Strong counties won’t be overlooked says new Hurling head Maher

By Paul Keane

New national GAA Head of Hurling Willie Maher has promised that traditionally strong counties, like his native Tipperary, won't be overlooked when it comes to developing the game under his watch.

Ballingarry clubman Maher, an All-Ireland minor winner with Tipp as a player, in 1996, and manager, in 2012, is four months into his new role with the GAA. He said that he first came to Croke Park in 1987 as a boy to watch the Tipp v Galway All-Ireland semi-final and described working at GAA HQ now as a 'dream' scenario.

"I love hurling, that's my baseline," said the former Tipperary minor and under 21 manager who guided his native county to the All-Ireland minor title in 2012 whose appointment to the position was a recommendation of the Hurling Development Committee.

Speaking at a Croke Park media briefing last week, Maher displayed a graphic with existing hurling clubs as dots on an overall map of Ireland. Concentration of those dots was far higher in the southern half of the country and a significant investment of time and resources will go into developing new hurling clubs in areas where it isn't being played.

"The focus will be on hurling development and trying to get more kids playing the game," said Maher who highlighted how 45 'hurling starter packs' have already been distributed to clubs wishing to get hurling up and running in their areas.

All but five of these are based outside of Munster - 18 in Leinster, 17 in Ulster and five in Connacht. Three of the new startups in Munster are in Kerry, along with Ballydesmond in Cork and Cluain Boine in Clare. So far, there are none in Tipp although each parish in the county has a hurling club.

But Maher was quick to point out that his native county, or any other traditionally strong county, won't be left behind in the general drive to increase participation levels and to grow the game nationally.

"I think there's something to be done everywhere," said Maher.

"I'm not sure, for example, the numbers on the Tipp senior panel from the south of the county; it's not a whole lot. So yeah, there's a lot of areas within my own county that need a lot of work.

"Some areas are really, really strong and obviously facilitating a strong senior team to compete in three All-Ireland finals in the last ten or twelve years. But there's work to be done everywhere.

"There are literally huge cultures of hurling in Tipperary and Kilkenny and Cork and it's just about harnessing that culture and the amount of hurlers that are there and making it better.

"It's about increasing the bar, and the bar has gone up a lot in the last few years as regards what Limerick have been doing, obviously Clare winning the All-Ireland last year.

“New teams are coming, because they've been able to do things a little bit differently in those counties, and I think it's important that you learn and move forward and that's the plan.

"It's very much a plan for everybody, that's the remit. But, again, there'll be different nuances to that plan in different areas depending on the situations."

Previous attempts to improve the lot of hurling under a national figure like Maher yielded mixed results. Kilkenny's Martin Fogarty was the GAA's National Hurling Development Manager for five years until 2021 and prior to that Drom & Inch’s Paudie Butler was also in the role.

More recently, Fogarty was part of the HDC but quit last December shortly before Maher was unveiled, complaining about the appointment process. Fogarty travelled extensively across the country while in the role, giving talks and coaching workshops though Maher said that his role will be significantly different.

"I think it's different as regards having that level of support from Jarlath (Burns) right through to Tom (Ryan, Director General) down to Terry Reilly and the HDC," said Maher.

"I think it's trying to put a plan in place that allows us to capture that support and to give the vehicle of a plan to move forward to implement throughout the country.

"So, I think there's a big difference there as regards from before. This is not an operational role, and this is not me travelling the highways and byways of the country developing coaching courses.

“Yes, I'll be going out there. Yes, I'll be getting my hands dirty as regards doing those things and meeting people. But I think it's giving them the tools to actually promote and develop hurling within their own communities."

Maher has agreed to a five-year term and said that the terms of reference detailed a 'particular focus for up the country as regards the Tain region, Dublin to Galway, and up'. But he clarified again that it is a 'plan for everybody' and that current strongholds of the game won't be disregarded.

"So perhaps it's the top-level counties and there's issues there and they mightn't seem like issues as regards compared to the bottom counties," he said.

"Those are still absolutely part of what we're interested in. This has to be a national approach for hurling and the whole of hurling."

Maher agreed that counties in hurling's 'squeezed middle', like Offaly, Carlow, Westmeath, and Laois present their own set of issues. They are not quite strong enough to be successful in the top tier but also have a clear tradition of playing the game to a high level.

"Having worked in Laois for the last two years as senior manager, I got a bird's eye view of what's actually happening there and the levels of players that are actually coming through to facilitate that senior team, to try to make that next jump up," said Maher.

"Definitely that's really fertile ground for us, there's hurling people there, there's a hurling tradition within those places. Again, looking at the example of Laois, trying to get more players through would be the big piece to make that jump up.

"That comes from building an academy structure within the county. Again, operating to defined goals as regards getting players through.

"Education and the second level piece in this are massive as regards schools, that's where they start. Go-Games programmes are ongoing, brilliant, but they need to move into a structure as regards within their coaching pathway that a schools team facilitates high level hurling to get those players up.

"I think the Offaly Schools is a great example. A couple of years ago, they beat St. Kieran's in a Leinster final by two points. That was the catalyst for that group to say, 'We're good enough to play at that level now' and some of those players subsequently won All-Irelands."