After the famine comes the feast for Doyle
Current senior team boss JJ Doyle, who hails from the Marshalstown club just outside Enniscorthy, unexpectedly cut his managerial teeth in Gorey while serving six-and-a-half of the nine years he spent in the priesthood before retiring.
He was playing with the Gorey hurlers at the time, all of them top-class players. But his efforts as a priest to establish a connection with the wider community unwittingly took JJ along the road to the heights which he has visited with the Wexford team in the last few seasons.
“I was Chaplain to the Loreto Primary School in the town, and while there was no camogie club, the school was involved in the Rackard League [the county primary schools championships],” he said.
“I used to go to all the matches, because I was trying to get to know the parents through the school.
“A couple of the parents knew I was hurling with Gorey and asked, ‘If we get a few people together, would you be interested in starting up a camogie club?’ I thought, ‘I might as well’, because, again, it was a great way to get to know people.”
The club – Naomh Éanna – first entered in U12 and U14 in 2001. By 2004 they had teams in U12, U14, U16 and minor, as well as adult, and they won every competition that year at Premier level. In JJ’s six years with them, Gorey won 23 county titles, and in the process, every team was elevated from Division 3 to Premier grade. All that success was based on the very same template that JJ has applied to the Wexford mission.
“What happened in Gorey was down to a lot of work and commitment,” he said.
But if those parents in Gorey had not extended the invitation to him to get involved, then almost certainly JJ would never have got the Wexford job. Even as it was, he jokes regarding the interview for that role.
“I would say they ran out of options! They had interviewed a lot of people before one of the committee who happened to know me asked, ‘Would you be interested in it?’.”
He thought about it and then set the wheels in motion towards succeeding Stellah Sinnott.
“I didn’t even know that Stellah had stepped down,” JJ now exclaims, giving an indication of just how far his thoughts were from the Wexford job when the vacancy emerged in late 2009.
JJ had his first meeting with the players on December 21, 2009 in Enniscorthy. He admits to suffering considerable trepidation. He knew only Lenny Holohan because she was teaching in Gorey. Otherwise he couldn’t connect names to faces. “Regardless, I really had to make a big impression that first night.”
He did that by declaring he wanted to win an All-Ireland. And, just like with Gorey, his uncomplicated approach has yielded great riches. And rather appropriately, Gorey will be the first-stop on the hoped-for celebratory homecoming on Monday.
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