Adult hurling returns to Athy after 17 year hiatus

By John Harrington

For the first time in 17 years an Athy adult hurling team will take to the field this Sunday when they play Round Towers in the Kildare Junior Hurling Championship.

The man behind the renaissance of hurling in the south Kildare club is Paul Whelan, who hurled underage for Athy but didn’t have the opportunity to do so as an adult.

He never fully gave up on the dream and eventually decided to make it happen for himself and others like him this year.

“I played hurling years ago underage for Athy up U-16 and there was a few of us back then wanted to go on play with the junior team the following year. Unfortunatley a lot of the lads on the junior team were getting a bit older and they hung up their boots at the same time so we didn’t have enough bodies with the few younger lads who were coming up to make a team.

“So, it kind of went on hiatus then and that was 17 years ago, but I always had it in the back of my head that I’d love see hurling get going again in the club.

“So last year I went to talk to John McCauley (Athy GAA Chairperson) who was one of my hurling coaches underage and I told him I’d really love to try and get it back into the town, because it's the only sport really that's missing from the town.

“He said, look, if you can get bodies and you can get names, we'll have a meeting, and we'll sit down with the committee, and then we'll kind of take it one step at a time.

“When we met them in January I brought a list of names of lads who I knew were interested in playing hurling and they were surprised with the amount I had.

“We put on a skills session at the end of February and I’ve made sure that there was at least one session a week from then up until now.”

Rather than take part in this year’s Kildare Junior Hurling League with little preparation under their belts, Whelan decided he and his team-mates on the newly constituted Athy hurling panel would be better served building up their numbers and sharpening their skills in training until the championship swung around.

Sunday’s match is a journey into the unknown because it’ll be their first ever competitive game, but spirits are high ahead of the clash with Round Towers.

“When you get your touch back in and you start hitting a few shots, it's a great feeling,” says Whelan. “I've seen it as well with the other lads.

“We've had at least a session a week since March and the boys have been coming up fairly regularly, you can see them just getting that little bit sharper.

“There seems to be a good environment around training. Everyone seems to believe in having a laugh and buzzing off each other. Hopefully that'll be the same come Sunday.

“I can’t wait now for the match. We recently got our new jerseys and when I was opening the bag and I took the jersey out and I was looking at it again and just the maroon and white again with the club crest. I was like, ‘jeez, this is brilliant’.

“It's going to be fun, it's going to be challenging, it's going to be exciting to get out and have our first competitive debut, all of us playing together.”

The return of adult hurling to Athy is a welcome one because the club once had a good tradition in the game, winning county titles in 1928, 1936, and 1959, and the absence of the game in recent years has stuck out like a sore thumb in a town with a rich sporting pedigree.

The club’s footballers are reigning county senior champions, Athy Camogie are reigning Kildare Junior champions, Athy Rugby Club have won back-to-back Town Cups, Athy Town football club have won back-to-back titles in the Leinster Senior League, and Athy’s LGFA team is expected to challenge hard for a Junior A title this year.

Sport tends to dominate conversations in the town, so the fact that the club is about to field an adult hurling team again has tongues wagging.

“There's more of a buzz even in the town than I thought there was going to be,” says Whelan.

“I went in for the jersey launch the other night, and I was literally just walking over to O'Brien's, who are our main sponsor, and there was a few people out and around the square, and I don't know how long I spent talking to people about it.

“O'Brien's is kind of the hurling hub of Athy. Frank O'Brien was always involved with hurling when he was alive, there's still photos of old hurling teams from past glories of winning championships in there, hung up on the walls.

“There's a lot of boys around the place who are telling me stories of when they were involved in hurling, a few faces I knew from when they were involved, and a few I didn't know.

“There's a general excitement around it because I think it's new, it's fresh. Hurling over the last few years has a big profile and people see how skilful it is from watching it on telly and I think there's just a big interest in the fact that it's getting going in Athy again.

“Kildare playing up against the top senior teams in Leinster this year, I think that has definitely done wonders for boosting the profile of hurling in the county.

“You can see the impact of that as well with Rathangan entering a hurling team again this year and I think this is the second year that Round Towers are going with a team.”

The simple short-term priority for the Athy hurlers is to fulfil all their fixtures this year and to lay a solid foundation on which to build in the coming years.

The club fields hurling teams at U-16 and Minor level in partnership with St. Laurence’s GAA club, and Whelan is enthused at the prospect of those young players from Athy having an adult team they can progress to in the coming years.

He’s also hopeful that the hurling team’s ranks will also be swelled further by others like him, those who haven’t played hurling for many years but want to try their hand at the sport again.

“I'm hoping so anyway,” he says. “I think it's one of those things where, because it's been out of the town for so long, I think people are excited about it, but I'd say some people were probably still hesitant thinking 'Ah, it still might not happen.'

“Hopefully this weekend against Round Towers, and especially on the 27th when we play Cappagh at home, I'm hoping there'll be a good crowd there.

“Because I think it's one of those things where when somebody goes up and actually sees a match and sees it happening in front of them, they're a bit like, ‘Okay, this is real, I actually might throw my hand to it next year’.”

If you’re interested in hurling with Athy visit their Facebook page HERE