Kilcormac–Killoughey and Offaly hurler Adam Screeney pictured at the launch of the 2024 Beko Club Champion at Croke Park in Dublin. A competition to reward and celebrate local Leinster GAA club heroes who go above and beyond to help their local community and club. For more information visit leinstergaa.ie/beko-club champion/. Photo by Ben McShane/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
You hear a lot about playing the game for the pride of your club or county, but the greatest wellspring of motivation is usually family.
That’s where most people get their love of the game from and if you love something then you’ll devote yourself to it.
That’s why when you ask Adam Screeney what was most special about Offaly’s All-Ireland U20 hurling final win this year his first thought isn’t for the glory he brought to his county.
Instead, it’s for the honour he brought to them memory of his late and much loved Grandfather, Paddy Screeney.
Paddy was a talented sportsman himself who won an All-Ireland minor football medal in 1964 which for many years has had pride of place on the mantlepiece of the Screeney family home.
“For my whole career I really wanted to join him with a Celtic Cross. It’s really special that I was able to do that,” says Screeney.
“Me and my granddad were inseparable. He was a huge influence on my career, under-8s, under-10s tournaments, he was there. He was the one who brought me to training.
“Really, he was living in my house from about nine o’clock in the morning when you wake up, he was there; then when you went to bed he went back home.
“He was a huge influence.”
Life revolves around Gaelic games for the Screeney family. Adam’s dad Keith has coached him up through the age-grades and is Offaly Coiste nan Óg Chairperson.
His mother Jacqueline is also a GAA stalwart who doesn’t miss a game and has played a huge role nurturing the talent of Adam and his siblings Jack and Aaron.
Adam Screeney of Offaly celebrates with his dad Keith and the James Nowlan Cup after the oneills.com GAA Hurling All-Ireland U20 Championship final match between Offaly and Tipperary at UPMC Nowlan Park in Kilkenny. Photo by Ray McManus/Sportsfile.
You know the parents are dedicated to helping their sons be the best hurlers they can be when they build a hurling wall beside their home!
“It’s a real big help,” says Screeney of the hurling wall. “It was nearly put in to save me breaking windows because we were spending more money from me hitting the ball off the window and smashing it.
“And still to this day, only six months ago, I ended up going out before one of the matches and touching it against the wall and it hits the window and that’s it, it’s on the floor.”
It’s hard to imagine Screeney hitting any sliotar awry such is the incredible accuracy he displays on the field of play.
At the age of 19 he’s already one of the most famous hurlers in the country thanks to his All-Ireland heroics with the Offaly U20s this year.
How does he cope with the fame and adulation that has come his way so early in his career?
“I suppose for 90% of people, they are really there to help you and guide you a long the way,” he says.
“I am only 19 and I am not going to know all the paths and I am going to do the wrong thing at times.
“For most of the people out there, they are very good to you and just guide you and help you in the right way. They are not there for any badness really.”
It surely helps that he’s part of a band of brothers who are travelling the same path together.
The Offaly 'starting fifteen' stand together for the playing of the National Anthem before the oneills.com GAA Hurling All-Ireland U20 Championship final match between Offaly and Tipperary at UPMC Nowlan Park in Kilkenny. Photo by Ray McManus/Sportsfile.
He’s grown up with the team-mates who delivered the All-Ireland U20 championship this year and they couldn’t be a tighter bunch.
“Yeah, it was a mission,” he says. “At U-14 we got to a Forristal Final and were beaten by Tipperary after a long weekend of hurling. From then on it was nearly a mission. Every year you came in there was a task to be done and we had to get there. Thank God we got there.
“I've seven or eight best friends from my club and school who are on the team with me and then I've another 25 who I met at 14 years of age and there's always been that bond there with the group.
“I could go to any one of them today with anything. Just from the start there was that bond with the group, we're all really good friends who all gel well together.
“To be able to put on the jersey and hurl with them and then to win an All-Ireland is just incredible really.”
The county’s supporters would love nothing more than for U20 success to translate to the senior grade as soon as possible, but could that level of expectancy burden this generation of young Offaly hurlers?
“I suppose for me anyway and a few of the lads I've been working with, we don't really feel any expectation, to be honest,” says Screeney.
“I suppose it's really only what happens in the camp that matters. There's no-one in the camp going to blow you up or knock you down. So really we just concentrate on our own game.
“Go out and do what's best for the team and when it goes well it's good. We don't really listen to the outside, to be honest. We just try to keep our concentration on the camp.
“I don’t really let the expectation get to me to be honest. And I think if I did I would be knocked down fairly quickly by the lads beside me.”
An Offaly flag is flown by a supporter during the oneills.com GAA Hurling All-Ireland U20 Championship final match between Offaly and Tipperary at UPMC Nowlan Park in Kilkenny. Photo by Ray McManus/Sportsfile.
In three or four years’ time this generation of young Offaly hurlers will be coming into their prime.
What might the hurling vista look like then? Will Offaly have returned to the top table and be contesting matches at the business end of the All-Ireland championship in Croke Park?
“Yeah, absolutely,” says Screeney. “I suppose there is a light of optimism there but I suppose with hard work and dedication and determination and the right lads around you, there’s definitely a chance.
“There’s no doubt that the hurlers are there. It’s really a full time commitment now to be an inter-county hurler so I have no doubt that with the emphasis on commitment we’ll be back there some time.”
