Pathway to Senior essential for young hurlers to blossom
IWITNESSED an exhibition of point-scoring early last week, with talented Horeswood teenager Seán Nolan picking off an impressive eight from play in the course of his club’s narrow loss to Rapparees in the All-County Hurling League Division 4 final.
A recent dual Wexford Minor, and a member of this year’s Under-20 football side, the deadly-accurate attacker was in superb form in O’Kennedy Park, New Ross, and some of his striking off his left side in particular had onlookers gasping in awe.
That scoring feat came just two days after he had registered five points from play for the Horeswood Intermediate footballers in a hard-earned championship win against St. Joseph’s.
Nolan already played Senior club football last year, and there’s a good chance he will get to do the same in the not too distant future.
What about hurling, though? Will we ever see a player of his calibre and potential adorning our own Pettitt’s Senior championship?
Not unless we re-introduce District teams as I have been highlighting in recent weeks because, with the best will in the world, it’s asking a lot to envisage Horeswood making the giant leap from Junior to the top flight in the next decade.
It’s encouraging to note that they’re putting a determined effort into hurling at adult level, but they are a long way off the standard that saw them in Senior county finals in 1951, 1952, 1954 and 1963.
I’d love to get a real indicator of Nolan’s talent by seeing him line out on a New Ross District side along with the likes of his clubmate Michael O’Hanlon, St. James’ duo Matthew O’Hanlon and Mark Molloy, Fethard pair Garrett Foley and Mikie Dwyer, plus Taghmon-Camross colleagues Ian Carty and Stephen O’Gorman.
In the case of the last-named duo, how can we realistically expect them to even attempt making the huge jump from inter-county Under-21 to Senior when they are playing their club hurling in our third tier?
If anything, performing at that level will only foster bad habits, because it’s easy to get away with errors when the opposition isn’t up to scratch. And for the benefit of those who don’t attend lower level club hurling games on a regular basis, let me assure you that the standard is poor to average at best.
And that’s the difference between our young hurlers and their Cork counterparts who brushed them aside so clinically on Saturday.
As I outlined last week, there is a clear pathway for every Leesider without exception to play in the county Senior championship with his division, and we have the perfect numbers to do the same.
I’m advocating the inclusion of the four Districts in preliminary quarter-finals against the third- and fourth-placed teams.
It’s important to stress that again, because this would have no impact on our two groups of six format. All five rounds would be played without any District involvement, yielding the usual eight qualifiers (four per group) plus two relegation candidates.
By the time the Districts would get involved, all fifth-placed teams would be eliminated in the Intermediate, Intermediate ‘A’ and Junior grades too, and this would free up more players without any further club commitments to give the Senior championship a shot.
The records will show that, apart from beaten finalists Enniscorthy District in 1971, these group teams didn’t make much of an impact in hurling, so there is no reason for clubs to fear their presence.
It was somewhat different in football, as Wexford District won the title in 1977 and reached the finals in ’78 (conceding a walkover) and ’83. New Ross were runners-up in 1937 and 1939, and semi-finalists in 1970 and 1981, going close to creating an upset in the latter year before losing to Castletown on an unusual 2-13 to 5-3 scoreline.
Whether they would make an impact or not isn’t necessarily the point anyway. Even if their presence gave the players named above just one Senior game per year, that’s still better than nothing.
Fixtures for club teams in the lower grades would take place first on any given weekend, followed by District games on the Monday or Tuesday.
If a District team did reach a semi-final or final, obviously the game would have to be on a Sunday, but we could cross that bridge when we cawwme to it. After that Cork thrashing, surely we must try harder to expose all of our best young players to Senior club hurling.