Scallan calls for new approach for hurlers
Hurling boss appeals for players to be left in camp
WICKLOW hurling manager Eamonn Scallan left delegates in no doubt as to what his desires are for the New Year when he called on clubs to leave their players in the county set-up for the month of April to give them the best possible chance when they take to the field in the Christy Ring Cup in May.
Scallan was addressing delegates at a county Board meeting last week and he outlined his reasons for wanting the players to remain in the county camp rather than be released for an early round or two of the club championships as happened this year.
‘I was asked to come here tonight to give a presentation and I have absolutely zero intention of getting up here and lecturing people about what the Senior hurlers in Wicklow are going to be doing for the coming year,’ began the Wexford native.
‘Because I think what we want to do is going to be predicated in terms of how the club championship is going to be run.
‘And I’m talking specifically about playing matches in April – the club months as it’s called – and if I was to look with hindsight and assess the way the year finished: we had reasonable success I would say in winning the league, but the ultimate aim of getting to the Christy Ring final wasn’t achieved.
‘So, the reality of the thing is there was limited success there. So, what’s the solution or what was the problem. Well, I felt that, I don’t think having a round of the club championship in April benefited anybody.
‘Now, before I go any further, I’m only giving my opinion on this. At the end of the day, when I’ve given my opinion on this, I’ll be going out those two big doors there and I’ll be leaving ye to discuss it.
‘Ye’re the delegates from your clubs, ye’re comprising the County Board and whatever ye decide at the end of the day I’ll be going with.
‘But I do think that when your decisions are being made they need to be informed, and the information I’ll be giving you is players being away from us for a prolonged period of time last year cost us, ultimately, when we went to go play Down in Aughrim.
‘Our structure, while the players knew what to do, it wasn’t right on the day. I’d be specifically talking about out structure from our halfback line to our half-forward line.
‘Down ran us ragged, there was a lack of communication, and what we had done well during the course of the league in terms of packing midfield and packing the defence and not conceding goals ultimately didn’t work against Down because we let ourselves get dragged in every single direction possible.
‘We were beaten by five points, conceded two goals and ultimately got knocked out of the Christy
Ring on score difference of five points. And I think not having the players together for long enough – so we probably had them back, and I stand to be corrected on dates, but I think roughly maybe for three to four weeks before the start of the Christy Ring and after the start of the club championship which was sometime in the first or second week of April or whatever the case may be.
‘But that gap saw them going from hurling on the edge and being sharp to not hurling on the edge and not being sharp. Now, that’s not a criticism of anybody, it’s something that happens in every county. When players go from an inter-county setup, let it be ranging from Leitrim to Cork to Galway and across to Wicklow, when you leave a setup where you’re surrounded by the best players in your county and you’re going back to your club it’s just a natural thing for you to slip. It’s just the way it is.
‘And I felt, looking back on the year as a whole, I couldn’t, we couldn’t get them back to the level in time. We got there two weeks later against Derry. Admittedly we went up and bet Derry, we had a couple of scoring opportunities that we didn’t take that day, so I suppose you could say had we taken our chances against Derry up there we would have got through and the match against Down wouldn’t have mattered and I wouldn’t be here saying that tonight, but that’s not the way it turned out,’ he added.
Eamonn Scallan went on to say that this year there was every chance that the players would be away from the county set-up for longer than they were in 2019.
‘So, that was my experience, but it was based on us getting to a league semi-final and a final which saw us hurling right up until the middle or the third week of March.
‘Our national league this year finishes on the first of March, so if we don’t get to a semi-final or a final our national league is finished on the first of March.
‘So, if we go ahead with a round of the club championship at the same time as last year, it means that players will be itching to get away from us quicker, naturally, back to their club.
‘They’re going to have their round – or two, as someone was saying – but we’re still only going to have the three- or four-week period between a potential club championship match and the start of the Christy Ring but the players will be away from us longer.
