William Maher's blueprint for National Head of Hurling role 

By John Harrington

On his first day in the job as the GAA's newly appointed National Head of Hurling, GAA.ie sat down with William Maher to talk about his vision for the role and what he hopes to achieve in it in the coming years.

GAA.ie: William, for those who don't know much about your background, can you talk to us about how prevalent hurling has been in your life? I presume your whole life revolved around it growing up in Ballingarry in Tipperary?

William Maher: Absolutely. That was my reason for applying for this job. I love hurling. I love everything around it, the community it's given me. Ballingarry was a brilliant place growing up. We went from 'B' hurling to U12 'A' hurling in two years. My father Martin and Murt Duggan, a former Tipp selector, were over the teams. We went right through then winning 'A' competition across South Tipp and all culminating in winning two minor 'A' Championships in Tipperary, beating Thurles Sarsfields and Toomevara in '94/95.

I think we were the first south Tipp team ever to win two minor 'A's. It was an absolutely brilliant experience and testament to the planning and operation of my dad and others. Hurling was always very much part of my life growing up as regards going to matches to watch Ballingarry on a Sunday and then going to Thurles to watch National League and Championship matches. It's been a huge part of my life.

I was fortunate then that my parents made a decision to send me to St. Kieran's College so that gave me another window into another network of hurlers and high-level hurling. From a social and a community piece it was brilliant to interact with people similar to myself from all over Kilkenny, Laois, Carlow, Waterford, South Tipp.

Hurling has been part of my life from the start. The connections it's given me and the sense of being has been huge. Coming out from last year's All-Ireland Final, that game between Clare and Cork was just unbelievable, and it was just an amazing feeling to be there and seeing it.

Hurling is something that I'd like to develop more on the island. There's lots of success stories but there's also lots of areas that are that are not as successful and that's part of the role that I've taken on.

GAA.ie: You achieved a lot as a young hurler captaining Tipperary to an All-Ireland minor title in 1996 and then winning back-to-back Fitzgibbon Cups with WIT. Then, when you were on the cusp of a promising senior inter-county career, it was all ended by a serious injury. Did you appreciation for hurling become all the keener because your own playing career ended prematurely? Did that change your relationship with the game?

WM: Yeah, I definitely think so. It pushed me in a different direction. Dave Billings in UCD was very good to me around the time of my injury. He saw the importance of me staying involved in the game and to have something to fall back on and ultimately coaching gave me that. It was St. Vincent's camogie in Dublin initially, UCD hurling, and Dublin minors before I got going with Tipp.

Yeah, absolutely, you appreciated the game a whole lot more. There were former classmates of mine winning all Irelands and former team-mates with Tipperary winning All-Irelands and it was difficult to not be able to do it yourself. But, at the same time, I think the realization that I could still be part of this game and ultimately the GAA family was huge for me. One of my motivations for taking on this role is giving other people the access to hurling that I have had.

GAA.ie: Is the main reason why you went for this role as National Director of Hurling? To give as many people as possible the opportunity to play this great sport?

WM: Yes, that’s a big piece for me. And, also, we have such a brilliant game and I want to give it a bigger profile. Hurling was once described on a tv show in the USA as the greatest game you've never seen. That can be said around Ireland as well because there's large areas of our country that there's no access to Hurling.

A friend of mine from Kildare said to me once that he never got the opportunity to hold a hurley. There's a lot of kind of motivation for me in something like that, that we can give as many kids as possible opportunity to play our great game, and then it's about building structures to keep those players playing after that.

The first thing to do is to establish what are our participation numbers across the country and then build our plan from there and measure what success or failure would look like. What's not measured is not done. I'm very strategic in my outlook in terms of this role. I want to give kids the opportunity to experience the game, build structures to keep them in the game, and then obviously measure it in the longer term.

GAA.ie: Paudie Butler and Martin Fogarty preceded you in similar roles. In what way will your brief be a bit different to theirs?

WM: I think first of all it is essential to recognise the body and quality of work that Paudie Butler and Martin Fogarty did for hurling throughout the island. It was absolutely mind boggling the amount of teaching session they facilitated in their tenures. This role will however be very different to what has gone before.

