Saturday brought all sorts of milestones for Éamonn Cregan, who coached Mary Immaculate College in Limerick to a first Fitzgibbon Cup.

Mary Immaculate is more than 100 years old but as a small teacher training college, it has only been part of the elite landscape since 2013, reaching two finals and winning this year’s after an exhausting final against UL.

It was also Cregan’s 45th wedding anniversary and his plans to return home from Cork where the final was held were delayed to the point that he and his wife Anne decided to postpone their celebrations until a less hectic date.

The college overlap with family is completed by daughter Ciara who is the Mary I sports officer.

Management career

In the aftermath of his team’s triumph, Cregan decided it was time to call it a day – or in his case nearly a quarter of a century. At first, it was only helping out and had to be run parallel to his intercounty management career in what was a busy decade, starting with the Offaly side he took to All-Ireland success in 1994.

"My first involvement was in 1993. Noreen Lynch persuaded me to help her with the camogie team. She was the one who really pushed Gaelic games in the college. At first the camogie team was far better than the hurlers, who at that stage barely had enough for a team and played in Division Three," he says.

"Back then the ratio of females to males was 10:1. At one stage the hurlers could only field 13 with two camogie players, one of whom was Lynn Dunlea, who won All-Ireland medals with Cork."

The improvement was gradual in the 20 years that followed and culminated in a Fitzgibbon final at the end of the first year contesting the venerable third-level colleges’ trophy.

“What happened was about five or six years ago it was decided there weren’t enough men going into teaching so steps were taken to make it more attractive to graduates and mature students, and we started to get more male students and eventually some county players so things improved and improved,” Cregan says.

Freshers semi-final

“We got to a Freshers semi-final against UCC and in 2013 we entered the Fitzgibbon for the first time. The number of courses has expanded as well. You can do a BA; it’s not confined to teacher training any more. It gets a good share of hurlers but the ratio of men to women is still low.

“There’s no way of bringing them in on scholarship. They’re there on merit. There are some bursaries but not for very much, around €500.

"The Munster Council has involved itself but I'm surprised the GAA doesn't invest more in teacher training. Schools are where the love of the game starts.

“I don’t agree with the massive training. We did virtually none because we had 10 players in Ballyferriter working in Irish and couldn’t be bringing them back twice a week and some of the postgrads away on teaching practice.

“They trained with their counties but we did have what was really a bonding session every week with a bit of hurling.

“But we were hurling under lights on a small, camogie pitch, nothing like the big all-weather pitches some colleges have.”

Encouraging time

It’s an encouraging time for Limerick hurling. Three of the four Fitzgibbon semi-finalists were from the city and in two weeks, Munster champions Na Piarsaigh are favourites to win the county’s first senior All-Ireland club title. Last September the under-21s won the All-Ireland.

Although Cregan believes Na Piarsaigh are not representative of the overall strength of club hurling in Limerick, which he says is poor, he accepts that there is an upbeat feeling about hurling in the county.

“There certainly is. It comes from a lot of work put in by the academies over the past six to eight years. Kids are brought to UL on Saturday mornings and get coached. They come from throughout the county.”

He also says that the modern emphasis on further education has benefited Limerick, as there are three institutions in the city.

“We’d six or seven Limerick players; LIT had five or six. UL, not so much, but they’d a few. Fitzgibbon is a good level for young hurlers.”