Five counties must fulfil commitment to develop hurling – Kent

Cavan, Fermanagh, Leitrim, Longford and Louth earned a reprieve earlier this month when the proposal to remove them from the 2025 competition to develop hurling at club level was referred to the new hurling development taskforce.

Mon, 18 Dec, 2023 - 09:07

John Fogarty

The five counties whose existence in the Allianz Hurling League was threatened will be expected to back up their commitment to develop the game, says outgoing Central Competitions Control Committee chairman Derek Kent.

Kent, who is also Leinster chairman, says there is now an onus on them to fulfil their assurances to promote hurling within their boundaries. “The main reason for it was to give time,” he told Liam Spratt on South-East Radio.

“In those counties, they don’t have time, they don’t give time to hurling. They don’t give time to coaches to develop them, so we were generating time. A simple stat in Louth – we have age grades U13, U15 and U17. This year 2023, they have only played two games of hurling to date simply because they don’t give it time.

“I fully respect the decisions of the counties, that they came back and said, ‘No, we don’t want to remove our teams from the leagues’ but the cry to stay in the leagues came from players outside of those counties travelling, expensed travel. It came from some of the managers well looked after, well imbursed for their services.

“It has generated debate, it will go to the new hurling task-force and something we will keep to the fore going forward. It has generated something that might be good for hurling in the future.”

He continued: “I am happy that the five counties have stated that they’re going to develop hurling in those counties. We’re in 2023, let’s revisit those counties in 2028 and see what they’ve done for the five years.”

Kent wants to see the revival of Liam Griffin’s plan to mandate every club in the county play under-age hurling deserves another hearing.

Wexford’s 1996 All-Ireland winning manager put forward a proposal at Congress earlier this year was soundly defeated but Kent believes the new hurling development committee should embrace it.

“What Liam is talking about is giving everyone a chance to hurl. We have to give them a hurl, a helmet. I think we should support the motion, I think it’s the way forward and I would hope the taskforce take that motion and bring it to the fore.”

At recent Central Council meetings, Kent has asked questions of the Gaelic Players Association’s finances. He explained his reasoning: “As an association, we have to look at our costs. We have to control our costs. I believe the number one thing we have do is have persons accountable. So when we give over our money to an association like the GPA they have to be accountable for their spend.”

Kent added that the split club championship in Wexford, hurling followed by football, which he brought in for 2020 should have been ditched after the pandemic.

“I brought it in for the covid. We didn’t know how many weeks we had to play our championships. My attitude was let’s play our hurling championship first. That’s our No1 sport in Wexford – 85% of our followers go to hurling – and if we had enough weeks we’d play football.

“Shelmaliers won the (senior) hurling and Castletown won the football. The day Castletown won the football, the Government put a stop, no more games. We were one of the few counties that got both football and hurling championships played.

“The county board decided to continue on with that format. I believe that it’s not the correct format for Wexford and we should change it in the upcoming meeting in January.”