Through the agreed alignment of all stakeholders in the Association it was decided that this new role had to be more strategic and less operational. My vision is to build a robust National Starting Plan and operationalise it through the county and provincial Games Development staff throughout the country.

Each county will have a hurling development pillar to their annually assessed operational plan with agreed intervals for hurling development assessment. The first part for this National Hurling Plan is understanding each county requirement in relation to hurling development. Each county is different and will require specific nuanced solutions.

Once a plan for hurling is agreed and operationalised, we will track and adjudicate success or failure at agreed intervals. This is a long term approach working through provincial and county structures. We have to be brave and innovative in our approach so we allow every child in Ireland the opportunity to play our national sport.

GAA.ie: The game of hurling hasn't grown significantly outside of the traditional strongholds over most of the history of the Association. That's not good enough, is it?

WM: It's not. But, at the same time, there are case studies that shows it can be grown in every part of Ireland. What Slaughtneil have done over the course of the last 20 years has been amazing. Cuala have made Dalkey a hurling stronghold, which is another huge achievement. Na Fianna in Drumcondra are another recent success that has been built over the last 20 years.

So, there are pockets of hurling thriving everywhere, but I understand your point that it has been a failure of the Association not to broaden that out and give more kids the opportunity to play. My vision is that we will do that now by putting a strategic plan in place with quantifiable metrics that we can measure over time and see where we're going from there.

That will require a buy-in from provincial councils and from counties. Whatever plan that we develop will come from the Coaching and Games Development Department under Shane Flanagan's leadership and that's a welcome change from what's gone before.

Terry Reilly the Chairperson of our Hurling Development Committee is fully on board in terms of being aware of the needs of hurling development. And our Uachtarán, Jarlath Burns, is 100 per cent firmly behind this.

My role is to give them a plan that we can get agreed at all the levels of the Association.

GAA.ie: This is technically your first week in the job, but is it fair to say you've been conducting a listening exercise in recent months so you're as well briefed as possible coming into the role and can hit the ground running because a one size fits all approach won't work?

WM: 100 per cent. This is my first morning in the job and I've sent my first emails from my account, but, yes, I've been doing a lot of listening and liaising with the Hurling Development Committee over the last number of months. That has been a real experience in so far as it gives you a complete flavour of what's actually happening in the Association from a hurling perspective, the plans that are already in place, and where we need to go from a national level with the National Head of Hurling role reignited under that Hurling Development Committee.

It's been a listening exercise and will be for the foreseeable future as regards finding out what's going on and then drilling down into counties. So, what operational plan do you have? Where does hurling fit into that operational plan? How do we hold county boards and County Games Managers to account in terms of what we've agreed to do from a hurling development perspective? Is it being done or not? And then we can work forward from there through Provincial Councils as well.

I think this has to be a national plan that cascades right down through the Association. As you say, a one size fits all approach won't work. We have to listen to the individual concerns of counties, understand the problems, put solutions in place to alleviate the problems, and then measure them over time.

Again, this is long-term, this is not six months to a year. Yes, we'll be measuring at those intervals, but this is a five to 10-year plan in terms of where we're going, how can we develop the game, and looking at real metrics around participation numbers and retention rates.

Everyone looks at All-Ireland Final day and if your county isn't involved you might think there's nothing going on, but there are so many other metrics to measure the health of the game in counties. There are cultures of hurling developing everywhere and it's just a case of how we tie it all together in a measurable fashion so we can track progress or not.

GAA.ie: If we look firstly at where the game is weakest, I know the aspiration is to develop new clubs and that the Hurling Development Committee has already invited expressions of interest in new club hurling starter packs. Talk to me about the strategy there.

WM: When Jarlath was inaugurated as Uachtarán he made the development of new hurling clubs one of his priorities through our new club grants which have been launched. We're currently working through some strict criteria because we have over 100 applications which tells you that there's an appetite here to give kids the opportunity to play hurling in our clubs.

So, yes, developing new clubs is a key point of reference for myself and the Hurling Development Committee. We're hitting that in a major way and hope to make a massive impact. The grants are the first part of that, but we want to also really understand where the players are throughout the country.

