John Fogarty
For the past three years, incoming GAA president Liam O’Neill has headed up the Hurling Development Committee (HDC).
He is a hurling man – he makes no bones about that. His club Trumera in Laois is predominantly a hurling club.
In February, he launched the Hurling Development Plan which will see Carriganore on the ring road outside Waterford city become the base for a hurling and camogie development centre.
However, it was the creation of the Táin club leagues for weaker hurling counties as well as the establishment of a nationwide network of mentors that caught the eye.
Recognising that the game has no chance of flourishing in counties without the grassroots first embracing it, the hope is the Táin club league will engage players to compete at a level suited to them before taking it on to inter-county level.
Borrowing a line from the GPA tutoring scheme, Tipperary’s Liam Sheedy and Eamon O’Shea working in Tyrone and Donegal will be major boost to the fortunes of both counties’ second GAA sport.
“Hurling was hanging by a thread, literally, and it needed some sort of an intervention. It was never going to happen if we did what we did before,” O’Neill said at the launch.
“It was all about throwing money [at the problem], but now this has changed. This is a people-based plan and it is about games first.
“We set our stall out straight away with the Táin League. This is about games, getting hurling played, because if you don’t play games you can’t develop hurling.”
That last line couldn’t be more appropriate this week as the Monaghan County Board have decided to throw away all the good that their hurling team has done this year.
They may not exactly be guilty of contravening the rule that dictates they promote Gaelic games but they sure have stymied the encouragement of hurling.
By arranging intermediate club football fixtures for the same date as hurling training not to mention just four days before the Division 3A final, they have demonstrated disrespect to their own county team.
A definite chance of picking up some silverware has now been spurned. You could say they have shot themselves in the foot but then such is the indifference shown towards hurling in the county that some would argue it’s someone else’s toes they have aimed the barrel at.
It’s hardly surprising Mattie Lennon and his players have decided to down tools in protest. They had been swimming against the tide but had done it so impressively they were hardly going to sit idly be and see all their efforts compromised.
If anyone was in any doubt about the Monaghan County Board’s modus operandi, they were put right when hurler and GPA representative Mickey McHugh revealed officials had already scheduled in a round of intermediate club football for this Sunday, the same day the hurlers were supposed to face Fingal.
A quick look at the county board website confirmed that. They wouldn’t have robbed their graves as quickly.
Remember, this was the same Monaghan County Board who had fought so strongly against the Central Hearings Committee’s (CHC) decision to strip their footballers of home advantage in Division 2.
They had contested the €5,000 fine handed down to them by the Central Competitions Control Committee for some of their players’ involvement in a melee in the home game with Kildare in February.
Their fight was vigorous and expensive as they took their case to the Disputes Resolution Authority, which, for starters, carried a €1,000 application fee.
They were eventually beaten but not without a battle.
What they perceived as an injustice is exactly what their own hurlers feel has been done to them by their own administrators.
The willingness of the county board to defend their footballers and their reluctance to cut their aspiring hurlers a little slack couldn’t be more different.
Why couldn’t three club intermediate football fixtures be switched for the greater good of the county hurling team winning a title and making the first of two steps to promotion to Division 2B?
Was that something to fear?
The county board surely knew that Lennon had organised training sessions on Wednesday nights. The hurlers couldn’t be blamed for thinking the county board wanted this confrontation.
On Twitter, the #SupportMonaghanHurlers hashtag has been doing the rounds and gaining the backing of several prominent inter-county hurlers and Gaelic footballers.
However, that encouragement must extend further than a mere retweet or a handy mention if their campaign is to be successful.
Coming after Longford’s failure to field a team, it’s been a miserable few weeks for hurling and Croke Park are undoubtedly worried about it.
Unless they are prepared to take sterner action with counties, all their good work at central level will continue to be undermined.
Monaghan’s hurlers should be praised for standing up for the game, which is exactly what they’re doing.
As O’Neill says, the development of hurling is to do with people. As Fingal manager Willie Bourke says, it’s those in the weaker counties who keep the game alive that are the real hurling men.
They are in the minority though, and changing the life-long attitudes of those in charge of counties where Gaelic football has held precedence is a burdensome task.
Sadly, the situation in Monaghan indicates just a small part of that problem.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/E2Nz69Zq3kM/post.aspx
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