were looking at why did we come back down? What can we do to get better structures in place?”
Ah yes, ‘structures’ - one of the many buzz words that have infiltrated the GAA and all top sport, often thrown out with little or no meaning. For Peden, though, this is not the case.
Improving player development from youth to adult level, creating a player potential pathway and an official link between clubs, families, schools, universities and county teams are all central to the long-term plan.
Covid has stalled some aspects of that but the success of the Saffrons’ senior team – who take on Kerry in Sunday’s Joe McDonagh Cup final – has helped energise the county in other ways and will, Peden hopes, make his job easier in the years ahead.
“It’s not just about the senior team – we have a gap between our U17s and our seniors in terms of the athlete,” says the St John’s clubman.
“We look at Limerick, Tipperary and you see how athleticism has developed within hurling. Antrim is full of smashing young hurlers but what we need to develop is the athlete so we have to put structures, like our strength and conditioning, in place across the board.
“We’re looking at how do we monitor and develop our young players within the school system, when they go to university, in the club. We have to support all that.”
The introduction of strength and conditioning coach Brendan Murphy has brought considerable benefits to the Antrim senior side, and Peden is confident his influence will widen out.
“We brought Brendan in as our new athletic performance manager and he is starting in the full capacity - in terms of the whole county, hurling and football - when we finish the Joe McDonagh.
“Some players develop more than others because they’ve had a major interest in developing themselves, others are very good at hurling and maybe realised when they came into the county set-up that there needs to be a mixture.
“Brendan came in and changed the narrative; strength and conditioning is part of your training. It’s not something you do for six months, leave it, then come and hurl. You work at it right throughout the year.
“Now, coming into a final we’re still developing them because it’s part of their training plan. We need powerful, strong athletes and that’s what we’re developing.
“Looking down the line we want our U17s to be stronger as they grow into these mature 20-year-olds, so that when they come out of U20 they’re nearly ready as a senior hurler – that way they don’t have to go on a four year journey to be that athlete, we’ve developed them right through.”
Next year Antrim are back in Division 1B, sharing a stage with the likes of Kilkenny and Wexford, while victory on Sunday would afford them a crack at the 2021 Leinster Championship.
Peden knows they have been here before, he was there with them, but feels the will is there across the county to ensure this momentum carries on.
“You can see with Darren being appointed, our new senior football management being appointed, there’s an ambition there. The county board is very supportive of this, they see that we need to be doing this if we’re going to go into the top level.
“We’re busting for Casement to get delivered, our gymnasiums are being built, we’re building hubs for our footballers and hurlers to strengthen. Gaelfast is working so deeply with the primary and post-primary sectors too, the base of the pyramid is getting greater and that’s what we need.
“We need to strengthen that for young players to say ‘Antrim is developing me’ – not just my club, not just my school. The shop window is our seniors, so being in a Joe McDonagh final, playing in Croke Park is a real opportunity to keep that momentum going so that the young ones watching on say ‘I want that to be me one day’.”