I know we have lots of really good demographic data that has been published in recent months and we need to understand that and where the greatest need is for the next batch of hurling clubs is. Taking just two examples, we have had a good number of applications for new club grants from Donegal and Louth. You have two obvious big population centres in Louth where there could be a great opportunity to grow the game.

That's Step One. We'll also have refresher packs coming as well coming in the next while for existing clubs that need additional support so we can continue growing the game there as well.

The really big thing for me is working with county boards and Games Managers and working through their games programmes to actually see what's going on at the moment, see how many kids are playing hurling, and then identifying areas we can target in the future similar to what we've done already.

GAA.ie: Is ensuring that there are specific days or weeks ring-fenced for hurling in a county's games programme going to be one of the keys to growing the game in a meaningful way?

WM: That is some of the feedback we've gotten to date. I'm thinking particularly of Down. The first email I received in my account this morning was from the Down Secretary who was looking for a meeting and striking while the iron was hot after winning the Allianz League Division Two title. I think it's brilliant that they're already reaching out like that and seeing what we could discuss.

There is definitely something around that piece we need to look at, but every county is different. This is where the one size will not fit all.

The issues facing what I would call the middle tranche of counties in the Joe McDonagh and Christy Ring Cups are different to the issues facing the counties in the Nickey Rackard and Lory Meagher Cups. There are so many different issues across all of these counties, so do we need to be more innovative in our approach?

Do we need to look at something totally different like having a Táin region team at county level? I know Team Ulster was broached a couple of years ago to give players the opportunity to play at the highest level.

I think we have to be innovative in our approach, I'm not saying what I proposed there might happen, but we need to start having discussions and thinking about things differently because what's gone before hasn't worked. So how do we change that? How do we change our approach?

Space in the calendar for hurling is definitely a really big piece for counties where football dominates. Hurling needs room to breathe and to develop and time in the schedule is what will allow it to.

Putting that stipulation into a defined county plan is the way to go. There's no fudging then. It's in the plan, it's agreed, and then it's either happening or it's not and we'll work forward from there.

GAA.ie: You said we need to be more innovative when it comes to developing hurling. Arguably the most innovative development we've seen in recent years has been the development of the Táin Óg and Cúchulainn competitions which have given clubs in the developing counties more meaningful matches. Do you see those competitions as being crucial to growing hurling in those areas?

WM: 100 per cent. I was on a call about a month ago about the Táin Óg and Cúchulainn Leagues and I was blown away by the level of coordination that goes into them. It was brilliant. It was so healthy and so vibrant. I came in not fully understanding the levels that these competitions provide for players in those areas to play at club level.

I can imagine taking that further and having a representative team from the Táin area playing meaningful matches at perhaps the Joe McDonagh Cup level. We have some brilliant competitions in the Association but how do we tweak what we're currently doing to give players the best opportunity to play at the highest level.

You look at the example of Offaly over the course of the last five years. Offaly as a county got really good structures around a talented group of players, but it all started with an Offaly Colleges team that beat St. Kieran's by a two points in a Leinster Final, that was their first big success and it was another opportunity to experience high level hurling for that group which accelerated their development and helped them to go on and win an All-Ireland U20 Final last year, winning the Joe McDonagh, and now reaching a Hurling League Final.

They're on a roll now but they've been given a lot of opportunities and you have to give Offaly great credit for putting those structures in place and allowing their players to play at the highest level.

Some other counties of a similar stature haven't really made that jump. It's about getting more players playing the game, building a structure to keep them in the game, and giving them the opportunity to play high level hurling right through their careers which is what happens in the more traditionally strong counties.

We have to build structures that are meaningful and that you can measure over the time.

GAA.ie: You've managed Laois in the Joe McDonagh Cup so you have a good knowledge of hurling at that level. Are there other counties in that middle tier of hurling that could make the sort of progress that Offaly have in a similar time-frame?

WM: I think it is possible to make good progress in that time-frame. I know they're a Liam MacCarthy Cup team, but I think Clare have shown that. In 2021 they suffered a 40-point defeat to Cork in a minor match in Thurles. Two years later they won the All-Ireland Minor Championship and they're now very competitive at minor and U20. Tulla won the Harty Cup, St. Flannan's were in the Harty Cup Final this year, they have lots of players in Ard Scoil Ris, so they've developed systems that allowed their players play at the highest level culminating in that great All-Ireland senior win last year.

