By John Harrington

Did you hear the one about the Kerry man who has sparked a hurling renaissance in his corner of Mayo?

The man in question is the appropriately named David Hurley, and he has breathed new life into hurling in Claremorris.

The narrative of hurling in the weaker counties is usually that it is being kept alive by a small group of zealots. Hurley very much fits that profile.

He inherited a love of the game from his father who was a big fan of Galway hurling when they were going strong in the 1980s.

Hurley played the game himself for Killarney Legion and then for a spell in London before moving to Claremorris in 2000 with his wife who is a native of Swinford.

He was keen for his twin sons Dara and Niall to play hurling in Claremorris, but the game was ailing in the club.

Playing numbers were sparse and underage teams were cobbled together at some age-grades but not others and there was no long-term development plan.

Hurley’s twin sons were U-8 so he decided he’d start coaching at that level and from those humble beginnings hurling in the club was reborn and is now blossoming.

As the club’s Hurling Committee Chairman, Hurley has really driven the thing on, but he’s keen to emphasise how it has taken a collective effort by a growing number of coaches and parents to transform hurling from an afterthought to a vibrant sport in Claremorris.

“The way it works with young lads is that there's sometimes kudos in something a bit different and when a few of them do it they'll drag a few more along with them and that’s how you first start building something,” Hurley told GAA.ie

“It has taken a lot of hard work, but we persisted and eventually what we decided was to be a bit more pro-active once we had the thing up and running.

“At a meeting it was suggested we could enter the team in the Community Games which we did and ended up getting to a Final in Athlone which was a great experience.

“We just said we needed to do other stuff like that and decided our big goal would be to try to get a team to qualify for Féile which isn't easy in a weak county like Mayo coming where we come from.

“It played into our hand because Féile was hosted in Mayo when that first group of players got to U-14 and they were a good group. We got to a Shield Final which was an incredible experience for everyone and really drove the club on.

“That was 2018 and then in 2019 we qualified directly for Féile down in Cork and Kerry and had a fantastic weekend there and got to a Cup semi-final.

“We've been trying hard to raise our level but it's not all about winning. What we want to do is offer the kids a good experience, good coaching, and a bit of craic. If you get enough good lads and they have enthusiasm for it and they're getting good coaching, then the wins will come eventually.

“It's not an easy fix, it's a hell of a lot of work to keep that going and to have a presence in the schools and to be driving it and pushing it alongside football.

“If you take your foot off the gas at all, then it goes backwards very, very quickly. You'll have gaps where you won't be able to field teams and if that happens you'll be in a bad place."

The numbers best tell the story about how just how much underage hurling has developed in Claremorris in the last eight years.

When Hurley started off with that original group of U-8s he had just a handful of players to work with. That generation has grown to a panel of 22 who will compete in the minor grade this year and have won multiple titles along the way.

Last year’s U-14s had a panel of 25 players and won the Mayo A title having also won it at U-13 the year previously.

And when it looked like they might be struggling for numbers at U-12 last year, Hurley took charge of that team himself and eventually grew the group from nine players to 26.

The numbers are healthy too at U-10 and U-8 level so it looks like the supply lines are in a good place for the foreseeable future.

Ultimately the hope is that this year’s minor team will form the bulk of a junior team in the club in two or three years time which would be a major step forward for hurling in Claremorris.

“The big lesson that I learned is that I saw so many clubs in Mayo fielding teams at U-10 and then having nothing at U-12 or U-14 and then maybe fielding again at U-16,” says Hurley.

“I just felt because it was so broken up that they were never going to be able to develop properly. Every club needs to have a meaningful team at every age and that needs to be driven.

“That can be hard to do because Mayo is such a football-mad county and those that want to get involved with teams are only interested in football.

“But you can be lucky and strike gold and have a good working relationship with the football people in the club and we were very fortunate that Jimmy Nally was appointed club chairman when he was because he gave us great support.

“And then when you start making progress and people can see the work that's being done and the lads benefiting then even the doubters that think hurling is in the way of football as opposed to complementing football which is what of course it does do, it brings on the skills of every child, and they should be allowed play it in every county.

“That's the reason I drove it here. It should be the right of every child that if they're given the opportunity to play Gaelic football they should be given the opportunity to play hurling alongside it.

“That's why hurling is failing in the weaker counties a lot of the time, it's just not facilitated from the county board down. That's not any county board person in particular, it's just the culture. It's the way things are and the way things have been and it's very hard to break that mould. With everyone working in the county together, hurling could be pushed on a bit more."

There’s no doubt that developing hurling in the weaker counties can feel like a Sisyphean task for those trying to push that boulder up the hill, but what Hurley is achieving in Claremorris shows that where there’s a will, there can be a way.

