The Mighty Quinn doing it for love of the game

NED QUINN is the man with the Midas touch.

Whatever he lays his hands upon turns to gold. There’s the obvious success in his private life, not so much the big house and big car (and Ned has both) as the happy, healthy, hard-working family he and his wife Lucy have raised; there’s also, though, the magnificent complex that is home to his native Mooncoin GAA, and of course there’s the success being enjoyed by Kilkenny hurling, at every level.

With Mooncoin, Ned has been involved since the mid-60s. He was there when they had nothing to their name but can now point proudly to two full-size pitches (one with a covered stand), an indoor hurling alley, a gym, and top-of-the-range dressing rooms, all completed with massive coordinated local effort.

With Kilkenny he is in his second year as county board secretary, but prior to that Ned spent nine years as county chairman, nine very fruitful years during which Kilkenny won five All-Ireland senior titles.

None of this was accidental achievement, not a simple case of being in the right place at the right time; with both Mooncoin and Kilkenny, Ned has worked selflessly and tirelessly, and – though he waves such plaudits aside – much of what has been achieved by club and county is due directly to those efforts.

A fine portfolio, then, one which surely qualifies Quinn to advise on what the GAA should be doing to further the growth of hurling nationwide.

First, the thorny question of whether hurling would be better off to separate itself completely from Gaelic football: “No, I don’t think so, though there are problems. There is a tendency, for example – mistaken, in my opinion – to try to apply the same rules to the two sports, and that was tried again as recently as the league, with the yellow card experiment. That was shot down at Congress, and if you look at the voting pattern it was the big hurling counties that put an end to it. The irony of that is that this year, under the old rules, we’re probably seeing the best football and the best football championship for years, because the rules are being applied.

“And that was the problem, the rules weren’t being applied in previous years and football was suffering. They tried to change that with the yellow card experiment but they applied it to hurling also, where there was no such problem. Even off the field, there’s a regulation for football that you can only have three water-carriers, so we’re also allowed only three hurley-carriers – how can that work? We’re told two at one side of the field, one at the other – is one side of the field shorter than the other? You know how vital it can be to get in a replacement hurley, and this system makes it very difficult. But if a rule is brought in for football, there seems to be a tendency there to try to bring in a similar rule for hurling – it’s a mistake.

“But overall, I don’t have any problem with football. The first thing hurling has to accept is that football is the major game in the GAA. I don’t agree with those who criticise the football counties – these are also genuine GAA people, just as dedicated in their areas to football as we are to hurling, and I admire them for that.

“But football IS dominant, that’s the reality; hurling is the minority game, and this isn’t a recent development – it always was and probably always will be, which means that hurling has to be nurtured. There should always be someone in Croke Park dedicated to nurturing hurling, looking after its needs.”

In fairness to many of the football counties there is a real effort being made now in places like Armagh, Tyrone, Mayo, Sligo, to grow hurling, and the introduction of new competitions in recent years have given all those teams a new incentive. As a member of the HDC (Hurling Development Committee) during those years, Ned had a hand in those progressions.

“The setting up of the Ring, Rackard and Meagher cups have given a profile to the lower counties that wasn’t there previously. I can remember All-Ireland B finals played in local fields, with three men and a dog, intermediate championship being dominated by the second teams from the bigger counties – all that has gone, and those counties now have something to aim for. On the development side, there’s great credit due to those like Pat Daly in Croke Park. They are creating what I call “a career path” in hurling, from underage to senior. Only a few players make it to senior inter-county, but we need to create a path to adult club hurling for everyone, and I think that’s being done.

“We have the Go Games for kids, the Cúl camps in the summer, and I think that’s a huge advance. We have to get away from the 15-a-side syndrome at underage, but more importantly we have to get away from the ‘first 15’ syndrome, when a decision is taken as early as U8 that these are our best 15, we want to win every game and these are the guys we’ll play in all the games, the rest can go home without ever touching a ball.

“We need to get away from that and on to just skill development – personally, I’d have no competitions below U14, instead I would just focus on skills development, like we do in Kilkenny. And I’d be a strong supporter of ‘parish rule’; if there are problems with numbers, we should reduce the numbers on the teams rather than amalgamating clubs. In any such amalgamation, the smaller club suffers, the few players they have will end up with no-one to play with in their own parish at adult level, those clubs will disappear.”

Before we leave the football/hurling topic, however, what of the accusation constantly thrown at Kilkenny, that – as the only county in the country that doesn’t take part in the All-Ireland championship – they don’t do a whole lot to promote football? Taken on the chin, and not even an eye-blink.

