A view of Laochra Óg's new home in Ballymacorcoran outside Macroom, Cork.
By John Harrington
Cork might not seem a likely location for a hurling success story against the odds, but that’s exactly what Laochra Óg Hurling and Camogie Club are.
When the club was founded 10 years ago, large tracts of West Cork were a hurling desert. Now the sport is flourishing in the parishes of Macroom, Ballyvourney, Kilnamartyra, Clondrohid, and Coolea.
The progress that Laochra Óg have made in a short period of time is remarkable.
In 2014 they started by bringing together a small group of children for regular training sessions on a lumpy, bumpy farmer’s field.
Fast forward ten years to the recent opening of their new eight-acre home which already has a state-of-the-art full-sized pitch and a training pitch, with plans for much more development to come.
What’s most impressive about Laochra Óg is the can-do attitude everyone involved with the club has shown in the last 10 years to grow it so quickly and in doing so build such a vibrant community.
Significant fundraising was undertaken to purchase the lease on their new home and that combined with a successful application for a sports capital grant and significant donation from a local philanthropist have turned what once seemed a fanciful dream into an impressive reality.
The club’s main pitch was developed by Kelly Brothers with the help of engineer James Healy who sadly passed away this year, but everything else about the development has been a collective effort by the club-members themselves led by a hugely enthusiastic pitch development committee.
Members of the Laochra Óg pitch development committee pictured at its opening last June.
The list of jobs completed by volunteer hands continues to grow every week and includes everything from putting down blinding stone to erecting goal-posts to installing portakabins used as dressing-rooms.
They’re proud of the fact too that all the material for the site with the exception of the sand for the main pitch has been sourced from the site itself with Trojan work done to move rock and top-soil to where both were needed most.
The next stage of the development is installing pitch and perimeter fencing, but the priority always was and remains growing their membership.
With over 300-players on the books and rapidly counting, they’ve been hugely successful in this regard, and rightly take a great deal of pride in the community they’ve built from nothing in just 10 years.
“It's phenomenal,” says club chairperson, Ian Keoghan. “It just underlines the truth of the saying, 'if you build it they will come'. Our club is the perfect example of that.
“There was a need for it. West of Macroom there was nothing for hurling. There was a huge demand. If you look at our geography it's about 200 square kilometres that we're covering which is huge.
“We started using the pitch in June and since then we've been steadily increasing in numbers.
“Giving ourselves that base and definite location has definitely given things a boost and let people know that we're here to stay. Having our own home makes all the difference.
“The town of Macroom is actually really feeding in to this now whereas previously we probably would have been quite country-biased as opposed to town-biased, but that's changing and we have a lot more coming from the town to the point that it's now quite balanced between the town and surrounding countryside.”
Laochra Óg teams have enjoyed sustained success since the club's formation in 2014.
The club is very ambitious about where they want to get to in the future, but also very grateful to those who have helped them get this far.
Top of the list are Michael and Nora McCarthy, who gave the club the use of their field as a first home when they started out 10 years ago.
“We originally asked to use it for 12 months but we ended up using it for 10 years and we've only recently vacated that since we opened up the pitch,” says Keoghan.
“To be frank, we couldn't have started without their help, simple as that. We had no base and didn't have a penny to our name and no location to go to and they kindly gave it to us for a year initially and we ended up there for 10 years. Even at that, they were sad to see us go, which is nice.
“It was called ‘Teerbeg’ and there have been hundreds if not thousands of kids who have gone through there every week for the last 10 years starting at U6s the whole way up to the late teens.
“We also still have the use of a school pitch in Coláiste Ghobnatan in Ballyvourney and we still use that and are very grateful for that too and we have a great relationship with the school.”
Establishing links between their club and their local schools has been a big priority for Laochra Óg and requires a significant amount of work considering there’s nine national schools alone in their sprawling catchment area.
Laochra Óg have made hurling and camogie available to hundreds of children in West Cork.
Their recruitment drive has been successful, and has brought together a group of children and adolescents who might otherwise never have met one another but are now tied by strong bonds of friendship.
“Liam Slattery who is an ex-chairperson and now the coaching officer, he has gone into all of these national schools and secondary schools for the last 10 years,” says Keoghan.
“Every year he goes in to them and gives them a taste of hurling for a six week stint. Sometimes you get two or three players out of that and sometimes you get more. The kids get a taste of and it and then want to have a proper go at hurling afterwards and it works out for some of them and not for others.
“We're always playing with low percentages because we're in a football heartland, but that work alone has contributed massively to the growth of the club.
“We are in a football-stronghold, there's no question about that, but if you go up there now any night of the week to Ballymacorcoran you'll have kids from all of those different schools and parishes all mixing together.
“It's a really diverse group of kids who would never have probably gotten the opportunity to play together or get to know each other were it not for the club.
“It's evident now there's a whole social thing that comes from that, a real community thing. Even now today we have all our kids who have come from U-8 up to the adult level and these guys are best buddies.
“They would never have had that opportunity to have that diverse group of friends which is a huge thing for the club and I think parents have noticed that and appreciate it.”
A young Laochra Óg hurler in action.
Developing their own grounds has been a really tangible reward for the work everyone involved in the club has put in over the last 10 years.
But what means even more to them is the sight of the first tranche of players who’ve come right the way up through the club’s underage structures now graduating to adult hurling and camogie.
That was the main mission all along, and there’s every expectation that the club’s player pathway will become more and more productive in the coming years.
GAA President, Jarlath Burns, says he wants to see “an explosion” of new hurling clubs during his term and Laochra Óg certainly offer a blueprint of how it can be done.
Keoghan is one of the club’s founders so has been there from the very start. What advice does he have for those who would like to replicate their success story?
“You have to get like-minded people together,” he says. “You have to get people who are interested in it and willing to stick with it.
“Every club comes down to a dedicated dozen. And then you have to build around that. That dedicated dozen needs to get as many people around them as possible and try to get as many parents and coaches involved as they can.
“The parents are key with helping out with the training. Because a lot of them are coming from absolutely nothing in terms of experience. A lot of them will say, 'sure I didn't play hurling or camogie, how would I know about it?' Or, 'I'm too busy'.
“But you need to get them involved any way you can be it just strapping on helmets or getting the kids to hold the hurley correctly and if you do then they will learn as they go and it all grows from there.
“We all got recruited and involved because we either had an interest from the very start or we just got roped in and never got back out!
“We have plenty of people now heavily involved who started off helping in a very minor or small way and eventually became coaches or heavily involved in committees.”