The hope is that their success and the equally impressive development of hurling by the Caiseal Gaels club in recent years can act as an inspiration for others in Mayo to follow in their path.

The Mayo hurling community might be a small one, but it’s a passionate one, as exemplified by Austin Henry and Jackie Coyne who have devised a 10-year Strategic Plan for Mayo Hurling which hopes to double the number of senior clubs in the county in that time-frame.

“Mayo has only four senior clubs which means we rank 29th in the country,” Henry told GAA.ie.

“There's only three counties that have less senior clubs that Mayo so we have punched above our weight really when you consider how well we’ve competed at inter-county level.

"Clubs like Tooreen and Ballyhaunis have done great work to backbone the county team for a long time but we really need to deepen the talent pool so we're not always reliant on a single club to produce eight or nine county hurlers in any given year.

“When we wrote up our Strategic Plan a year and a half ago our chief aim was to get to a point where we could have eight adult clubs in the county.

“You have to start that process somewhere, and last year we were able to get eight clubs to field at U-12 level which was definitely a major win for us. A lot of that is down to our excellent Games Promotion Officer, Adrian Hession, who does tireless work for hurling in the county.

“Caiseal Gaels fielded a Junior team last year, Ballina might be able to field one this year, and Claremorris will hopefully be also able to field one in the next year or two, so that’s seven out of eight clubs competing in the senior grade in the first three years or so of our plan which is not bad.”

As encouraging as those green shoots are, Henry knows that sustaining any growth of hurling in the county will be a real challenge.

He believes for it to be possible, a number of key objectives that are outlined in the Mayo Hurling 10 Year Strategic Plan will also have to be met.

“We have identified that having a second GPO is critical to all of that,” says Henry.

“Adrian Hession has gotten hurling into 44 national schools, but if we don't continue with those lads into hurling clubs and especially into post-primary schools and have a fairly serious post-primary schools competition in Mayo, then it's going to be very difficult to keep it going.

“Adrian does absolutely Trojan work, but there's only so much he can do on his own. We know getting a second Games Promotion Officer in the current climate will be difficult, but it’s encouraging that we now have good communication channels with the County Board since Liam Moffat came in as chairman.

“We have a Hurling Board in Mayo which is made up of a Chairman, Secretary, and PRO and we want to be able to enlarge it so you'll also have a Hurling Fixtures Committee that will run the whole thing a bit more professionally.

“We also believe there should be hurling officers in all eight clubs that would liaise with a central hurling officer who would also be on the Hurling Board.

“That central coaching officer would then link in with the likes of our Games Promotion Officer, Adrian Hession, Connacht Hurling Director, Damien Coleman, and National Hurling Development Manager, Martin Fogarty.

“The whole coaching of hurling in this county needs to be properly managed. It can't just continue to be haphazard.

“At the moment we're relying a lot on individuals in clubs driving the thing on without enough support. David Hurley in Claremorris would be a good example of that, he is doing absolutely Trojan work with great success.”

At times Hurley has questioned just how sustainable that work he has put into Claremorris hurling is, but with three new coaches already lined up for the 2021 season and with good numbers at all age-groups, he feels like they’re steadily getting to point where the future of the project won’t be solely reliant on his own dedication to the cause.

And as challenging as it has been at times to develop hurling in Claremorris, it has also been hugely satisfying to see how it has grown and the enjoyment the young players who have participated have derived from it.

He has seen attitudes change along the way too and now hurling is no longer perceived as the ugly duckling it might once have been in the club. There’s a growing respect for what is being achieved as the silverware steadily accumulates.

“I think people's eyes opened up eventually when they saw a Claremorris team playing in an U-16 hurling A Final,” says Hurley.

“To see lads catching ball and striking the ball like you'd see a Kilkenny lad doing it. We have free-takers on our team who are as good as any you'd see in Galway or Tipperary or Kilkenny striking the ball 60 yards.

“Having our players get to that level is just wonderful to see. Their skills, their soloing, their striking, their tackling, just everything coming to fruition at an older age.

“You'd see faces down at our matches now that you would have never seen before. The secretary of the club rang me recently to compliment me on the development of the players but I told him not to compliment me because so many good people have done this work.

“No-one can do it on their own, you need to get a lot of good people to come together. And as you progress you need more and more people.

“This year we'll hopefully have three new coaches getting involved which is pure gold. Any year you get three new coaches to help you with hurling in a club in Mayo is beyond your expectations. And we need them all because the club is stretching now.

“The hope is as you get more good people involved coaching teams and more children playing the game then the game will continue to flourish and grow and it'll be an automatic option for kids in the club.

“What you want is for every child in your club to be given that chance to play the great sport of hurling.”

And so say all of us.