NATIONAL HURLING LEAGUE: KEITH DUGGANtalks to some of those involved in the unglamorous lower divisions of the hurling league about their love of the game and their faith in future progress

ON SUNDAY, the Tyrone hurlers will host Longford in Omagh for the second round of matches in Division 3B of the National Hurling League. It is fair to say all of the protagonists are keenly aware their engagement is not the one that sports fans around the country have been eagerly anticipating all week.

True, an away win or a dogged home victory might be pencilled in as part of a complex accumulator wager involving the Six Nations or the All-Ireland reprise between Kilkenny and Waterford.

This is a dedicated hurling weekend but virtually all of the Gaelic Games attention will be devoted to the games in Division One, with lip-service paid to Division Two. The lower divisions, comprising of Division 3A and 3B and Division Four all but exist in their own private universe.

But it is in these divisions that the perpetual, gruelling and thankless struggle to keep hurling alive – and to maybe one day see it flourish – takes place. It is easy to forget these are real teams, with real players making not perhaps the same effort as the elite set of squads that contest the Liam McCarthy Cup but making a considerable investment nonetheless and for what appears to be scant reward.

“Injuries and accidents,” sighs Barry Cox in explaining Longford’s miserable opening match against Roscommon a fortnight ago. The Longford selector is originally from Roscommon but only got involved in hurling after moving to the midlands and was bitterly disappointed that his team couldn’t have made a better showing against his native county.

“Of the teams in our division, London are probably too strong, realistically, and we won’t expect to beat them. But against Tyrone, Fingal, Donegal and Louth we would expect to hold our own. Against Roscommon, it is always on the day. And our first match was just a nightmare. We had a few injuries and at our level, that affects our team hugely.”

Tony Fawl, the caretaker Tyrone manager, has a similar lament. Ten regular first-team players are an injury list that he reads out in a flabbergasted tone, the injuries ranging from heart muscle strains to domestic accidents.

During the week, the Galway man raced off to an Ulster hurling development meeting in addition to trying to get the Tyrone team ready. He has been living in the province since the early 1970s and although he was talented enough to make it on to Galway underage panels in the late 1960s –“ a broken ankle put paid to that” – he has most spent much of his sports career in Ulster’s Arctic hurling plains.

In 1972, he won an Ulster junior championship medal with a Donegal team comprised of guards, foresters, customs men and other blow-ins. After he moved to Tyrone he became involved with the game there.

When he thinks back to his initial involvement with the game, he can see that the overall standard has risen, but it is a painstaking process.

“When I played with Donegal, it was nearly all players from elsewhere making up the team. When we play them this year, they will have all home-grown players. That is a development in itself.”

Players who sign up for duty in county teams in Tyrone or Louth or wherever are doing so for a glory that is, at best, obscure. Of the programme of games on offer in divisions three and four this weekend, a crowd of anything between 50 and 200 people may show up. Many hurlers are also deeply involved in either club or county football teams and that compromises their freedom to practice and improve.

Just getting pitches is a constant dilemma – Naomh Colmcille is the only club in Tyrone with a pitch dedicated to hurling.

Fawl sees the efforts that players make. He instances the case of Conor Gallagher, one of the most promising young hurlers in the county. Gallagher’s post in the Army is based in Dublin and curtails his availability for training. But one evening he took a bus up to Tyrone, trained, went to see his family at home for a few hours and got a bus back to Dublin late that night.

In Longford, Barry Cox sees the same thing. Both his owns sons, Kealan and Nathan, try and balance football with hurling at inter-county level and it can be a thankless attempt. You can fall between two stools; loyalty to football is expected. Longford have a big midfielder, Neil Casey. He too works in Dublin and hurls with Kilmacud Crokes. The improvements that training and playing among the Dublin players has made on his game have been remarkable.

“We have a young lad too, Joe Dempsey from Edgeworthstown – a beautiful hurler,” Cox enthuses.

“He has his name on the seven jersey – he can bring it home with him. But it is getting these lads hurling at a higher level that is the important thing.”

Not so long ago, the Wexford hurler Malachy Travers came up to Longford and held a hurling clinic. Travers was terrific and the Longford coaches found the sessions beneficial. Cox reckons they probably do many of the same drills that the elite teams do but at nothing like the speed or with anything like the touch.

When Cox went down to visit a Kilkenny training session, he had a good talk with Brian Cody and then watched what the Kilkenny boss had billed as a light training session.

“Dear God. They are so far ahead of us. What they are doing and what we are doing bears absolutely no resemblance at all. The commitment level is just completely different. And there were more people watching that one Kilkenny session than we would see at our games over an entire year.

“I do think they have a respect for what we are trying to do. Overall, hurling is a minority sport and there is that grá between the hurling community, no matter what level.”

But there are exceptions to the general rule that the chasm between the higher and lower tiers of hurling is impossible to bridge. Last Sunday, Keith Raymond started in midfield for Connacht in the interprovincial match against Munster. The Sligo man’s appearance on the interprovincial scene is one of the more heartening illustrations of the possibilities for hurling in the ‘weaker’ counties.

As he showed in last August’s Nicky Rackard Cup final victory over Louth, Raymond is an accomplished hurler: he scored 1-08 in Croke Park that day, despite Louth trying several different players to mark him.

The 21-year-old is also a dual player. He is on Kevin Walsh’s Sligo senior football squad and is one of the best examples of the underage hurling programme in the Yeats County, having graduated from his club, St Joseph’s, to the county U-16 team that made it through to two Féile C finals.

“I suppose the main reason I got interested in hurling was because my mother is from Tipperary,” says Raymond.

“She would have brought me along to the club. And in summers, we went to Tipperary and I would have been brought to Munster championship games.