He replied: “There are 42 clubs in Kilkenny; of those, 12 are exclusively hurling, three exclusively football, with 27 dual clubs – that means we have 30 clubs playing football, and it takes the same number of games to win a Kilkenny county senior football title as a senior hurling title. There are counties out there with only three or four hurling clubs in total, so I think we compare well there. Look, hurling is the major game in Kilkenny, you can’t force football on them. They play it, they enjoy it, but that’s it, their focus is on hurling. Maybe if there was the equivalent of the Lory Meagher Cup in football they could kick away at that, but in the All-Ireland, we can’t compete.”

So how would Ned Quinn develop hurling?

“If we accept that we have 12 counties at the moment in the top tier, I would say four of those at the moment – and I don’t include Dublin, where a lot of investment is already being made – need nurturing. They need assistance, financial assistance, for coaching. At the moment there’s great work being done in Laois by Pat Critchley and Niall Rigney, and we saw the result of that work in Laois’s performance against Limerick. Pat has now got hurling being played in clubs that never had it, but then hurling is endemic in Laois. It’s the same in Offaly, they’ll be back, and the same in Wexford, but all those counties could do with financial assistance.

“Wexford especially are doing great work at underage and should win an All-Ireland in the near future. Carlow also are doing likewise and Michael Dempsey’s appointment to the IT college there will bear fruit. Whether they’ll have a serious MacCarthy Cup team in the near future is problematic, but they have some fine hurlers, won the Minor B All-Ireland four years in a row, two Christy Ring titles, competed very well in division 2 of the National League, where there were four top tier teams, so there’s progress being made. Antrim, I don’t know what went wrong there this year but again, hurling is endemic there. The GAA should focus on those counties, bring them along. I know, that’s a difficult decision for any association, to focus on developing a few counties; the other counties will want their share as well, and they should get it, but it should be proportional. Everything has to be done in a developmental context.”

Finally, an area of real concern for Ned, a topic introduced without prompting – hurling in the education system.

“In the current downturn, the changes being proposed in the education system can cause us problems. We’ve had a great run in recent years, games played, profiled, promoted, but that could change. I think we’ll be okay at primary school, the local clubs are closely identified with those, but this doesn’t happen at secondary school, clubs don’t see them as their own. Under the new constraints, will schools drop the hurling team? Will they drop the younger grades, focus just on the senior team? I’d be concerned about that, we have to keep an eye on it and we might even have to supply people to the schools. You won’t have two teachers taking training sessions anymore, taking matches – we might have to supply the second, maybe even the two. Third-level, though, is one of the great successes – you hear a lot of criticism about it, but not from me.

“I grew up in an era where you heard nothing about third-level GAA, it was all rugby, colours matches. Now it’s all GAA, Gaelic football and hurling, and that’s very positive. I hear people saying they should have their competitions finished before Christmas – how could they, with a six-week break? Kids go to college first for education, and that has to be their focus – it’s fantastic. All the leaders of Irish life – politics, business, education – will come through college, and it’s important we maintain our base there. We have to ensure it remains strong, that our presence in third level is strong.”

Finally, how goes hurling now? Progressing? “Yes, without question, and there’s a simple barometer – the number of hurleys and helmets being sold. Being on the HDC opened my eyes to what’s going on around the country. Places you’d never have associated with hurling, but they have pockets, they have individuals, totally immersed in hurling. They attach themselves to the more successful counties, even the successful club teams. We regularly have people down in Kilkenny from Down, from Antrim – the far reaches of Antrim, and I’m sure the same applies in Cork, Tipperary and in Waterford now.

“Look at Sligo, their success in the Rackard last year – that was brilliant for them. Look at Kerry, pockets there where hurling is the religion, they are absolute fanatics on the game. One thing I would like to see is the All-Ireland finals brought forward, hurling to the last Sunday in August, football to the first Sunday in September – that would free up the whole month of September for club hurling. And I would like to see a system where the main team in every club was still involved in championship until at least the end of August, maintain interest over the summer.”

There was more, much more, but space doesn’t allow further elaboration. A man of ideas, a man of action, Ned Quinn. If the GAA weren’t as parochial as it still is – even at the very top – he would surely be a prime candidate for the top job, and soon. As it is, with Nickey Brennan having just stepped down, there will be the old ‘sure you couldn’t have another Kilkenny man so soon after the last’ objectors. The GAA’s loss.