By Michael Devlin

From struggling to field a team at the start of this decade, Naomh Eoin enter into the next one as Sligo county hurling champions.

The Sligo town club defeated Easkey at Markiewicz Park on Sunday to clinch their first ever senior county title, banishing the pain of last year’s county final defeat.

The club have endured a long and at times turbulent road to get to Sunday’s maiden triumph.

“There were dark days for the club,” says winning team captain Thomas O’Callaghan. “From 2008 to 2013, we didn’t win a championship match. One of the years I don’t even think we fielded a team.”

Around 15 years ago, the club set up a youth structure and began to develop young hurlers with the vision that it would produce a future senior county title.

“Men there like Bill O’Kelly Lynch and Pat Hickey were doing Trojan work with the underage,” says O’Callaghan. “Every Friday evening, every Saturday, they were out coaching teams. The fruits of that labour are coming through now.”

There was an All-Ireland Feile title in 2010 and another Feile final appearance in 2011, signs that the Naomh Eoin youth system was moving along nicely, but at senior level, things were at an all-time low.

Crisis meetings were held on several occasions in order to revive the senior team into life as numbers fell away, and some of those left were given no option but to move to nearby clubs to get their hurling.

O’Callaghan and others though persevered with Naomh Eoin knowing that someday the talent would eventually come through to challenge for a county title that would wash away the bleak memories.

“That’s what sort of kept the show on the road, the fact that there was a crop coming through. But it wasn’t just the underage lads that were there on Sunday, there were five or six lads there that I’d started off with back in the day.

“It was great to see them at the final whistle. David Hickey, our corner back, he was on his hunkers almost in tears. The amount of stuff he’s seen in the dark days along with myself and some of the other lads, it’s just so rewarding to see that.”

Naomh Eoin were founded in 1984 and were beaten in their first county final in 1997 by a then all-conquering Tubbercurry side. Throughout their existence, the club were very much overshadowed by their more successful town neighbours, first Craobh Rua throughout the 80’s and 90’s, and then Calry St Josephs for the last decade and a half. On the outskirts of town, Coolera-Strandhill won their first county title last year with victory over Naomh Eoin, but had previously been runners-up four times since 2010.

“For fella’s coming into Sligo town from traditional hurling counties like Galway, they would have been going to those clubs,” says O’Callaghan. “It would have always been a bit of a scramble to get players.”

Of the six teams in the Sligo championship, it is Naomh Eoin and Easkey who have been making the most strides at youth level in recent years. While Sunday was a watershed moment for Naomh Eoin, there is a feeling around the county that Easkey are not far away from senior success of their own.

In just their second year at senior level, Easkey were going for the treble, having won the league and the Martin Brennan Cup competition.

“They are a pretty young team, most of them would be only 20 or 21. They have dominated underage in the last ten years, and are continuing to do so. A lot of our lads would have lost to Easkey fairly regularly growing up, so it was great to get a win over them.”

With inaugural county titles coming to Naomh Eoin and Coolera-Strandhill in the past couple of years, and Easkey on the rise, the Sligo club hurling scene is in rude health.

It’s a mirror reflection of the mesmeric rise of the county’s hurlers in the past two years, who won the Lory Meagher Cup in 2018 before going one better and clinching the Nicky Rackard this summer after a thrilling win over Armagh in Croke Park.

The back-to-back success has seen Sligo climb from hurling’s lowest tier to compete in next year’s Christy Ring Cup, where they have been grouped with Offaly, Derry and Wicklow.

“With the two wins, the Meagher then the Rackard, it really has boosted the profile of the county and also the standard of hurling within it. You can really see it now, the quality of club hurling is far higher.

This week the Naomh Eoin players took the county championship cup for a visit to some of the local schools in Sligo town. O’Callaghan visited his alma mater, Carraroe NS, where he experienced first-hand the growing enthusiasm for hurling in the county's new generation of youngsters. 

“The kids are going mad for it, it’s great to see for the club and for Sligo too,” he says. “We had a bit of a coaching session with them, and you could see there some great skills on show. It’s very exciting.”

Naomh Eoin will go forward into the Connacht Junior Hurling Championship semi-final next weekend, where they face the winners from Leitrim, either Carrick or Cluainin Iomaint.

O’Callaghan though will not be leading his team out, having jetted out to Chicago this week to fulfil long-existing travelling plans.

“I’ll be handing over the reins,” he says heavily. “I was made captain last year and we lost the final, and my intention was to go travelling at the start of this year, but I held that off and was made captain again.

“It was something that I always wanted to do, and I’ve been waiting for a while to do it. The final was actually delayed for a few weeks which had me sweating. I would have cracked up over there if I was missing it, it would have been crazy.”

Fate was kind though, and he managed to stay put just in time to become the first Naomh Eoin man to lift the county title. He’ll be keenly monitoring the game from the States as his club mates continue their journey into Connacht, with last weekend’s memories still fresh in his mind.

“It’s all I ever really wanted to do, to win a county title, considering where we’ve come from the start of the decade to now.

“There are lads who soldiered on for years and years, and that’s why Sunday was very emotional for a lot of people.”