Hurling in crisis at every level in Cork

When Cork’s status in the hurling world is debated in bars and online chatrooms, the fall of traditional city powerhouses is cited as a contributory factor in the decline of the county side.

This is shorthand for the failure of the traditional ‘big three’ of Blackrock, Glen Rovers and St Finbarr’s to win county titles, but far below the top flight clubs at the sharper end are fighting for their existence.

In the past decade or so, outfits like Shandon Rovers, Gurranabraher and Fr O’Callaghan’s have disappeared, while many others are barely clinging on. Filling hurling teams is either a constant struggle or a lost cause, and while things are not as bad football-wise, they are still far from rosy.

With five county senior titles — though all won by 1917 — Redmonds are joint-fifth on the roll of honour with Sarsfields, behind the big three and Midleton.

Dwindling numbers meant an arrangement with neighbours Ballyphehane, combining under the Redmonds banner for hurling and Ballyphehane for football.

That ended three years ago, however, and since then Redmonds have gone football-only at junior C level. For club PRO Eric Murphy, it is a sad state of affairs.

“For those of us who have been there since time began, it’s a dagger into the heart that we’re not playing hurling,” he said.

“We were a hurling club, but our last season was 2010. We were only getting 11 or 12 players, we wouldn’t know how many we’d have until the game itself, on top of that we were going out and being hockeyed.

“It basically got to the stage where it was a case of just fulfilling fixtures, it’s a lot easier to get 15 fellas for a game of football than a game of hurling.”

Murphy played with St Finbarr’s at underage, but accepts that Redmonds can’t compete with their Togher neighbours and instead have to try to entice those who fell away back into the club.

“You’re hoping for dropouts out of the Barr’s,” he admitted. “Basically, the social side of the club is very healthy, it’s very well-run, we have a good clubhouse on Tower St, but getting a team on the pitch is another thing.

“We ring fellas, we call out to fellas, basically what you’re hoping for is that if we do get fellas, that they’ll bring their friends along for a game of ball.”

Redmond are hampered by the lack of underage structures.

In 2011, moves were made to establish a South Parish Juvenile club, which aimed to cater for those in the catchment areas of Redmonds and Lough Rovers, but it proved fruitless. Lough Rovers secretary Don Rice acknowledges that a playing-resource drain is hard to reverse.

“We don’t have an underage section, and a lot of the players who played when they were younger have moved out of the city. I live in Glenville, we’d have fellas in Cobh and Ballincollig, and their kids then stay local and play with their friends. Where we are, there are no young families moving in, there are a lot of students in our area.”

Having a large quantity of players whose first love is soccer means that the Lough — who have hurling and football sides at junior B — often struggle for numbers.

“If we have to tog out ourselves at 40, we will to fulfil the fixture,” Rice said. “We got floodlights put in last year, that might help as fellas don’t want to play at the weekends, they’d prefer to play on a Wednesday or Thursday night. But, again, you’re relying on the goodwill of other clubs to play at those times. We keep going as best we can.”

In comparison to Redmonds and the Lough, Delanys are in the luxurious position of running two football teams and a junior A hurling side.

A local scout group uses the clubhouse, there is a crèche there during the week, and two pitches have recently been complemented by a hurling alley.

Unfortunately, from a high point of competing at senior hurling level as recently as 2006, three successive relegations saw then fall fast and fall hard.

“The infrastructure is there, it’s just a matter of getting the playing side strong again,” says club secretary Denis O’Flaherty. “We have no problem fielding two football teams, but it’s harder for the hurling. The team was too old when we won the intermediate, and we probably took our eye off the ball with the underage, eventually it disappeared. We had a meeting on it just two weeks ago about getting it going again, but it’s case of going right back to basics, electing a committee and getting in eight- and nine-year-olds. What you need really is the former players getting involved, it’s happening to some extent but you need it on a big scale. I’d be very hopeful for the future, but there is a lot of hard work involved.”