BREAKING NEW GROUND
Chin points to change of Wexford mentality as he looks to future
WHEN Lee Chin revealed that he was living the life of a professional hurler, minus the pay cheque, he probably didn’t expect to start a national conversation on where the Gaelic Athletic Association is going.
In a bid to dedicate himself to the Wexford cause in 2018, he just decided to put any nine-to-five employment opportunities on hold. Instead, he has a number of ambassadorial and sponsorship sidelines with different brands.
By virtue of his five-star talent and poster boy status for the Davy Fitzgerald revolution, Chin’s charisma and comic-book cameos on the field – witness his tour-de-force in last year’s breakthrough Leinster semi-final triumph against Kilkenny in Wexford Park – make for a winning combination.
It’s the same qualities that made him a natural fit to star on The Toughest Trade, the sports swap documentary where Chin tried his hand in the National Hockey League with Vancouver Canucks while one of their players, Alex Auld, enjoyed the unique appeal of some winter hurling in the not-sosunny south-east.
Tomorrow, Wexford play the first of four Leinster championship games in 21 days. A professional schedule framed around an amateur game. By dint of putting his career on hold, Chin will be ideally placed in terms of rest and recovery, freed from the workaday demands of most players who are busy juggling a hectic schedule with family demands.
Speaking at the unveiling of Sure as the GAA’s official statistics partner for the championship, he admits the idea of a professional sports career is hugely appealing.
‘It’d be a great experience in the sense that your sole focus is going in on that. Stuff like training three times a day and working on the little things you want to work on as a team and as a group.
‘I think all that is so appealing, yeah, and I think anyone that plays sport would love to experience something like that some day, especially with the level we’re at.’
The easy answer is to say that the GAA’s long-time amateur ideal will always hold; that the dam isn’t going to burst. Except Chin sees a semi-professional game on the horizon. ‘I do think it will [happen]. I think it’s pretty much at the peak of where it can go now as an amateur sport.’
So what’s the next step? ‘I’m not quite sure but I think you’re talking about a semi-professional status the same as what the League of Ireland is at the moment maybe. Some guys play League of Ireland and still have day-time jobs but I don’t know, I don’t know what the next step is going to be but it’s definitely going to change at some point I’d imagine.’
Of course he’s aware of the potential negative repercussions, of players being contracted to the county and being divorced from their clubs, of a pro versus amateur two-tier split.
‘Anyone involved in the GAA, you started out with your club and everyone loves playing for your club and it’s one thing that people know would suffer if it ever went down that route and that’s what we’re all scared of I suppose.
‘If the GAA some day did turn professional, it’s the young guys that were born only in 2018 and grew up within the system, the club scene wouldn’t mean that much to them obviously in a number of years’ time. I think some day it will end up going a little bit further.’
He understands why his own decision to focus on hurling has fed into the whole debate over where the GAA is going long-term. ‘I don’t think you’ll ever get a day where players, especially the players that are now, they’re never going to say, “we’re not playing because the game is not a different level to what I want it to be and I’m fed up of working and fed up of doing this and having to commit to this.”
‘Guys are doing what they do because they love doing it and that’s what we pride ourselves on. That we just love playing for our counties, we love playing our games.
‘I suppose at some point there will be guys, and even at this point there’s that overhead question of when is it going to change or is it going to change? Because it is at a certain level at the moment now that amateur status is just holding on to.’
On that very point, the bulk of the Wexford squad flew out to Portugal together at the end of April, though Chin insists it wasn’t a training camp which is prohibited by rule unless 10 days ahead of championship. Instead, he offers this take: ‘We went out and we decided that we just wanted to relax in each other’s company and that’s what we went out and done.’
Wexford, Offaly, Tipperary and Waterford are all in same boat where the bye weekend in a fiveteam group in either Leinster or Munster means that they have no gap week and play four games in successive weekends.
‘It’s going to be a very demanding task. Four weekends in a row is not easy - we experienced that in 2014. We came up against a side in the fourth weekend — Limerick — that were a good, fresher team waiting for us and they blew us out of the water with how fresh they were. It is going to be very tough for teams who are going to have to face that.
‘For myself at the minute and other guys [it’s fine] but for guys in full-time jobs they’re definitely going to have to have agreements with their bosses, I’d imagine, to look after themselves over the four weeks. Time off or getting out of work a bit early, I imagine that is going to happen because I can’t see guys fulfilling their potential on the third or fourth weekends if they’re flat out working throughout the weekdays. Recovery is going to be a huge part of it.’
In that respect, the cryotherapy chamber in Whites Hotel is not an option anymore. ‘Some guys loved using it, some guys didn’t. Some guys would rather get down to the beach and get into the water - they found that a lot more effective. Everyone just found their own way. Unfortunately, that [Whites] is not there anymore for guys.’ The last time Wexford met Dublin in Leinster, in 2016, manager Liam Dunne listed number 26 as AN Other, hoping Chin would pass a fitness test after a knee injury and play. Just one problem: Croke Park regulations state no change can be made to the official squad list submitted, outside of the goalkeeper. With Wexford hammered 2-19 to 0-12 at Croke Park, it was a frustrating experience all round. ‘You like to think if you were
on the field it wouldn’t have turned out that way. Sitting in the stand knowing potentially you could have played, not being allowed to play and then to see us being beat by a cricket score. It was a bad experience.’ He doesn’t need to be reminded of the challenge of Dublin then, especially given Wexford’s proud unbeaten record at home under Davy Fitzgerald was spoiled by Kilkenny in the league semi-final. ‘I can’t explain how disappointing it was. The scenes in the dressing room after weren’t pretty. It wasn’t nice to be in.
‘It’s a little reminder of not wanting to have that feeling again. It’s something we really need to work on, winning a big game and then following it up with another one.
‘Beating Galway in the quarterfinal and then not justifying our performance in the semi-final. We would have loved to have made it to a league final.
‘We definitely believed we could have got there. We just didn’t perform on the day at all. Didn’t turn up with the right attitude. Even as a player, since Davy’s time it was probably one of the lowest times I’ve had as well.
‘It would have almost been like a moral victory in the past, to get close to Kilkenny. It is a bit of a sign of where we feel we’ve come as a team, that we’re disappointed with get-ting beaten by the likes of Kilkenny and the top teams that are out there because we definitely feel we can compete with these teams now, and on any day we can beat them.’
But that pales against the high last summer of a first championship victory over Kilkenny since 2004, Chin’s storybook catch to set up a score just one moment in a personal highlights reel that helped tip the balance.
Starting into a new Leinster campaign, the future for Chin, for Wexford, and for the association, remains unmapped.