By John Harrington

You ask Ryan Gaffney what year he first won an Armagh Senior Hurling Championship with Middletown, and he has to do a quick google to be sure.

That’s not all that surprising considering the 37-year-old has won 11 of them and has been playing senior club hurling for most of his life.

It turns out the first came in 2006, back when Middletown were relative upstarts.

Keady Lámh Dhearg were the dominant force in that era, winning 12 of the previous 16 championships.

Cúchulainn’s would have been the top dogs prior to that, whereas Middletown were the sort of club who’d win a title now and then, but never enjoyed the same sort of sustained dominance.

The landscape looks different now, though. On Sunday Middletown will bid to win an eight Armagh senior championship in nine years and fifth in a row when they play Keady.

For as long as he can remember it has been Gaffney’s ambition to win as much as he could alongside his brothers with Middletown, but his boyhood dreams were never quite so grand as this.

“When I was a young lad pucking the ball against the wall you would never have really thought it could happen because you were so used to only winning the odd one here or there,” he says of Middletown’s dominance of the Armagh hurling scene.

“But then we had a bit of success at Féile level, we won a couple of titles, and from there it was about trying to get those boys through and then when we did we were able to win a few championships.

“A lot of people did a huge amount of work in the club to get hurling up to a higher standard.

“We’re having a good spell this last number of years, but other teams will come up and have their purple patch so we just have to keep it going for as long as we can. I'm at the tail-end of my career now and you just take each day that you can get out on the pitch, you're just grateful for it and try to make the most of it.”

The core of this Middletown team has been on the road for a while now. Gaffney rattles off the names of nine current players who were involved in the 2012 All-Ireland Intermediate Final against Mount Leinster Rangers.

That was both the greatest and most disappointing day in Middletown’s history. It was a match they could have won but ultimately lost by two points.

But it was still a huge achievement to push the Carlow and Leinster champions so hard when you consider that Mount Leinster Rangers would contest a senior club final just two years later.

“We had a great year that year but I probably remember the worst of it most clearly,” says Gaffney. “At the time you don't really appreciate how good it was. We were a very young team at that time and, looking back, we probably wouldn't have thought we'd still be playing now.

“I suppose everybody then that was playing were doing it because we love the game and that's still the case. We all want to play it for as long as we can. We wouldn't still be going to the pitch to train unless we still enjoyed it.

“Having that experience in the team and getting that far in an All-Ireland, it can drive you on a wee bit too. It makes you feel like you want to give it more.”

Gaffney’s contribution to hurling goes beyond what he’s achieved with both the Middletown and Armagh hurlers.

For the last four years he’s worked for Ulster Camogie as a Growth and Participation officer, and before that he had a similar hurling role with Ulster GAA.

The work he did then is still having a hugely positive impact on the game, because the Táin Óg and Cúchulainn Leagues were the brainchild of Gaffney and fellow GAA Games Development officers, Padraig Dowdall and Aidan Morgan.

The genius of the Táin Óg and Cúchulainn Leagues is that they wipe away county and provincial boundaries and give clubs in developing counties a greater number of meaningful matches than they could possibly have from playing teams within their own county bounds.

The success of the competitions is illustrated by their growth, year on year. When The Táin Óg started in 2016, 26 teams compete at U-13 level.

This year, 271 teams were registered across the four Táin Óg grades and the Cúchulainn League (for senior clubs) grew significantly too.

It’s not an exaggeration to say the competitions have been the most positive thing to happen hurling in a very long time, and Gaffney has been proud to see how what started out as a theoretical idea has been such a practical success.

“I suppose when you start any job or you're in any job you want to leave it in a better space when you leave it,” he says. “That was always my goal. I wanted to leave something behind.

“When myself, Pauric Dowdall, and Aidan Morgan sat down and designed the Táin Óg League I suppose we never really thought it would be as big as it has become, but we knew there definitely was an appetite for it.

“When we met with (National Hurling Development Manager) Martin Fogarty and he could see that it made sense we knew it had potential.

“It's definitely something that us four boys are all very proud of. It seems to be going well, but there are definitely things that can still be improved on.

“In terms of the senior teams in the Cúchulainn, I really think the senior teams have to take it a lot more seriously.

“The hurling clubs have a responsibility to do that too. I think we can all be a wee bit better - the hurling clubs, the hurling people within the clubs, the county boards, the provincial councils, and the GAA as well.

“I think a lot of times people within hurling communities are quick to blame other people. But I think we also have to ask ourselves, 'could we do more?' And we definitely can in terms of backing competitions like the Cúchulainn League.”

Gaffney’s obsession with hurling also extends to his academic pursuits. As part of his Masters in Performance Analysis and Sport in Carlow IT he wrote a paper titled ‘Determinants of match outcomes in elite level hurling’.

This involved sitting down with a group of coaches to decide on variables which might determine match outcomes such as scoring efficiency, turnover rates, and foul counts.

With these variables established and defined, Gaffney then collated the relevant data from 29 matches in the 2019 Liam MacCarthy Cup to establish the productivity of winning teams versus losing teams, including metrics such as the average turnovers forced by a winning team and their shooting efficiency.

“It was largely stuff that you would have predicted - that players need to be within the '21 to successfully shoot for a goal or that winning teams produce more turnovers,” says Gaffney.

“But now when you have the numbers, you can set your team specific targets before they take to the pitch.

“And then you can assess their performance at half-time and let them know if they're falling short in some of their key performance indicators.

"We're also looking for ways to refocus players or keep players focused on the present. To me, that's where the likes of these statistics can come in very useful.

“I've been the player myself at half-time trying to figure out where we're going wrong, so if someone can highlight that you're falling short of specific KPIs it really focuses you and you realise that if you improve your game in these particular areas, then you'll have a better chance of winning.

“It's a great way for coaches to really focus in on what they should be looking at and getting players to really focus on believing in the system.”

Gaffney clearly has an appetite for knowledge, because with his Masters complete he’s now two years into a four-year part-time Professional Doctorate in Human Performance and Innovation in University of Limerick.

You won’t be shocked to hear that in the coming two years as part of that doctorate he intends to carry out more research on hurling.

“I've a massive interest in hurling and that's an area I want to really push for more research into because that's the sort of stuff that could be so valuable for coaches as well," says Gaffney.

“I want to give back to the sport a wee bit and one of the main areas I would like to look at next in attacking play is goals.

“I just feel like there's not much research there into hurling at the minute. There's been some great work done by people like Dr. Damien Young who has looked at the physiological demands of the sport.

“But, in general, to date, there have only been a handful of published papers looking at the more technical and tactical side of the game.

“It's tough going when you're doing the doctorate part-time and working full-time. I've a young family too and I'm still trying to play the game as well. There's a lot of time-management required, but it's all very enjoyable.”

Gaffney stopped playing Gaelic football last year to make this time management that bit more manageable, but he has no plans any time soon to hang up his hurley.

“I'd hate to think what it'll be like when I'm not able to play,” he says.

“I'm still enjoying it and I'm still playing and that's what the club is all about, giving people the platform to go out and enjoy it because it's a hobby at the end of the day.

“It keeps you fit and it's a good way of life. I definitely owe the game of hurling a lot. Without it a lot of us would be lost. It has given me friendships, it has taught me a lot as well about working hard and that you get what you deserve.

"If you push yourself you'll get teh rewards. I definitely owe a lot to hurling and I'm very grateful for every year I was able to play.”