Ahead of Saturday's AIB GAA Hurling All-Ireland Senior Club Championship Semi-Final on Saturday between Ballyea (Clare) and St Thomas' (Galway), GAA.ie talks to Ballyea's Niall Deasy who discusses his thought process ahead of the game as the Clare club look to reach their first ever All-Ireland Senior Club Final.
Throw-in is 5pm in Semple Stadium on Saturday, with tickets available from selected SuperValu and Centra shops nationwide and on matchday - price are Adult €15/£13 while juveniles under 16 are free of charge (Concessions for Senior Citizens/Students are available on match day at the grounds with valid ID only)
By John Harrington
Ballyea and Clare hurler Niall Deasy says his club and county colleague Tony Kelly has God-given skills that are impossible to simply learn.
2013 Hurler and Young Hurler of the Year, Kelly, produced a series of incredible individual displays as he helped Ballyea win Clare and Munster titles last year.
Some of the scores he hit along the way were scarcely believable, but by now Deasy is well used to Kelly’s brilliance.
He’s hurled with him since they were both six years of age, and what he’s seen has convinced him that Kelly is a once-off.
“I don't think you can train what he has to be quite honest, I think it's more natural ability, the sort of balance and the skill levels he has, the way he's able to read the game,” says Deasy.
“I don't think it's possible to train that into someone, you either have it at a young age, develop it or else you don't...he was always fairly gifted.
“There's only so much you can mark him. I remember Colin Ryan did an interview and they were asking about Tony and he just said 'sometimes you're wasting a player marking him, you might as well just put him back as a sweeper and let him off by himself because he's that quick and that fast and well able to read a game that whoever is marking him won't be able to get close to him'. Hopefully he stays that way.”
Ballyea’s progress to the All-Ireland Club Hurling semi-final where they will face Galway and Connacht Champions St. Thomas’ has been a bolt from the blue as they had never even previously won a Clare county title.
They always had potential though, and Deasy believe having access to their inter-county players like Tony Kelly in 2016 for a longer period than they ever had before was the key to their history-making season.
“I think our biggest thing is our county players,” he says. “We have five on the senior hurling and five on the senior football team.
“We're only a very small club. We'd have a panel of 25 or 30 players. So when everyone else is away they don't really train with Ballyea.
“So we'd only have 10 or 15 players at every training session so we'd be fairly dependent on Clare hurlers and footballers getting knocked out early in the championship to be able to get a decent run going with the club. I think that's the same everywhere.
“We lost our first game and then our second game was three months later in August time so we actually had a bit of preparation done.
“Everyone was back training. We had decent numbers of training. You'd have more than 20 players at training every night. We always knew we had the potential to go on, it just took a lot of different things to go our way to be able to.
“This is probably the first year that everyone got a clean break around the summer-time. That was one we were always waiting for.”
Deasy is keenly aware that their stars may never align like this again, and is determined that he and his team-mates seize this massive opportunity.
“It's huge,” he says. “I think everyone understands how big an opportunity it is. There's probably seven or eight teams in Clare that can win it every year.
“There's no guarantee that we'll ever win a county championship again, let alone to get out of Munster. I think everyone understands how big an opportunity it is.”
