An unoriginal thought occurs to me about this time every year (I should say that unoriginal thoughts occur to me all the time, but this particular unoriginal thought hits at this particular time of year): county championships, in senior, intermediate or junior, are so difficult to win.
That there’s only one team celebrating at the end of any year is what makes winning them so special. You just have to keep winning tight games until there’s no one left to beat – the only way around is through.
But it takes a toll. A route to a county title, even to a team that is used to the road, is exhausting.
And so, while listening to Colm Parkinson and Christy O’Connor on the Smaller Fish podcast running through the 11 clubs that entered last weekend looking for a hurling-football double, you couldn’t but be amazed at the ability of those clubs to stay focused on the game in front of their nose, and not get distracted by the idea of six, seven or maybe eight weekends in a row trying to win knock-out games.
Clubs in the hunt for a double were most strikingly in the spotlight in Dublin, where three of the four teams in last week’s football semi-finals are also in this weekend’s hurling last four.
These are clubs functioning at an extremely high level, but their squads are almost entirely separate. These are dual clubs, not dual teams. The laser focus required to transfer seamlessly from football to hurling and back again, week after week, is not something they have to worry about, Conor McHugh and maybe a couple of others aside.
Éire Óg of Ennis have quite a bit of crossover between their hurling and football teams, and the hurlers did their bit last Sunday, ending a 35-year wait. They have St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield in the football decider this Sunday and they’re strongly fancied. Cratloe did the double in 2014 in Clare, but it had been nearly a century since it had been done before that. Éire Óg might never get a better chance.
[ Na Fianna and Ballyboden both looking to double up in Dublin ]
Slaughtneil won the hurling title last Sunday and are in the Derry football last four this coming Sunday against the reigning champions Newbridge. Naas are in the Kildare hurling final this Sunday, having hammered Celbridge in a football semi last Sunday. Loughmore-Castleiney are doing what they seemingly always do in Tipperary.
The double hopes of Carnew in Wicklow, St Finbarr’s in Cork, Dunloy in Antrim and Naomh Éanna in Wexford all fell by the wayside last weekend, and it was an incredible achievement to get as far as they did. The Barrs knocked out the reigning Cork football and hurling champions on successive weekends, but couldn’t get past Sarsfields in the hurling last week.
Naas and Éire Óg look like good bets now to get the double-job done. Slaughtneil might be third favourites for the Derry football title, and Loughmore-Castleiney will be as doughty as ever, but the rarity of it is what makes it special.
How many Ireland jerseys are up for grabs ahead of the Autumn Nations Series?
My recent experiences in a dual club at junior level in Waterford was eye-opening. If Dublin’s biggest clubs can run two entirely different squads, and clubs such as Éire Óg, Naomh Éanna and the Barrs can carry multiple dual players, then running two basically identical squads for both games, as we do in An Sean Phobal, with playing resources stretched to the limit, is an achievement of a different sort. That almost unanimous cross-over between squads is what makes Loughmore-Castleiney special, even in this rarefied air (by the by, their record in their last 20 games in the Tipperary senior hurling and football championships: won 19, drawn 1).
Waterford is the last county to start their football championship, only getting going once the hurling finals are finished. Wexford had been doing that until this season, and the decision to change brought some words of caution from the county’s football manager John Hegarty.
“In the alternate-weeks model, football tends to lose out. I’m not saying they don’t get to train, but if there’s any extra required it comes from football towards hurling. What we were finding when it was a split – hurling first and then football – even the likes of Rathmore and Oulart, who would have not entered football teams for a long time, got involved because players got tired sitting around for eight weeks.”
This was what I saw in Waterford, too. Clubs that just wouldn’t bother with football were entering teams because the winter was stretching out before them from August onwards with no games if they didn’t. But by the same token, Lee Chin’s club and intercounty hurling season being over by mid-August seems like a crime against common sense. It’s a delicate balance.
Everyone has admiration for dual clubs – the ones still alive in senior county championships, and the ones doing it because it is that community’s fullest expression of their commitment to Gaelic games – but it’s not easy.
Dunloy getting to this Sunday’s Antrim football final is an example of a massive hurling club that nevertheless enthusiastically plays both sports. But they lost their hurling semi-final to Loughgiel by a point last weekend, and it would be a major surprise to me if their football efforts were not mentioned – and not positively – in the informal postmortems carried out.
As the new national director of hurling Willie Maher seeks out the reasons why hurling doesn’t gain more of a foothold in football areas, he might do well to talk to his brethren in Dunloy this week. If enough people up there can see the benefit – and the glory indeed – of playing both sports, then convincing predominantly football clubs to give hurling a go is absolutely achievable.
