Ronan Sweeney: ‘It will be the death of the GAA if we don’t sort it’

Ronan Sweeney will be entering a 19th consecutive year of inter-county involvement when linking up as coach and selector with Kildare for 2017, but it speaks volumes that he is acknowledged countywide as the epitome of a clubman.

It isn’t that he was necessarily more available than anyone else from the time Mick O’Dwyer called him up to the Lilywhite squad for the League in 1999 until reluctantly handing in his All White jersey at the end of the 2013 season.

He was under even more pressure when joining up with Niall Carew in Waterford in 2014 and then moving on to Sligo for the past two seasons.

The travelling took its toll eventually and he relinquished that role but once fellow Moorefield man Cian O’Neill got wind of developments, he got in touch. With wife Jackie fully in favour, Sweeney jumped at the opportunity. His contribution to Moorefield never suffered, though you could never keep everybody happy, and it continues as they prepare for tomorrow’s county final against Newbridge rivals Sarsfields.

“I remember having people in Moorefield giving out to me because I wasn’t playing enough League games” he muses. “One particular chairman rang me up really going at me hard which I thought was extremely unfair. We were county champions at the time and I had played quite well in that campaign.

“I always went to the club manager at the start of every year and I was speaking for the rest of the Moorefield players on the Kildare panel as well.

“I said: ‘We’re trying to do something away from the group, to win an All-Ireland. We would appreciate you and the rest of the players supporting us in that. And when we come back we will drive this whole thing on. We’ll be the first on the pitch, we’ll be the last out. We’ll be genuine and honest.’

“Every manager was fine with that once you delivered on that promise. I always felt you owed the club players and I often say this to county players now. You owe your club teammates because they never see you, which is a little bit wrong as well. So when you go back there, you have to lead and you have to really care. You need them and they need you.”

The 36-year-old’s competitive instincts have never waned. He was knocked unconscious in the semi-final against Celbridge and had to depart the fray.

He feels passionately about the plight of the club player generally and the former GPA secretary and current member of the association’s national executive reveals that an amended version of their proposal to reformat the inter-county Championship will be published later this year. The proposed shortening of the season and availability of windows exclusive for club action will be retained and he issues a stark warning about what will happen if the club player isn’t catered for.

“The biggest problem that the club players have, and it’s a massive problem in every county, whether they’re in the All-Ireland final or out of the championship in the early stages, is fixtures. Everything is put to each county board individually which is…” he pauses… “troublesome.

“People are getting so annoyed now that they’re just stopping playing. They’re just not bothering because they don’t know when their Championship is going to be so they’re going off doing other things that are better structured. For me, any Championship restructuring will have to come from the top, from Croke Park and the fixtures committee. When the Championship fixtures are laid out at inter-county level, there has to be a real effort to include the club player. Everyone is passing the buck saying ‘Who’s going to sort it out?’ but the key stakeholders have to sit down and sort it out. It will be the death of the GAA if we don’t sort it.”

Meanwhile, he chases his eighth county title (the Moores have nine in total) and having beaten Sarsfields in five of the seven finals, has good vibes around the derby. But they are, he insists, up against it, describing the Sash’s feat of appearing in a fifth consecutive decider as “outrageous”.

“I believe that this is the best Sarsfields team that I’ve ever seen and that’s a statement because I’m playing a long time against some of the greats. They just seem to have everything. But we’ve been underdogs before and won games. This is not impossible but we’ll have to be at our best to compete and if we’re there or thereabouts with 10 minutes to go, we know how to win games.”