O'Neill wants Poc Fada revolution

GAA President Liam O'Neill wants to revolutionise aspects of the Poc Fada tradition and bring it fully into the 21st century.

The All-Ireland final of the M Donnelly-sponsored Poc Fada takes place on the August Bank Holiday at the Annaverna Mountain in Louth each year, with qualifiers coming through county and provincial competitions.

Speaking at yesterday's launch, O'Neill says that while it is important to maintain the tradition of the competition, new aspects must be brought to the Poc Fada to enhance it.

"We are upgrading this and we'll take any opportunity to promote hurling skills or hurling promotion," he said.

"This is an important one because it captures people's imaginations. Every child that ever picked up a sliotar and a hurley wanted to see how far they could puck it.

"I would love to see novelty stuff, I would love to see a veterans competition. I would like to see maybe new people, including some celebrities and players from other sports just to promote the idea. I think the more people we have hitting the ball the better."

Recent innovations in the competition include the decision to host the Leinster Poc Fada as a 'road competition' last year.

"I think that was really commendable of Leinster," O'Neill said.

"It was really different, it was a novel approach. It focused more attention and involved more people.

"I think what Leinster did last year with the Poc Fada could be easily done by any club or parish at Christmas time or winter time, maybe on the longest day or the shortest day of the year.

"I think around the New Year period there are great possibilities with that.

"We'd love to see that every county would identify a site, for arguments sake Laois and Offaly might do it on the Slieve Bloom mountains - maybe either side of it.

"Something novel where you would start equal distance apart and come together. I'd love to see anything that promotes it."

Top hurler Brendan Cummins of Tipperary and Waterford camogie player Patricia Jackman are the current All-Ireland champions respectively, but O'Neill has challenged players from all levels to get involved.

"While it is great to have those, we would love to see an ordinary person come out and challenge the top sportspeople, because it is a specialist art.

"There are goalies up and down the country who are pucking long and I would love to see a bit more interest. We have to enthuse them and get them to a stage where they might challenge one of the established stars."

The Poc Fada is a key aspect of the GAA's Hurling Development Plan, with the plan set to be reviewed at national level in the coming weeks.

"We want to develop the Poc Fada and we want to promote it and we want to use it as one further way to promote hurling, but we want to do it jointly promoting hurling and camogie. That's the strong message we want to give out.

"We are going to do a look back on our hurling plan now and see where we are going with it.

"A review will be undertaken and see where we are with it and see what we want to do in the next while. That will be done over the next weeks and months."