Galway city hurling must raise its game

Ground hurling and urban development.

Two of the challenges facing hurling in Galway, writes Michael Moynihan

An All-Ireland final appearance shines a light on hurling in a county, and it’s Galway’s turn on Sunday.

For instance, a vibrant club scene in the west hasn’t always been reflected with intercounty success, says former Galway star Cathal Moore, though he says reorganising the club championship has paid dividends west of the Shannon: “We know the eight teams in the quarter-finals now, which is a miracle given we’re in the All-Ireland final.

“It’s always a competitive championship but in times past would probably have been played at the wrong time of the year — it would have been getting going in September when that should have been the quarter-final stage, at least.”

Moore doesn’t see a competitive championship as detrimental to the intercounty team, but former Offaly star Daithí Regan sees the club scene having a different influence on Galway’s county team.

“The standard is very tough,” says Regan. “I was involved in Ballindereen and Oranmore-Maree but I’ve been at a lot of Galway senior games over the years.

“It’s very physical and often borders on dirty, to be honest, and I’d put that down to poor refereeing. It’s very parochial, very competitive, clubs in on top of each other and it can get bitter, which has happened at times there. Sarsfields would have been one team that bucked the trend there, they were very popular there compared to Athenry, say.”

Regan links the clubs’ approach to the westerners’ playing style.

“Galway play a distinct way — they’re not interested in ground hurling, for instance. When I was with Oranmore-Maree, Pat Malone and Gerry McInerney were my selectors, and Pat and I had a long chat about this — I mentioned fast ground hurling and he said they didn’t go along with that.

“I pointed to the 1988 final, when Ollie Kilkenny pulled on a ground ball and sent it to Noel Lane, who pulled again and got the vital goal. ‘Point taken,’ said Malone.”

When Regan was putting Galway teams through ground drills, the players were picking the ball behind his back.

“At club level they’re picking the ball and running into lads, and then bringing that onto the inter-county team as well: pick, pick, pick and run through your man.

“But that won’t work at inter-county level because it suits opposing teams — you can’t run through Kilkenny or Tipperary, for instance. You open up your opponents with the ball on the deck, not by doing what they’re doing.

“The fact that the clubs all play a similar style has influenced the county team insofar as they didn’t have variety in their game. As a consequence, they’ve had good results but not a run of good consistent results.”

The other challenge for Galway is the city. Moore accepts the game isn’t as strong there as it should be but he points to the work being done.

“For hurling to succeed it needs to be stronger in the city areas. That’s where the main population is.

“But that’s not the case in Galway. Liam Mellows and Rahoon-Newcastle are doing tremendous work at underage level but you won’t see the fruits of that for seven or eight years. In fairness, there’s a lot of work going on there, it wouldn’t be true to describe it as a wasteland, say.

“What would help enormously would be an All-Ireland title, obviously. That would help the promotion of hurling in a huge way. The success of Galway at minor level from, say, 1992 onwards was due in no small way to the work done in the 80s and to the All-Ireland wins of 1987 and 1988.

“One feeds the other, though people need to be patient.”

Eamonn O’Shea, former Tipperary selector, is a longtime Galway city resident. He sets the challenge in a wider context.

“A problem that’s not just confined to Galway is that the GAA is still by and large a rural organisation. For real change to occur in urban areas like Galway, Cork, Waterford and Limerick — not Dublin, which is slightly different — is that the urban voice needs to be heard more.

“For instance, a menu of matches is needed, because the GAA’s competitors provide a menu of matches. A regular schedule of matches on fixed days and times would help, and establishing the GAA as a weekend sport would help. So would a defined close season.

“It’s rare, for instance, to have games on a Saturday in Galway. I’d be told ‘well, the soccer team plays at 11 on Saturday’ and there’s a sense in which that’s fine, but I think we’ve given up a bit on that.

“The other challenge is retaining children from 12, 13 up to adult. There are good underage structures for kids up to 12 to 14, there are good coaches in the primary schools which are driven by one games promotion officer here — who does fantastic work — but they’re stretched in the primary schools. The reason for that is the absence of a strong ethos in the schools themselves.

“My kids went to school here in Galway and we’d have gone into the school and ran six-week training camps, worked with the GPO, put coaches in — but the impetus came from outside.”

Cathal Moore echoes O’Shea on the importance of the schools.

“It’s overlooked a lot of the time, whether you have the national school teacher in your area whose big focus is the GAA, which was the case years ago.

“I’m not referring to the gender of school-teachers, because a lot of female teachers are very good at promoting the GAA, but if you talk to the players next Sunday most of them will tell you they first picked up a hurley in national school.

“I’m not sure you’ll be able to say the same thing in 20 years’ time. That’s not a problem for Ireland, by the way, it’s a problem for the GAA. There’s no substitute for a teacher being there every day compared to a coach coming in once a week.”

O’Shea teases that point out. “Cathal is right about the primary school, that’s going to be less and less of a help, but I still think the real hard work comes from 12 up, that’s when you need the schedule of games enforced — that the hurling is every week. The child’s doing grinds for school or whatever.

“To add to that, the sense of the GAA club in the community must be strengthened. And that’s up to the club, to make its games attractive, and to be open-minded about coming up with solutions.

“One thing is to make it more family-inclusive, which the GAA is to some extent, but it should be stronger on that. If you don’t, then the link to the club is half-hearted. If the entire family is involved it becomes a tighter bond, and there needs to be more done in that area.”