It's a fantastic example of moving from a point of despair in their underage system to putting structures in place, putting the right people in those structures, developing players, and ultimately winning an All-Ireland. It's not all about winning All-Irelands, it's about being competitive, and Clare are now a very competitive county at all levels. Offaly are well on the way too, and getting up to Division 1A next year is huge for their county. It's a testament to the leadership of Michael Duignan at county board level and the impact of managers like Johnny Kelly and Leo O'Connor.

There's a lot of great people involved in what they're doing. But, again, the fundamental for me is that their players were given the opportunity to play high level hurling and developed accordingly. They have to be the case studies that others look in terms of hurling development and what can be achieved. There's a lot of learnings across the board in counties like Offaly and Clare and we need to be more strategic in our approach, more strategic in our resource allocation, more strategic in our budget allocations.

Everything should be aligned with a national hurling development plan. This is what the expectation is, it goes down to provincial Games Managers, down to county Games Managers, and everyone is held accountable to the hurling pillar on operational plans throughout the country. That's the overall vision we have so we can control the development going forward.

GAA.ie: You mentioned the potential in a county like Louth. Are there huge opportunities to grow the game in growing urban towns like Dundalk and Drogheda?

WM: If you can build hurling in Dalkey you can build it in Drogheda and Dundalk. Go further down the coast to places like Balbriggan and Swords. There are areas of huge population that are relatively untapped from a hurling perspective. So, how do we put plans in place so kids have the opportunity to play the game, and firstly measure now what the participation levels are across those area?

In Louth the numbers of applications for new hurling starter packs is very encouraging. It just shows the appetite that's there.

Louth's hurling GDA, Paddy Lynch, has been over and back to me on email. The development on the ground in counties like Louth is testament to people like Paddy who are hugely passionate about driving hurling. We need more strategy and people like Paddy need more help to develop the numbers of players.

This is a numbers game. Hurling can be played anywhere. This is not exclusive to where you're born. It shouldn't be that you're just fortunate to be born into an environment where hurling is played. Anyone can play hurling.

My wife is a former hockey international and is a very capable camogie coach now. There are a lot of people born outside this country now coaching in our camogie club in Bennettsbridge who are top-class coaches. It should not be exclusive to where you're from. It's about building structures to expose more people to hurling, that's the key.

GAA.ie: Is it important to get across the message that hurling isn't Gaelic football's enemy? There have been many studies that have shown that cross-sport participation makes for better young sportspeople. So surely introducing hurling to clubs where only football is currently played can only help produce even better footballers?

WM: 100 per cent. I noticed a stat from the Super Bowl that something like 70 per cent of players who played in the Super Bowl had played multi-sports up to the age of 14 or 15. I know that's an American example, but it testifies to how skills transfer across sport.

We're the one Association. There shouldn't be competition between football and hurling. We're the one Gaelic Athletic Association and hurling as our national sport deserves the time, effort, planning and enthusiasm to give kids the opportunity to play.

Hurling is a brilliant sport. We're not in competition with football, but, at the same time, it's important we start developing an eco-system on the ground across the country that allows our members to participate in both sports.

We're not in competition with football. They are very complementary sports and we're the one Association. I think we have bigger things to be worrying about external to our Association than anything internal.

GAA.ie: Are we sometimes too negative about hurling? Is it important to also recognise the huge work that has always been done and is ongoing to develop the game in all parts of the country? Your own eyes have probably been opened to that in recent weeks and months?

WM: Whatever plan we put together for hurling development, it's very important we communicate the successes as we go. You often hear the line, 'oh you're up there in Croke Park', in relation to hurling issues as if you're disconnected from what's happening on the ground. We need to give hurling people a face to communicate with whilst also giving an overall structure to the game and we need to communicate all the good work that is being done.

The Hurling Development Committee has already done great work and even this week met with the referees body around hand-passing and head-high challenges and the importance of communicating those messages from those meetings so people know we're having these conversations on behalf of the hurling public. It's important to communicate that as we go.

