St Eunan's hurlers go for double delight in Donegal

By John Harrington

Tomorrow, St. Eunan’s Letterkenny will contest both the Donegal senior and intermediate hurling finals.

It’s a serious achievement and testifies to the huge work done in the club to nurture the game.

Paddy Flood has been at the coalface of that work for many years and is an assistant manager with both the senior and intermediate teams that will play against Setanta and Dungloe respectively.

A native of Dublin where he was a Good Counsel clubman, when he moved to Letterkenny he hurled for Burt because St. Eunan’s only had a football team at the time.

Then, in 1996, hurling got going again and ‘blow-ins’ like Flood, Denis Murphy from Wexford, and Eugene Organ from Clare really helped to keep the game alive by both playing and coaching the game.

They rightfully take a lot of satisfaction from helping to develop a new generation of homegrown players who should ensure a bright long-term future for the game in the Donegal town.

“There are quite a lot of guys similar to myself who moved up,” says Flood. “I could start naming names but I'd leave out so many of them who ran the underage teams here and who created the senior team we have now.

“Obviously what we wanted was for hurling to put real roots down and I think we've hopefully reached that point.

“It’s always great to have outsiders like me to come in who are committed to the game. But the real win is having your own local lads driving it which I think is going to happen.

“We had a nice event last weekend down at the Academy with the senior hurlers. It's just great that the kids can see that these are all Donegal lads, that's it's a team of Letterkenny men playing.

“A lot of work has gone into it over the last number of years. To build any team in any part of the country takes a lot of work but it's great to be at the point now where we are competitive.

“The key thing that clubs have learned up here is that it's not so much winning championships at underage, it's having teams at every age-group so you're constantly feeding new players in and we've been lucky enough to have that.

“It can be hard to find space for multiple sports for elite players at underage. Football academies, Gaelic or soccer, are moving towards exclusivity. It's hard work but, look, we've managed to keep it going.

“In some clubs I know hurling can struggle with the football element, but in our club the mindset is to try to let the dual players play both codes which is great.”

Both the St Eunan’s senior and intermediate teams train together which Flood believes has created a really positive atmosphere that has helped both teams raise their level this year.

“We've had a really enjoyable year with the way things have worked out,” he says. “We've a lot of guys home of the right age, they're not in college anymore, so we've had big numbers training all the way through and we made a decision that we're going to train as two teams together.

“I think that's been of benefit to both teams. The Intermediates have come on greatly and for the seniors it's hard to beat coming to training and there's 30 guys there. The two teams have been very supportive of each other so it's been great year.

“We've had a huge amount of games between tournaments and going looking for games all around. We've done well but everything is on the line now on Saturday. The day has come when the season will be decided.”

Many of these St. Eunan’s players were part of the team that won the 2021 Donegal SHC, which was only the second in the club’s history and first since 1972.

They defeated tomorrow’s opponents, Setanta, in that final and it was a sweet victory because they’d lost to them in three of the four previous Donegal finals before that (2017, 2018, 2020).

Setanta have had the better of them since then again though, and Flood doesn’t mind admitting that St Eunan’s have underachieved since 2021.

“The truth of it is that 2021 was huge for us but we would be extremely disappointed that we have not kicked on,” he says.

“It hasn't gone our way the last few years. The three top teams have been very close to each other but Setanta have certainly tended to get the better of us other than in 2021.

“There's a lot riding on this game for us tomorrow. We've lost an awful lot of finals and semi-finals to them so the pressure is on for us, absolutely.”

Back in 2021 Sean McVeigh was very much the most inspirational figure on the St Eunan’s team so the fact they have gotten all the way to this final without their injured star says a lot about how their younger players have matured.

“That's been one of the great things about this year,” says Flood. “We were dealt that body blow in what I think was the last training session the county team had in the Christy Ring.

“We got the news that Sean was going to be missing and that could have gone one or two ways. I'll be honest, the attitude the next day was, 'right, let's move on'. The boys put it completely behind them and I think Sean himself is very gratified about that because there would have been years where an injury to him would have been seen as a death-blow to our chances but the boys have put it completely behind them and gotten on with it.

“That's the big thing we have this year compared to any other year, depth in the squad. We’re going to very much need it for this final because of the death of Ollie Horgan who was a much loved character up here and someone I would have known and played with.

“Two of Ollie's sons (David and Brendan) are on our senior team so obviously we're going to be losing them. They've had a tough time for the last while and our thoughts are with them.

“Losing Brendan and David in any other year would have been pretty much catastrophic for us and it still is a big blow for us, but we have good depth this year and there are more important things in life anyway.”

Hurling is now very much on solid foundations in Letterkenny but a double county final win give the game another huge boost in the town.

“It would absolutely be a dream come through,” says Flood.” I'd love to be sitting here tomorrow night with two cups but we've an awful lot of work to do to get our hands on either of them.”