Former Antrim hurler and current Hurling Development Committee member Neil McManus during the Hurling Development Committee media event at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
Former Antrim star, Neil McManus, believes we can grow hurling in a meaningful way with a two-pronged approach to its development.
McManus is a member of GAA President Jarlath Burns’ Hurling Development Committee, and sees merit in a bottom up/top down approach to raising standards in counties where it plays second fiddle to Gaelic football.
“We need to do it on two fronts,” says McManus. “Number one, we need to have much more participation at youth level because Ulster is football dominated, obviously.
“For example, the Uactarán’s son, Jarly Óg, is, if not the best, one of the best hurlers in Armagh, you probably know that anyway. He's brilliant. But where's the incentive for him to play Hurling for Armagh? That's the truth.
“When he can play out here and compete in the All-Ireland final…like, how is Karl McKeegan, my own club mate, supposed to convince him to come and play Hurling for Armagh? It's a very tough job.
“So I think you have to start at the very bottom in terms of the underage and the schools. We need to get our games development officers into the schools in a really structured way, and then figure out what we do when the schools aren't operating over the summer as well.
“How do we have those people still playing Hurling? Because at the minute, so few of the kids are getting an opportunity to play Hurling in Ulster.
“So we need to get the participation level at that level up, because that's the only way they're going to continue. They're not going to take up Hurling at 15. Not in Ulster anyway, or Connacht for that matter, outside of Galway.
“Then we need to have more teams from Connacht and more teams from Ulster competing at Christy Ring and at Joe McDonagh level at least, at a minimum. I think that's really achievable if we work on the teams we have already shown that they can do it.
“I think Down, if you look at what Ronan Sheehan has done with a very small group of Down hurlers. Three seasons ago, Westmeath beat them in the Division 2 final, so they were nearly in Division 1.
“Let's help them get to at least the top end of the Joe McDonagh competition and try and get them into Division 1, or to the top end of Division 1B. Those are all really achievable goals.”
“So two things. One, participation at under-age level. Two, more senior teams competing so those kids can see that level of competition, see that that's achievable and therefore want to play for those teams.”
Neil McManus of Antrim in action against Liam O'Connell of Laois during the 2013 Allianz Hurling League Division 1 Group A match between Antrim and Laois at Corrigan Park in Belfast. Photo by Ramsey Cardy/Sportsfile
McManus brought his 16-year inter-county career to an end last year, and hopes the experience of competing at the highest level until so recently will be a useful asset to the HDC.
“I think my job in the committee is to be cognizant of what the players are facing,” he says.
I'm very lucky to have been recently retired from inter-county and to be on the board of the GPA, so I get the opportunity to chat to a lot of players across a lot of different counties who are actually living the problems that there are with hurling at the minute.
“We need to develop more top tier teams. Whenever you talk to Gaelic football players across Ireland, there are only two championship competitions.
“Some of the teams at the top end of the Tailteann Cup don't even really want to be in the Tailteann Cup because they think they can fight for honours, even if it is at a provincial level, for themselves. And that level of competition clearly doesn't exist within hurling.
“We have six to nine teams who have a real chance of winning, and I'm just talking at a provincial level here, to be totally honest. So we need to grow that.
“I know that strategically we always have to grow the game, participation-wise, especially in Ulster and Connacht. But we need to develop more teams and hopefully I can bring insight from those current inter-county players to the committee.”
McManus is part of newly appointed Antrim manager Davy Fitzgerald’s backroom team as performance coach, and hopes the Clare native can have a very positive impact in the role.
“I think we need to learn as much from Davy as we can,” he says. I'm really happy that so many of the backroom team are Antrim people because we need to get the information, the know-how from Davy and keep it within Antrim, build up our own capabilities so we can look after our own affairs in the future.
“Davy has won Munster with Waterford, won the All-Ireland with Clare, won Leinster with Wexford, so there's a lot of experience for us to tap into there.”