LockerRoom: Sometimes everything that happens in Irish sport seems like a choreographed rehash of everything that's happened in Irish sport before. Does nobody else yearn for a bit of novelty, something completely different?
This was a weekend of hoary tradition. An Irish Gold Cup winner at Cheltenham (cue articles on the horse-racing priest and the ocean of black stuff consumed, faith and begorrah), then the trek down to Twickers. (Triple Crown win. Passion of the fighting Irish, etc.) Add in a zillionth Leinster Schools win for the Ross O'Carroll Kelly Academy of Rugger and the club football All-Ireland going west yet again and you got a slight Groundhog Weekend effect.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, don't write in. There were certain twists. Shane Horgan's late winner and the sight of Michael O'Leary celebrating with something other than an overpriced bag of peanuts were among them, but isn't it time we saw O'Connell Schools win the Leinster Senior Club, Italy taking the Six Nations and, well, the back of Michael Bloody O'Leary?
Being under virtual house arrest myself these days, I venture out only when I expect to encounter a cavalcade of whimsy, a festival of novelty. On Saturday, Dr Cullen Park in Carlow was the only place to be. A Leinster Schools' hurling final which for the first time since records began (it seemed) didn't have St Kieran's College in it. Now, we bow to no man or beast in our respect and affection for St Kieran's, but their absence made the occasion fascinating. (Strange to see such a decline so soon after the phasing out of boarders at the school. Another little piece of hurling culture gone?) Instead, we were entertained by Kilkenny CBS and the Dublin Colleges.
CBS last won a provincial title in 1983. On that day they won their second title in three years. St Peter's of Wexford won the intervening title in 1982, and in 1983 Birr Community School came along and won two in a row. It was a period of fomented revolution which presaged events at senior intercounty level. St Kieran's put a stop to it by coming along and winning the next eight Leinsters on the trot. This year they were looking for their fifth on the trot when they were undone by the CBS.
Saturday's game had a couple of points separating the sides at the finish of it. The Kilkenny boys deserved to win and the Dublin lads only played with sufficient urgency in the final quarter.
Dublin could reflect that with a little better luck they might have won, or with a little worse luck they might have lost by a good deal more. Giving away so many frees with a dead-ball player as accomplished as Mark Bergin on the field cost Dublin dearly. Bergin got eight points from frees.
What impressed overall was the quality of the hurling on display. In the league before Christmas, the CBS had hammered St Kieran's, and then Birr had beaten the CBS in the final. In the provincial semi-finals this month, CBS and Dublin Colleges had beaten Birr and St Kieran's respectively. You expected that they would need quite a lot of quality to have pulled off that feat. They had.
The problem is that too few schools play top-level hurling these days. Nine schools for the whole province of Leinster is a little depressing. For all the talk of the GAA's bigotry in discriminating against or frowning upon other sports, it is rugby which has been the most successful at safeguarding its fiefdom in the schools. Rugby has consolidated and is spreading itself quietly. Soccer moves on like bushfire. Schools are the next area for urgent attention from the GAA.
It is time for clubs to stop lamenting the fact that kids don't get coached in schools anymore. The Brothers aren't coming back. It's time for something novel.
Take Saturday in Carlow. Compared to the Leinster Schools rugby final held the previous afternoon, the hurling final made virtually no impact in Dublin. The game was a big thing within the culture of Kilkenny hurling, and as such in Kilkenny successes can be self-perpetuating. On the Dublin County Board website, however, there was no team line-up beforehand and the city media paid scant attention to the event.
For Dublin clubs there was scarcely a blip of excitement that a county team had reached a provincial hurling final. In terms of hype, you had Blackrock winning on Friday and Shane Horgan doing his thang on Saturday and the Premiership going on 24/7. Hurling hardly scored at all.
Which, again, was a pity. First, the game in Dublin needs all the hype it can get, and second, because what Dublin has experienced isn't very dissimilar to what most other counties have come up against or will soon experience. Dublin is worth watching, as the response in recent times has been imaginative and effective.
The shadowy agitator of revolution who is the Hurling Development Officer (HDO) for the county talks about initiatives as either being Push or Pull. Push implies a "bottom up" development designed to increase participation, and Pull refers to a "top down" intervention designed to bring standards up. The schools system in Dublin is getting a lot of pushing and pulling these days.
There are decent levels of participation but a poor overall standard. There are traditional rugby schools which, thanks to the work of clubs like Kilmacud Crokes, Ballyboden and Castleknock, have good numbers of hurlers within their ranks but which don't compete. For instance, four of the Kilmacud side which won last year's All-Ireland hurling féile are students in Gonzaga College. On Saturday, the team which represented Dublin Colleges had only three players from the traditional northside clubs which we used to think of as the heart and soul of the game in the city. O'Toole's or Craobh Ciarán weren't represented at all.
Schools, especially secondary schools, are a complex problem, especially when you are coming from behind, as the GAA in Dublin is. In Dublin, the bulwark against decline has been mass participation and a crowded, uncoordinated fixture schedule which pits school fixtures against the busiest time of year for underage club fixtures as well. This strategy has been implemented in an environment where Dublin schools don't have the depth of coaching talent or volunteers in their schools anymore, with the result that schools fulfil fixtures while often not training or preparing for them.
Dublin is moving to catch up in more imaginative ways which involve clubs taking a stake in the development of their local schools. Clubs in Dublin tend to ignore what is happening in their local schools, but Kilkenny is as fine example of why that is a mistake. Four Kilkenny schools have access to A standard Leinster Colleges hurling: Castlecomer, Kilkenny CBS, Callan and St Kieran's. Which means about 120 players every year are in squads training and competing at that level. It's a system which the county board takes an active interest in and which clubs accept the effectiveness of.
Dublin schools have a high level of teacher engagement, but it is spread thinly over many small schools as opposed to being concentrated in a number of large schools, as in Kilkenny. Their involvement and the back-up from a fleet of Games Promotion Officers liaising with clubs and county board are the key to the future. Already the system is integrated with the county development squad system. Saturday's team which lost in Carlow but which goes into the All-Ireland series through the backdoor trains en masse with the county minor squad. Teachers can see results and are enthused all over again.
The involvement of clubs and Games Promotions Officers can't ever replace the input of good, enthusiastic teachers, but it enhances their work and gives them the satisfaction of seeing good players getting to a decent level. Amalgamated teams and a co-ordinated approach are giving good players access to good competition.
The HDO, speaking from behind a pillar in a dark, underground carpark, draws the analogy with rugby and what the European Cup did for the best Irish players who wound up on provincial sides playing against French and English superclubs. For a long, long time, too many people have regarded the schools hurling championships as a private club the affairs of which had nothing to do with the rest of us. We lost out.
The young Dubs roll on. St Flannan's came out the back door in Munster. It's good to be keeping such company, good to know there's even better times coming down the line. Sometimes novelty and innovation beats tradition and custom.
