Twenty years a growing, hurling stays ahead of the crisis

It's all of 20 years since Nickey Brennan – then chairman of the Kilkenny county board, future manager of the county hurlers, chairman of Leinster Council and president of the GAA – warned annual congress that "hurling is dying on its feet".

His reasons appeared sound at the time. Speaking to the 1994 congress, he noted how the game was falling “far behind football in public support” and that the problems were not confined to traditionally weak areas of the country. “Even the strong counties are feeling the pinch,” he said.

Looking back, the sentiment is laudable but out of nowhere the world suddenly changed. A few months later at the All-Ireland football final banquet, the late Paddy Downey received a presentation from the GAA to mark his retirement from a career writing about Gaelic games for this newspaper.

He told his audience that he had spent his life being told that hurling was in crisis but that the game always recovered and continued to find its way.

By then Offaly had fired the first shots in hurling's revolution that decade and ahead lay the colour, spectacle and excitement of memorable All-Ireland championships for Clare and Wexford.

Last weekend there were resonances of that past. Brennan occupied the table reserved for past presidents on his return to Croke Park for the first congress held at HQ since he won a gripping presidential election nine years ago. And a further coincidence: the first president elected from Cavan – location for that 1994 congress – Aogán Ó Fearghail.

'Hurling's greatest year'
Concerns about hurling have n

ot disappeared but the context is more encouraging. The ovations that greeted last year’s championship have hardly died away in time for the new season and current president Liam O’Neill in his annual address didn’t hide his views in cautious language.

“The year gone by will be remembered as hurling’s greatest year.”

It might be irritating for Cork, Kilkenny and Tipperary but great years or golden ages tend to be defined by their absence from the roll of honour. Then again if as a group you're knocking off three All-Irelands every four years, that's to be expected.

Even more impressive than the new faces and plaudits was that for the first time the hurling championship took in bigger gate receipts than its football equivalent.

O’Neill has never made any secret of his committed engagement with hurling. Although he launched a sweeping consultation process and two detailed reports into the state of football, it’s no secret what his preferred game is and coming from Laois he knows it from the perspective of the disadvantaged.

That has been his focus during the presidency and previously. At Leinster Council he was interested in allowing counties from the Ring Cup contest the provincial championship. "If we don't expand the number of counties at the top table, how do you develop the game?" he said in 2007. "The idea was that six counties who hadn't reached an All-Ireland final within the previous 30 years should be resourced with a view to meeting that target within 10 years."

Five-year funding plan
Fast-forward seven years and the million-euro plan outlined in O'Neill's speech is also about targeting those counties who are

a level below the top: Antrim, Carlow, Laois and Westmeath. The funds will be made available over a five-year period and the uses to which they are put are to be monitored by a hurling development work group.

Spread through four counties over that period of time, the money isn’t astronomical but it will be a start.

Interestingly, when speaking in August 2007 about expanding the Leinster championship O’Neill mentioned Dublin as a project county. The investment and effort that has gone into hurling in the capital has paid off with national league success, last year’s historic Leinster breakthrough and two All-Ireland semi-finals in the past three years.

Dublin are now comfortably included in the top 10 rated counties who are – perhaps overinclusively in the case of Wexford and Offaly but who knows? – stated to be the group from which will emerge the winners of the next 20 All-Irelands.

Carlow have made huge strides with improved results at under-age level and the stunning success of Mount Leinster Rangers who contest next month’s All-Ireland club hurling final.

Can this improvement be harnessed with the help of additional funds to generate genuine competitiveness at senior inter-county level? If so it will be the biggest crack ever seen in a glass ceiling, but even at the weekend Carlow were bullish enough to steer through a motion leaving the door to the Leinster championship slightly more open for them, Antrim, Laois, London and Westmeath.

Recognising that the inter-county stage isn’t the most relevant indicator of hurling in these counties O’Neill’s development committee initiated a club-based league with the intent of ensuring children, regardless of where they grow up, can experience taking a hurl up and playing the game.

“We couldn’t believe by how thin a thread hurling is hanging in some of those counties,” said O’Neill when launching the innovation two years ago. “And we said that we have to develop the club hurling. I think that is one of the most significant things to happen in the history of the organisation.”

Maybe even the periodic talk of crisis will become a thing of the past .

smoran@irishtimes.com