‘I can’t tell you we’re going to get to a league semi-final or a final. It’s going to be a hell of a lot more difficult to do it this year because of the quality of the teams. I remember someone asking me last year, where did you want to see Wicklow hurling? Exactly where they are at the moment: against better teams.
‘It would be brilliant to get to a league semi-final or final but the chance of hurling against the likes of Offaly, Kerry, Meath, Antrim is only going to bring the ability and development of those players on.
‘And sometimes over the last year I kind of got the impression that what ye have here is a core group of players that are committed to hurling for Wicklow. Do they need a lot of work? Absolutely. Is there a culture there that needs to be changed? Yes, it does. Is there a degree of professionalism that needs to be increased year on year? Yes, it does. Are they training at this point of the year harder than what they were last year? Absolutely. I couldn’t fault them for one second in terms of what they have done this year.
‘But, ultimately, they need to be judged, not as someone said to me as being able to ‘survive’ in this higher division in the league. They need to be judged on progression in the Christy Ring.
‘Now, they’ve got Sligo in the first match. My concern would be that if we don’t get these players together – now this might sound controversial but I don’t mean it to be – I think that the Senior hurlers being together as a unit for longer and getting practice matches; for example, going down to Tipperary and playing Toomervara, going down to Cork and playing Sarsfields, going to Dublin playing Kilmacud Crokes or wherever would serve the players from each of your clubs better instead of going out to Wicklow Town, as Bray did last year and beating Greystones. I don’t think that benefited anyone in Greystones because I was involved, and I don’t think it benefitted anyone from Bray. Ultimately, there was one team there who got no championship match.
‘So, when it came down to the nitty gritty of it, having one game in April, I don’t think benefitted the players. Now, I’m around long enough to know that if you don’t have players playing with the clubs and if you don’t have clubs providing players to a county team then you don’t have a county team. So, there’s two sides to the coin here, and from my experience last year, I felt that the round of club championship in April, it f**ked things up, really. We didn’t get back to where we should have been, and we lost out.
‘Now, if ye decide to have two groups of three, like someone was suggesting, or of ye decide to have two rounds of the championship in April, that’s something I’ll have to work with. All I’m doing is giving you my opinion on it in terms of what happened last year.
‘If you go back to what the psychologists say: What’s the definition of madness? Do the same thing over and over and expect a different result.
‘So, potentially, without being able to read the future, if we don’t get to a league semi-final or a final, and we go do the same thing, we will have players away from us for a longer period of time and possibly we could end up going to Sligo and losing our first match.
‘We lose our first match and we have Offaly at home in our second match, which is going to be a big ask, and then Derry at home and that’s not going to be that simple because it will be the fourth time in two years we’ll have played them. We’ve already beaten them three times and don’t tell me they’re not going to be coming down here with a certain bite in terms of that game.
‘So, the Christy Ring can get off to a very good start but if it doesn’t things can go very wrong, very quickly. I’m talking about the club championship matches being one factor in that. There are a hundred more factors that could affect it. As I said, had we scored enough points and goals against Derry last year I wouldn’t even be mentioning this to ye. So, it’s not the only factor in terms of getting the best out of players, but it is something that I looked at last year.
‘So, in terms of how we are going to be training or what are we going to be doing – when the national league starts on January 26, every single weekend there’s going to be a game bar one. So, there’s going to be very little time for us to train. All our training is getting done at this time of the year. That brings us up to March 1.
‘If we don’t get out of the group we’re finished. So, what happens then? I would rather see the players remaining in an inter-county setup, getting ourselves ready for a Christy Ring, and getting meaningful matches. What does that mean for the ordinary club player?
‘It means they won’t see their county players. So, ye’re here tonight to see what are my intentions in terms of releasing players back to their clubs.
‘We’re training four nights a week at the moment with matches at the weekend. That’s not going to reverse as we get closer to the Christy Ring. We’re still going to be training four nights, at the moment it’s two in the gym, two in the pitch, but that will be changing to three on the pitch to one in the gym collectively and then doing one session themselves. If we’re playing a match on the Sunday it will mean we will be training on the Friday night. If we are playing on the Sunday and have to travel on the Saturday or if we are playing on the Saturday, the hurling sessions will be changed to a Tuesday and Thursday night to facilitate giving them 24 hours of rest before the game.
