Ballygunner won their 11th Waterford senior hurling title in succession last Sunday. They are now aiming for a fourth Munster club title in a row, uncharted territory given even their three-in-a-row last year was the first time that had ever happened.
Blackrock in Cork won all five of their provincial titles in the 1970s and that was good enough to keep them out on their own on top of the Munster roll of honour – until Ballygunner drew level with them last year.
The roll of honour is an illuminating way of looking at the competition’s history. Na Piarsaigh in Limerick have four titles, all won in one six-year period. There have been a number of two-in-a-rows, by teams like Newmarket-on-Fergus, St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield, and Roscrea – and they are the only titles they won.
That’s how it goes. You have a special team, you win your titles while you can, and you retreat to the pack.
You see it in every province – in Galway, two weeks ago, Athenry played Portumna in the Senior B championship. They have won seven All-Ireland club titles between them, all inside the last 27 years, and now they’re not even competing in the top rank of their own county championship.
That’s what makes Ballyhale in Kilkenny so special – they’ve won All-Ireland titles in five different decades.
Ballygunner are going through an incredible run, but they’ve still only one All-Ireland title, and so instead of being sated and complacent going through the Waterford hurling championship, they’re incredibly motivated to get back to the provincial and national level.
It seems utterly insane to say it but, far from getting bored at their continual success, Ballygunner are driven by the feeling that they haven’t won half enough in this golden period.
That makes the Waterford club hurling championship a rather liminal space. The teams trying to end Ballygunner’s utter domination of the club scene in the county should at least be able to count on the champions’ complacency, but they can’t. The Waterford club title is a means to an end – Ballygunner know they can’t stamp their authority on the national scene if they don’t win it.
And so Abbeyside were the latest team to run up against the Ballygunner behemoth last Sunday and it ended in predictable, demoralising defeat, 2-28 to 2-10. The champions were run a little closer than had usually been the case in games earlier in the season but, when it came down to the crunch, they were untouchable.
Ballygunner’s dominance has been so complete that there’s an argument it has actually moulded how both games, Gaelic football and hurling, are run in the county. Waterford’s approach to their club schedule this summer has been the same as it has been in recent years, playing all their hurling competitions to a complete finish before starting the football championships at all grades this weekend.
Wexford had also played their championships off like that in recent years, before this year going back to the more commonly used approach of alternating every week or every couple of weeks between hurling and football, as is the system in Dublin, Galway, Cork, Clare and other counties with an established tranche of dual players.
One of the key reasons for Wexford’s reversion to the more commonly-used timetable is the lengthy gap between the county hurling final and that team’s debut in the Leinster club championship. It wasn’t the only reason, but it was certainly in the mix.
It was felt that it was a big hindrance to the hurling champions’ ability to stay at the requisite level to compete in the province ... but that just isn’t a factor in Waterford, as Ballygunner are so experienced at managing that gap that it doesn’t make any difference to them. They’ve already tailored their own approach to the hurling season, aiming to be peaking in December rather than in August or September.
I’ve been living and playing hurling and football in Waterford all year, with An Sean Phobal, so I have experienced for the first time in my life what’s it like to be a dual player. And it certainly was a struggle getting used to the idea that, having won our first ever game at the Comórtas Peile na Gaeltachta on the June Bank Holiday, we haven’t kicked another (big) ball in competitive action since.
Speaking to people who have experienced both systems, there’s no real consensus on which is preferred. I suppose it makes explicit what is implicit knowledge, that hurling is the more high-profile sport in the county, and that it demands and deserves the best of the weather.
Some club dual players may have a slight preference for the established method used in other counties, but more than enough of them are sufficiently happy with the current situation for it to persist.
The buzz in the county over the last few weeks, all the way down through the grades and including Dan Shanahan’s county Junior B medal with Lismore at the age of 47, would suggest that hurling certainly doesn’t suffer from its position in the calendar.
And there would be an even greater buzz if Ballygunner weren’t running roughshod over the senior grade, you’d presume. Their dominance will end eventually, but it’s hard to see any sign of it just yet.
