By John Harrington

Uachtaráin Chumann Lúthchleas Gael, Aogán Ó Fearghail, believes newly appointed National Hurling Development Manager Martin Fogarty’s background in teaching makes him ideally qualified for the job.

Fogarty is best known for his role as a selector/coach with the Kilkenny senior team from 2005 to 2013, but he has also done Trojan work in the past at developing strong links between clubs and schools in Kilkenny.

“Martin is a primary school principal, so in that role alone he has been working at developing hurling in schools constantly,” said Ó Fearghail. “He has done a great job on the whole school’s network.

“There are a whole lot of reasons for Kilkenny’s success but one of them is that every school and every club has a huge link. Martin was very much responsible for putting an organisation into that. He was always involved with Brian Cody for many years and then in his own right with the Under-21s.

“He’s a hugely passionate man and he understands what it is to get a hurler from a very low base up to a fairly decent standard of playing. He travels the country and I have seen him over the last number of years in every province delivering coaching sessions at weekends. I have no doubt he has the right feel for this job at this time and I think it will be a big boost for hurling.

“I don’t want to put too much expectation on him, but the hurling map is enlarging. The facts are there to show that it is. I couldn’t make the same claim about the standards because I don’t know how you would measure that in the same way. But certainly there are more children and adults than ever before playing the game of hurling. I think Martin’s job now is to see if the standard can go up among that increased hurling population.”

Ó Fearghail expects Fogarty to initially focus a lot of his energy on counties at Christy Ring Cup level, but admits his remit is a very broad one.

“Everything. He’s not going to be shackled and told what he can or cannot do. He will look at all of that and if Martin has a particular idea in that area then we will support that. I have no doubt he will be focussing on a lot of the counties in the Christy Ring Cup I would suggest initially.

"I believe one man can make an awful lot of difference to a lot of things in the world, and I think the Director of Hurling will be no different. There's none there at the moment. When you move from that position to having one, I don't want to put too much expectation on his shoulders but I have no doubt he will make a difference.

“He absolutely will, because a lot of the counties who are promoting hurling and finding difficulties, they find it hard to get around the system sometimes, whereas if there's a Director of Hurling, he'll be able to facilitate and help in all of that, and take a dispassionate view, particularly looking at the number of games club players play, the standard and style of coaching involved, and just all of those things. Of course he'll make a difference. If you have the right person in the right job at any time, you have to make a difference."

Ó Fearghail revealed yesterday that Fogarty’s appointment took some time because the GAA interviewed a number of candidates and wanted to ensure they had a defined job spec in place before appointing their man.

"He applied, as did others, but it took a while to do it. There wasn't a delay but the key thing for us was getting the job spec right; that we knew exactly what they were doing. We didn't want to appoint a Director of Hurling and then say, 'What's this fella going to do now?' So there is a very good spec about what a Director of Hurling should do. Many interviews took place and he emerged as the candidate we are proceeding with."

“We deliberately took our time. We deliberately wanted to wait and see, we wanted someone who would be a little bit more strategic in how we plan it, so I think Martin brings all the qualities we are looking for.

“He’s Director of Hurling and there is a Directorate, if I can call it that, surrounding that so he’ll be working from Croke Park. We had a Director of Hurling in the past and he tended to be in various counties organising coaching sessions. We don’t want that this time. We need something a little different. We need someone to plan and particularly look at counties that maybe we might be bringing up to the next level.”