Similarly with the venue situation over the weekend we had a meeting around why those League Finals were fixed for the venues they were. It's all very clear when it's communicated and I think it's important as an Association that we communicate those decisions with the public because everyone deserves to know why matches are on in certain places.

We need to communicate more externally to the general public in this country to make people aware of the huge amount of work that's going on and I'm only myself realising the extent of that work when you look in to see what's going on across all the different divisions of the Association here in Croke Park.

It's important that people understand that we're all talking, we're all aligned in what we're doing so we can tell people the great messages that are out there.

GAA.ie: The history of hurling development has been that at various times over the decades there have been bursts of energy to grow the game that have then dissipated. Presumably this has to be a long-term project that needs support through multiple GAA presidencies and a collective buy-in over decades?

WM: 100 per cent. I think there's a big shift in terms of the starting point of my particular tenure. Martin Fogarty and Paudie Butler did amazing work around the country and were two incredible evangelists of the game and hugely respected. They were very successful in what they were doing, but perhaps this is different in so far as we have huge backing at Presidential level from Jarlath. One of his key priorities for his tenure is hurling development. That's really refreshing to see.

Terry Reilly, the Chairperson of the HDC, is fully behind this and is also a member of GAA Ard Chomhairle. So, again, there's real power there to push the importance of a strategic plan for hurling.

And then Shane Flanagan as Director of Coaching and Games Development is fully committed to this as well and it's being pushed through the provincial Games Managers and the games development staff on the ground in the counties. We have probably never been as aligned in that way as we are now.

My job is to give them a plan that encapsulates the different priorities in the different counties so we're able to measure and move it forward in counties. It's a good time for me to be coming into this position because everything is so well aligned now.

GAA.ie: What message do you have for hurling people in parts of the country where the participation numbers are relatively low who have worked hard to develop the game but have perhaps maybe not been given the support they need?

WM: I want to fully understand their plight. I want to understand the barriers to developing the game in their particularly area. It's important we get that feedback so I understand what's happening on the ground and that those people are central to driving whatever plan we come up with in a county.

We want to hold county boards and Games Managers accountable for the development of the game so that the metrics we want to hit are hit. This is the plan we want to work through and everything is accountable. We are here to help from a central level and we want to drive this game forward in areas where it hasn't been done before but we will need help.

I don't have a magic wand to say this is going to happen now. But, at the same time, with buy-in around the country we will do the most comprehensive planning and operation based on the feedback we get.

Jim Gavin and the FRC have shown us the way in terms of the power of good planning to implement change. Yes, there were tweaks along the way. Yes, there were some pieces that didn’t work. But in a short space of time they've changed Gaelic football for the better. Using a similar approach to hurling development, I think we will create some positive change.

I'm enthused, I can't wait to get going. This is a dream job for someone like myself for whom hurling has always been central to my life.

We want to give more kids around the country to play the game, build structures within counties that allows us to grow and maintain those participating and to get better, and then hopefully we'll see the fruits of it in more meaningful competitions.

That's the innovation piece as regards how we go about changing what's gone before and how do we give young adults play meaningful matches here in Croke Park. Imagine something like a Táin region team coming down the road to play in the Joe McDonagh or Liam MacCarthy quarter-final. That would revolutionise our sport in my mind.

There is no quick fix. There are many pieces that will fit into this but people on the ground will have to row in behind whatever plan we do come up with.

GAA.ie: There are lots of people who enjoy watching hurling on TV but feel like they can't be part of it because they have no background in the game themselves. They might be confident playing or coaching Gaelic football, but don't believe they have the skillset to do the same in hurling. What's your message to them?

WM: Everyone can be a part of hurling. The GAA manifesto is 'Where we all Belong', and that's certainly true for hurling.

The hurling starter packs will be an ongoing initiative to get more and more hurling clubs going and is central to the vision of Jarlath Burns and the Hurling Development Committee to give more kids the opportunity to play.

Yes, you can be a part of hurling. Hurling isn't for other people in other places. Hurling is for everybody.

There have been many reports about hurling and many plans to develop it. We just need to pull it all together now in a structured format which we can now do through the GAA's Coaching and Games Development department which is a new departure in hurling development in the country.

There are really exciting times ahead and I can't wait to get going.