“She gave me Nicky English’s book, ‘Beyond the Tunnel’ and I was struck by how he described the importance of practising on his own. And that is how I developed a lot of whatever skill I have, just from hitting the ball against the wall. And I grew up in an estate in Sligo town so there wasn’t a lot of other kids doing the same.”

But his recent adventures have brought him into direct contact with the faraway world of Munster hurling. Raymond was delighted to get the call-up for the Connacht squad and astonished when he heard that he had been selected at midfield. “I don’t think I started to believe it until Friday or Saturday,” he added.

The team was made up of Galway men, apart from himself – although there was a hurler from Roscommon and Mayo on the squad. In the dressing room, the Galway players shook his hand and made him feel at home.

The manager, John McIntyre welcomed them and then simply treated them as if they belonged to the Galway team.

“It was a bit strange because it was basically a Galway team wearing Connacht shirts and the manager was coming at it in terms of the game that Galway had played against Dublin the week before. But for me, it was brilliant. You know, when I was about 14 I saw Ken McGrath hurl in a Munster final. So to be going against him for a ball the last day was something else.”

That match was easily the best level Raymond has hurled at.

“I felt at home in the middle of it. I felt that when you are playing at a level like that, you are able to enjoy the game a lot more. And I suppose part of me would love to play at that level the whole time. I do feel it is within my reach. But it was just brilliant to be involved and to have the final to look forward to.”

Sligo are a Division Four team. But even if it was for just a game, a hurler from that universe got to move and play among some of the best players in the land. (It could be that Raymond’s experience accidentally answers the persistent GAA dilemma of what to ‘do’ with the Railway Cup: mix it up so that each team features the best hurlers from the ‘hidden’ counties).

But all counties are agreed that innovations like the Nicky Rackard Cup have transformed the sense of self-worth among players hurling in the lower divisions. These competitions have given them something tangible to play for.

“Definitely. It gives players a realistic chance of getting to Croke Park,” says Barry Cox. “Last year, we got caught. We were drawn to play Fingal but Clonguish had a club football match the same day and we lost the hurlers from that club for our championship game.

“We felt we could have done well in that competition but we didn’t make it out of the group. This year, we are in the Lory Meagher Cup and realistically, we do expect to be in the final.”

In the mean time, they dine on small glories. Asked about the highlight of Longford hurling in recent years, Cox chooses a league game against Tyrone. It was of no consequence beyond the league points but they travelled with low expectations and a chronic list of absentees. “Injuries and red cards,” Cox explains.

They won a hard, physical game by a point. A championship evening in Down stands out as well. The game preceded an Ulster senior football championship match: the ground was busy, the hurlers committed.

“There was blood, sweat and tears, though mostly blood. A fair few lads got stitches that night. Very rarely do you see lads going out to hurt one another at this level,” he clarifies.

“It wasn’t dirty that night – it is just that if a challenge comes in fractionally late, it can make all the difference. But to me, that day in Tyrone was the best day I had in hurling because of the belief that these guys have. If you could bottle the heart that Longford hurlers show in their training and their attitude in the face of . . . well, it’s not abuse but there is no real help extended either, then you would have no problem in selling it.”

The London hurlers will be on the pitch in Louth for a one o’clock throw-in tomorrow. The exiles are in the enviable position of being regarded as clear favourites for this division.

“To be honest, I don’t know why they are in at this level. They have three or four hurlers who would grace any county team,” says Tony Fawl, who watched his admittedly weakened Tyrone side lose 7-21 to 0-08 in Ruislip a fortnight ago.

At any level, it was a demoralising loss. But in London, hurling plays second fiddle to football as well, despite the fact that the team expects to win most of its matches. Tommy Harrell is a selector with the current team and has been heavily involved with promoting Gaelic Games in the city for many years.

There is a transitory element to London GAA and over the years, the hurling team has benefited from the talents of such luminaries as Andy Comerford, who hurled for London in 1996 before returning to captain Kilkenny. The present team trains twice a week. The squad is made up of 25 players who gather from points across the sprawling city in Greenford and the West London Academy. The cost of travelling across the Irish sea for away matches is partly defrayed by the €6,000 per match expenses grant they receive.

“Although this weekend, we took a hit because of the Six Nations rugby match,” Harrell points out.

The new wave of emigration might well gift London with fresh, incoming talent. As it stands, they ought to advance into Division 3A without any great fuss.

“But that is an entirely different level,” says Harrell. “That will be a big jump for us.”

Progress is painstakingly slow and the rewards are not immediately obvious. Maybe, just maybe, Tyrone might someday be capable of hurling in Division Two. “In about ten years time,” says Tony Fawl. “That is what you aspire to. You have to think like that or you will go nowhere.”

Meanwhile though, there is the more immediate matter of a league game. The crowd will be mostly family and friends and every shout the hurlers make will echo around Healy Park. Strictly speaking, this match is connected by league tables and by rules and association to the game between Kilkenny and Waterford that will take place in Walsh Park.

But here, the stakes are lower – and higher. There is little reason to invest such time and energy – beyond the unconditional love of the game. Driving home, they may hear the result of the their own match on the main evening radio sports bulletins or they may not.

Any kind of recognition helps. But they don’t do this for plaudits and this week the uphill struggle continues. “We will have at least five young lads who are on the fringe going in there,” says Tommy Cox. “And they will have to either sink or swim.”

“I felt at home in the middle of it. I felt that when you are playing at a level like that, you are able to enjoy the game a lot more.

And I suppose part of me would love to play at that level the whole time. I do feel it is within my reach. But it was just brilliant to be involved and to have the final to look forward to.