Dual players performing juggling acts at club level

READING the papers these days, you could be forgiven for thinking that dual players are almost an extinct species in the GAA. That may be true at inter-county level, but the same can’t be said for the club scene.

Week in, week out players switch codes, sometimes even between senior, minor and U21 level, but no club has performed that juggling act quite like Portlaoise this season.

Last Sunday, the club won the county SHC for the first time in six years, and in three days’ time the footballers will take on Emo in the SFC final.

Eight of the players who togged out against Castletown will do so again this weekend.

Another four of this Sunday’s team are men who only recently laid down their hurleys to concentrate on the big ball, among them county full-back Colm Byrne.

Dublin’s Ballyboden St Endas also boast a team in both senior county finals this year, but their hurlers lost to UCD last Sunday. Their footballers take on Kilmacud Crokes on the same day Portlaoise and Emo face off.

John Hanniffy is the goalkeeper for the Portlaoise hurlers and will be reserve football custodian on Sunday. A club official as well, he is aware how difficult the season has been.

“It’s hard to keep lads focused on one game when they’re playing so much. The GAA doesn’t do much to encourage dual players either.

“The county team won’t let players play for their clubs at all for 13 days before a championship game but then if they lose one weekend with Laois they can be out again six days later. It doesn’t help clubs at all and we’ve been hit fairly hard by that.”

Damien Fox, who managed the hurlers to the title last week, has found the dual problem frustrating at times with Portlaoise, but admires players combining two or more panels as well as careers and personal lives.

“We have the same problem in Tullamore, where I’m from, but it’s been particularly hard to deal with in Portlaoise. When the championship came to the final stages the dual players were training with one team two nights of the week and playing a match with the other at the weekend. The next week we’d reverse that.

“It’s not perfect but we got through it. People don’t seem to understand what a huge achievement it is to be in two county finals in the one year. It’ll be all the better if the footballers win on Sunday and I think they will.”

A huge help in Portlaoise achieving this - their last double was in 1998 - is the fact that it is also a dual club at underage level. There is a strong culture of encouraging youngsters to play both games and that has a knock-on effect for the senior set-up.

There have still been times when the sheer volume of games has threatened to take its toll. One of the dual players, Cahir Healy, a Leinster and All-Ireland minor winner with Laois this past two years, has felt the strain more than most, as Hanniffy explained.

“Between minor and senior football and hurling with the club recently he was facing games on the Friday, Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. That’s five championships games in eight days.

“The county board backed off and rearranged some of the games, but the problem comes up year after year.”

Win on Sunday and the fixture chaos could spill over to both Leinster championships. A problem definitely, but a nice one to have for all that.