So, just how serious are we about hurling promotion?
Declan Bogue
AS YOU APPROACHED the corner where the Drumcondra and Clonliffe Roads meet, several buses were queued up on Sunday lunchtime.
Dozens of children emerged clad in the garb of their local clubs or else Galway and Kilkenny jerseys. Noticeable to this eye was the proliferation of kids from Belfast club, Michael Davitts, a bijoux planted off the corner of the Falls Road and Clonard Street.
Elsewhere in the stadium, another Belfast club, O’Donovan Rossa, had a busload of children. 33 in total, along with their mentors.
It’s not unknown for the Leinster final attendance to be swollen by hurling units from Ulster. Most years you are guaranteed a top-quality game, within a travelling distance that is manageable enough that kids won’t be blowing chunks all around a bus after a day of munching sweets, and for the tolerance levels of mentors, some of whom realise that children can be a bit like farting; you can just about stand your own.
However, there can be no doubt that the Leinster Council did the right thing in meeting these units half way. Around a fortnight ago it was announced that they were donating 20,000 tickets for children under the age of 14.
As they explained, the move came about through Leinster GAA’s, “ongoing commitment to youth participation and community engagement, providing young players with the opportunity to experience the excitement and atmosphere of Senior Hurling Championship match days.”
For every ten children, there had to be two supervising adults.
Speaking prior to handing over the Bob O’Keefe Cup to John Donnelly, Kent gave a shout-out to the various hurling units that had made the effort to come along for the day, hailing those from Tyrone, Armagh and Down by name.
It’s not sacrilege to also admit at the same time that the appetite for such a game was meagre at best.
The take-up was believed to be around half in an overall attendance of 37,503.
So essentially, for a Leinster hurling final, with the Joe McDonagh Cup final of Kildare and Laois as the curtain-raiser, brought in just over 27,000 apart from the freebies.
The presence of Hurling Development Chairman Terry Reilly and National Head of Hurling Willie Maher, sitting in a prominent position when Kildare were being presented with the Joe McDonagh Cup, was instructive.
Reilly has been exacting and exhausting in his efforts to date in his role. He has demanded a great deal, but he has also been careful to take his time in identifying what needs to be done, by whom and by when.
Maher was originally on the committee, but has had to step down in order to take up this role, which had been occupied by former Kilkenny coach Martin Fogarty until his contract ran out in December 2021 and the GAA in a dereliction of duty, did not arrange for an extension or a replacement.
The symmetry was too tempting for GAA President Jarlath Burns to ignore. In his speech before handing over the Joe McDonagh cup, he declared Kildare’s triumph to be an early ‘win’ for his Hurling Development Committee, given part of their remit was to expand the number of counties who could compete in the Liam MacCarthy Cup.
That status is now bestowed on Kildare, and reward for the plan they devised and began in 2018, and have carried through to fruition so far.
Good for Kildare. The sugar rush of a Joe McDonagh Cup needs to be capitalised upon by Kildare when they play Dublin in the preliminary quarter-final.
Though you may question why they have to do so much winning to keep playing hurling in the early summer.
In his programme notes, Kent noted, ‘Almost 60% of our senior hurling teams in Leinster will have no hurling in June, which surely demonstrates a troubling lack of hurling promotion. On the contrary, over 91% of our football teams, all but one of the 12 in the province, will play football this month. That clearly highlights an imbalance in the playing of our games.’
The line between Galway and Dublin is the Mason-Dixon Line of hurling. the Confederate states south of that hurling equator have access to each other, where the hurling culture is strongest.
The four teams playing in Croke Park were all within that area.
As hard as it is to call out the troops in the heartlands, consider the work then that is going on north of that line.
One of the chief aims of the Hurling Development Committee has been to increase the number of units in this area. They have already started that project with their ‘starter packs’ of equipment for clubs that have previously only fielded in Gaelic football, to offer hurling.
Good. Brilliant. Excellent.
However, there is absolutely no point in new clubs starting, unless they have help and support.
To that end, our eye gets drawn to a job advertised by the Ulster Council recently for a regional hurling development officer.
There are a number of them in the province and people generally don’t tend to last long in the roles.
The salary advertised was circa £27,000 (€32,000).
To put this into context, the average graduate wage in the north is £32,500 (€38,600).
The minimum wage in the north, since April 1, 2025 is £25,396.
A job at the interface of hurling development, where the work is most badly needed, is barely more than a minimum wage.
If you were wondering how serious the GAA were about promoting hurling, that’s one area to fix.
Immediately.
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