Darragh McCarthy will be a key figure for Toomevara in Sunday's FBD Insurance Tipperary Senior Hurling Championship.
By John Harrinton
This 1990s revival shows no sign of slowing down any time soon.
Hot on the heels of the Oasis reunion, Toomevara are back in a Tipperary Senior Club Hurling Championship Final.
That was very much a staple of life in the Premier County in the 1990s and noughties when ‘The Greyhounds’ were the top dogs, winning 11 county titles in 18 years.
They were an utterly ruthless outfit, only losing a single final in that period. Knowing the mentality of the club, you can be sure that surprise one-point loss to Boherlahan-Dualla still stings to this day.
The beauty of that Toomevara team was that they could beat you in any sort of game.
During their pomp they had hugely skilful hurlers like Tommy, Ken, and Benny Dunne, Paddy and John O'Brien, George Frend, Philip Shanahan, and Mikey Bevans so they could cut you to pieces with the pace and clarity of their hurling.
But they were also as tough as nails in every line of the field and had real warriors in the shape of men like Tony Delaney who won 11 senior county medals, Rory Brislane, Michael O’Meara, and Terry Dunne.
If you figured you could knock Toomevara out of their stride by getting physical with them, they’d give it back to you with a side of desert.
It seemed like Toomevara’s dominance of Tipperary club hurling would never end but then it did, and very abruptly.
Their 2008 county title was the last they would win. A few months later Oasis would break up too, an era had truly ended.
Francis Devaney celebrates with team-mate David Kennedy after Toomevara's victory over Thurles Sarsfields in the 2008 Tipperary SHC Final. Picture credit: Brendan Moran / SPORTSFILE
Until now Toome failed to even reach a county final since ‘08, and for a club so accustomed to modern-day success the last 15 years have very much been akin to a famine.
“In recent times it would be seen that way, yes,” says Toomevara club secretary, Patsy Hanley.
“We didn't have players who were up at the county level and you need a couple of those to drive on a club team, really, in a county like Tipperary.
“Jason Ryan and Mark McCarthy who is playing on Sunday as well were the last Toomevara players to be on the senior Tipperary panel.
“Now you can see that Darragh McCarthy is probably going to be one of those this year and going forward and you need to have those players on your team if you're going to win a county title in a strong hurling county.
“The run to this county final been a real buzz for the senior citizens of the club who are there all the time, win, lose, or draw.
“It's been a successful year for the club in general so this is a great culmination, getting to our first county final since 2008.
“We won the county U-13 Final and were in several north finals this year so it's been a great year.”
The Toomevara U-13 team that won a Tipperary title this year.
Toomevara’s revival is no happy accident. They’ve worked hard overhaul their underage structures and are in the enviable position of having someone as qualified as former Tipperary hurler and senior team coach, Tommy Dunne, as the club’s Coaching Officer.
For a sustained period of time Toomevara underage teams just weren’t winning significant silverware anymore but that has changed.
The current senior team is heavily stocked with players who won North U21A titles in 2016 or 2018, and the there’s another good crop now coming through that won U19A North Tipp titles this year and last year.
“Tommy is very focused,” says Hanley of the club's Coaching Officer. “His mantra would be that skill and hard work gets you results. It's a great asset for the club to have someone like Tommy in that position because people will listen to someone with his reputation.
“He's not some grey-haired lad like myself who might have read it in a book, or something. He actually has walked the walked as well so they look up to him and rightly so.
“He works hard to keep himself up to date on best practice and so do all the coaches. We have no issues getting people to volunteer as coaches in the club which is wonderful.
“It's very important to have someone like Tommy leading the coaching structure and all of our coaches have been trained up so they could reach the standard that the GAA would like them to be at. We'd have huge support both in the schools and also in the club.
“There's hardly a night when they wouldn't be some of the juvenile teams in the field. They're there the whole time and wearing their gear the whole time, it's not just on county final weekend."
Bishop Harty National School in Toomevara bedected in green and gold ahead of Sunday's Tipperary SHC Final.
The greatest sauce of all is hunger, and Toomevara’s appetite for success has been stoked by years away from the top table of Tipperary club hurling.
The parish is bedecked in green and gold, the four local primary schools have produced enough county final artwork to fill a warehouse sized gallery, and all anyone is talking about is Sunday’s showdown with Loughmore-Castleiney.
Perhaps the high level of excitement is also reflective of the greater resonance the club now has in its wider community than it once possibly did thanks to an enthusiastic embracing of the GAA’s Healthy Club Programme.
“The Healthy Club Programme and our club’s five-year plan have brought a group of people into the club who may not have had a real conduit into the club over the years through hurling but who see the club now in its correct position as a key community location and partner,” says Hanley.
“The Healthy Club Committee is superb. The run a wide variety of excellent activities that really engage with the local community. It's very well organised and it has brought in a whole new group of people who you wouldn't have normally seen around the hurling field and it's nice to see.
“The five-year plan brought in new volunteers and, again, they are people who just need to be given a chance to be involved. Some of them have been absolutely superb for the club.
“Sometimes in a club it might be the same few families who run it for over a hundred years, but the five-year-plan we implemented showed there were others who if they were asked were very anxious to come in and participate.”
Toomevara's Healthy Club initiatives have helped put the club at the heart of their community.
A nice example of the club’s role as a social as well as sporting outlet in the parish will take place on Friday night when Tommy Dunne hosts an ‘Up for the Match’ style preview night featuring former players from both Toomevara and Loughmore-Castleiney that will raise funds for North Tipperary Hospice.
Such is the buzz in the Toome that you can be sure the event will be a sell-out and that the parish will empty two days later for Sunday’s Final in Semple Stadium.
Their talented young team go into the match as underdogs, but such is Toomevara’s tradition that you can be sure players and supporters alike will fully believe they can win it.
Toomevara hurling is back in the big time and everyone associated with the club is going to enjoy the occasion, perhaps especially those who remember the glory days of the 90s and noughties with nostalgic affection.
“To paraphrase our GAA President's All-Ireland Final speech, these kind of days belong to the volunteers who line the field, cut the grass, put out the flags, lock up at half-ten at night every night,” says Hanley.
“A county title is for them as much as it is for everyone else, but it's especially for them because they're there day and night whether the club is going well or not. They're there because they do their job for the children and for the players.
“Winning a county title would be special for them, that would be their reward. They won't be mentioned in the programme and rarely get mentioned anywhere else, but everyone knows they're the people that keep the club ticking over during the good days and the bad days.”
