By John Harrington

With the country opening up again it’s a good time for new beginnings, which is why the rebirth of senior club hurling in Ballina Stephenites feels serendipitous.

30 players turned up for the Mayo club’s first senior hurling team training session in ten years on Saturday afternoon, and more than 20 more have expressed an interest in playing this year.

With Caiseal Gaels also fielding a senior team in 2021, Mayo now have six senior hurling clubs which is a 50% increase in the space of just two years.

Ballina's rebirth wouldn’t have happened without a good deal of work behind the scenes first.

The initial spark came from Adrian Hession, Mayo GAA’s Games Promotion Officer who is responsible for underage hurling development in the county.

He could see that Ballina were producing some talented hurlers at underage level where the club was still active, but many of them were withering on the vine because without a senior team to eventually graduate to they had nothing to aim for.

Hession wrote down the names of all the young hurlers in the town aged in their late teens or very early twenties he reckoned would be interested in playing senior club hurling.

It was a start, but many more names would be needed to make the project a viable one, so he picked up the phone and rang former Ballina Stephenites and Mayo hurler, Gary Barrett, now living in Galway.

Would Barrett be able to shake every tree in the vicinity of Ballina and see how many potential hurlers he could dislodge?

Barrett was unsure at first when the proposition was made, but after looking at the names on Hession’s list and then writing down a few more on one of his own, he realised there could be something in this project after all.

“For a long time there all I had was a phone, a piece of paper, and the couch at home,” Barrett told GAA.ie

“I was just on the phone ringing lads, WhatsApping lads, texting lads. What's your story? Could you help us out and play hurling with us?

“A lot of lads who would have played for the club back in the late noughties were still only in their mid to late thirties so a lot of them were happy to lace up the boots again.

“One of my own brothers would have been hurling down with Western Gaels in Sligo with around 10 other Ballina lads because Ballina didn’t have a senior team, and all 10 of them have now come back to the club.

“It was a lovely feeling to see 30 lads on the field on Saturday for the first training session because until then it wasn't quite real.

“We had a nice little session with a good mix of ages. Adrian Hession came down to help, I had another coach do the warm-up, and I would have bought some bibs and sliotars myself.

“I wanted them to come up and see that we were half organised, we're not a second fiddle set-up.

“There was a great buzz, but hurling in Mayo is a big challenge so we have to work at it as much as we can.

“It's not like football where lads will just turn up. We have to work at it to get players and keep players involved and show them from the start that we want to do this as well as we can.”

Barrett is going in with his eyes wide open because he knows from previous experience that hurling’s share-price in Ballina can be prone to wild fluctuations.

Back in the late noughties the game was in fairly rude health in the town, and he was one of the key players on the Ballina team that won what was only their third ever Mayo senior title in 2007.

Last that year they experienced the heady heights of playing the reigning All-Ireland champions Portumna in the Connacht Senior Club Hurling Championship Final, but within a couple of years that talented Ballina team was decimated.

“What really hit us was recession in 2009,” says Barrett. “A lot of lads left to go to other countries and I did a lot of work in Eastern Europe myself so I wasn't really around either.

“Then the thing sort of fell apart because there was no-one left to keep it going. They kind of kept the grassroots going, they kept the juveniles going from U-8s to U-11s to put a bit of focus back into it. But we probably lost a lot of players over the years because we didn't have a senior team to play with.

“Because there was no senior team they didn't see the point of playing when there was nothing to aim towards.

“Ballina is a big sporting town so it's hard to keep the good players because usually the good players are good at everything.

“Hurling was always bottom of the pile because they didn't see the point so instead they'd play football, soccer, or rugby which might be more traditional sports than hurling in Ballina even though hurling has been pretty well placed through the '80s, '90s, noughties.

“For the past 10 years hurling died a little bit but I suppose when things go that bad you can take the positive out of it because things can only get better.”

Already, it feels like the project is gathering momentum. The senior hurlers are getting great backing from the club, new recruits are joining all the time, and the prospect of playing their first competitive match in June is something really tangible to aim towards.

There are still obvious challenges to overcome and high on Barrett’s list is sourcing a sponsor for the team that will enable them to purchase some much-needed playing equipment.

Things have already come a long way though from the day he sat down on that couch and started writing names on a piece of paper, and now that he has the bit between his teeth he’s in no mood to stop pushing forward.

“It's like anything, if people see that it's going well then they will come out and support you,” he says. “If things are going bad, they just run a mile.

“So we'll just try to keep things positive, keep numbers high, and keep the good vibe and good talk about hurling in Ballina going. Hopefully we'll make it grow as much as we can. 

“People are saying to me it's a big undertaking, but when something is a passion it's never a problem. That’s why I've no problem making the commitment.”