‘So, depending on how the matches are going to be set up from a County Board perspective or from your perspective for the month of April, it is going to determine what we’re going to be able to do training wise because we’ll have to fit in with that.
‘On top of that there’s very little I can add. I’m not here to debate anything, I’m not here pretending I know anything. I am one year as a Senior inter-county manager. I do have experience training clubs and underage county teams. I am far from the finished article. I do not know it all.
‘But I am here with a vested interest, and it’s not to be up here to put myself on a pedestal. My father hurled and played football with Wicklow and so did my two uncles. And I started my career off hurling with the Arklow Rocks. That’s where I started. And I had guys like Matt Curran, Seamus Barnes, Jim Warren, lads like that showing me how to play.
So, I didn’t come into the Wicklow job as some kind of an outsider or some lad from Wexford who thinks he’s going to come up here and preach the gospel on hurling. I’m here because I was offered to do the job way back in 2007 and I had committed to go in as a selector with Colm Bonnar with Wexford in and around that time and I didn’t think I’d get a second opportunity to do it.
‘So, when it came up this time, I took it because I have a vested interest in seeing hurling in Wicklow develop. Not bullying my way to do it, or not trying to coerce lads into doing what I want to do. I’ve expressed my opinion and hopefully get lads to row in behind us. And if you do, well and good, and if you don’t well then that’s something you need to organise among yourselves. I’ll just have to work around it, simple as that.
Eamonn Scallan then took some questions from delegates with one of the first ones relating to whether or not there would be any circumstances where he would release players back to their clubs. Scallan replied that if there were league games scheduled and he knew his 20-man panel that not to release the other eight players to their clubs so that they could get hurling would not be a wise decision on his part and that that would be where he would envisage players being released to their clubs.
‘I’ve no issues with working with clubs in that respect,’ he said.
A Glenealy delegate highlighted the difficulty being faced by clubs in terms of preparing teams without their county players and that the month of April should be for clubs.
‘Say you’re probably operating off a panel of 20 or 25, there’s another 130 or 140 players in multiple clubs not doing anything. So, you have to fight your corner in this, and a club has to fight theirs.
‘I personally would be more lenient to playing something in April even though if you take last year’s example, we didn’t play in April, it was awkward, it was very difficult to keep going.
‘That being said, and I’ve said this to Martin Fitzgerald a few weeks ago, if the county manager, and particularly if the county manager is of the opinion and wants to come to a County Board meeting to state that opinion, we, as Glenealy Hurling Club, even though we haven’t discussed it, we wouldn’t be standing in your way, we’d stand to one side on what I think is our view,’ said the Glenealy delegate.
The County Chairman said that both the Christy Ring Cup and the Leinster football championship were starting in early May and that while April is club month that Wicklow ‘have to think about our county teams as well’.
‘We can’t be playing matches in April and then giving a manager a week to prepare his team. And that’s the reality,’ said Martin Fitzgerald.
Bray Emmets delegate Jackie Napier said that he didn’t believe that people in Wicklow realised the standard of the Christy Ring in 2020 and that it was ‘tip top’.
‘Offaly have been All-Ireland champions in all of our times and are now in the Christy Ring. They’re in our group. Derry have Slaughtneil, the Ulster champions, to pick from, and we have to play away to Sligo.
‘I know that what Eamonn is saying is the truth. And, surely be to goodness we can arrange, as we have done for years, that our championship starts after the Christy Ring,’ said Jackie.
Paul Wilson told the delegates that he has warned clubs for some time now that they would have to prepare and accept that they would be without their county players for league competitions.
‘Are you not pressing for hurling championship in April?’ asked a delegate of Paul Wilson.
‘I can’t say. I’m blue in the face saying this: there are a certain amount of weeks in the year’.
It’s likely that a decision on Scallan’s request will be made at the first County Board meeting of 2020.