By John Harrington

With over 1,000 coaching sessions completed in every county of Ireland and 300,000 miles clocked on his car, National Hurling Development Manager, Martin Fogarty, is ready to drive off into the sunset.

His five-year contract in the role is up, and such was the energy and effectiveness with which he fulfilled his brief that a significant void will be left by his absence.

He achieved a lot, especially when it came to encouraging the growth of hurling in previously stony soil, and is hugely enthusiastic about the hard work of both the GAA staff and club volunteers in those less hurling-fertile counties.

But, even now as he prepares to leave the position, the Kilkenny-man prefers to remain solution-focused rather than reminisce too much about the gains made and memorable times had.

Because the truth remains a harsh one – It’s 137 years since the GAA was founded and yet still hurling remains an endangered sport in many counties, and close to extinction in some.

There are eight senior hurling clubs or less in 13 counties, and four or less in six counties.

New hurling clubs are being established every year around the world, and yet at home in Ireland few significant gains have been made to popularise a native sport that the United Nations has seen fit to grant special cultural status to.

Such has been the entropy in vast swathes of the country towards the development of hurling for decades and decades that it’s easy to believe we’ll never see it become a national sport in the truest sense, but Fogarty is still convinced that if there is a will there can be a way.

He believes the key to development is to financially reward clubs that promote hurling in the weaker counties and back to the hilt the cross-county club competitions - the Táin Óg Leagues for underage players and the Cúchulainn Cup for adults - that have already had a hugely positive impact by giving isolated clubs a meaningful programme of matches.

“It can definitely change for the better,” he told GAA.ie. “Longford with three adult clubs have to aspire to having six. And then they have to aspire to that six becoming 12. The same in Cavan and the same in every county. Leitrim with two have to aspire to have four and so on.

“I firmly believe that if the GAA implement what I have recommended to them, and these recommendations come from the people on the ground at the coal-face, players, mentors, and our very good staff, then it will revolutionise hurling if it's put into place.

“That starts off by helping the existing clubs, which means providing the games.

“So instead of a club having three or four games a year, maybe packed into a weekend, that they have a meaningful competition. And that is the Táin Óg at underage and the Cúchulainn at adult level.

“That means at the very least having a six, seven, eight-game programme that's obviously going to be spread across 10 weeks. What that will do is first of all ensure every club has a competition that’s hard to win.

“So instead of a lad coming home with 15 county medals that he got by playing 15 matches, he's going to be in a competition that's a proper challenge. He's going to have variety. And if you have that you’ll attract more players and you’ll have more players training and playing.

“If you're going to have a competition that involves eight games over 10 weeks, then you're going to do at least 10 training sessions. You're going to do a bit of pre-season training.

“This is vital because very few athletes want to take part in a Mickey Mouse competition.

“Real athletes want something that's challenging. Now, they might never win it, but they want to be challenging. My own club for example despite playing at senior level since 1959, having dropped to Intermediate for just three of those years, have never won the county championship. But, by God, every year they want to win it and work tremendously hard to do so. That's the point I'm making.

“If we as an organisation can really put those competitions in place and respect them to the hilt, the current players will train more, and they will get better. There will be a knock-on effect with their inter-county teams. There will be a knock-on effect in that more players will want to play the game.

“I have met a huge amount of football people who say they like hurling but basically it's not worth togging out for. To play two or three matches in the year is not what they want. If they had a competition that was meaningful, they would take part.

“That will have a big knock-on effect and when that happens other clubs will see, yeah, this is worth playing. And I'm firmly convinced that existing clubs will start fielding hurling teams and not just football teams.

“But we need to support them financially because it's very difficult for people to run hurling in those clubs.

“I would be very confident that there are people now at the top of the GAA who may not have been aware of some of this and are now realising that the biggest challenge the GAA has is to foster the game in those counties and to foster the game by what we're talking about, by making sure the Táin Óg and Cúchulainn are firmly established and supported with no interference allowed into them.

“It's important to say that. I use the word sabotage and that can happen. You can have a county board that will back it and county officers who back it, but it just takes one person in a club to go off and organise a football game in opposition to a hurling game and that's where the problem starts.”

Fogarty doesn’t believe it’s simply enough to consolidate existing hurling clubs by giving them meaningful games, he wants the GAA to have the ambition to encourage county boards to establish new hurling clubs at underage level in parts of their county where none currently exist.

“It's like sowing seeds,” says Fogarty. “If you sow 10 seeds and if only two of them come to fruition, then that's two more than you had. I'm listening to people saying we'll consolidate what we have. That's a cop out. That's saying I don't want to do anything. Consolidate and nurture your current crop but continually plant new seeds so that in a few years, despite some seeds falling by the wayside, you will have a much larger forest.

“You consolidate what you have by providing these games, but at the same time you start new nurseries. You try to start 10 areas of hurling in, say, Mayo, with the hope that at least three will survive.

“Fermanagh is another great example. They had just one adult club until this year and that was Lisbellaw. However, in Fermanagh, there are now seven underage units and if those units can be grown and brought with support up to adult level, theoretically in five years’ time you could have eight adult units and that would be unbelievable. That's what needs to happen.

“The support has to come from the top. It must be financed because hurling costs money. Once it’s financed then the counties have to proactively look around and encourage clubs to start up hurling.

“We're seeing it in a lot of places where you have dual nurseries, for example. And people need not to be afraid. Football clubs need not to be afraid that if hurling gets going that it's going to interfere with their football. It won't interfere with it, it'll actually enhance it.

“If you could get a county to decide we'll have a really serious go at it saying, right, are there six areas in this county we could sow seeds in, try a bit of hurling and encourage them? If three of those survive, that's what we're after. I can really see that happening.”

When he looks back on the highlights of his five years as National Hurling Development Manager, it’s the visits to newly established hurling clubs that really stand out in his mind’s eye.

It takes a huge amount of work and dedication to start a hurling club from scratch in parts of the country where little or no tradition of the game exists, and Fogarty has been hugely impressed by those who have risen to the challenge.

“When I see new clubs starting up, I get a great kick out of it, and two of them stand out for slightly different reasons,” he says.

“One is Laochra Óg down in West Cork. In a totally football area, these people started up around the time I started in this role, and I was privileged to be down there a few times. They have progressed so much that earlier this year they signed a lease on their own new club grounds.

“To see that happen, that is unbelievable. To watch those people build something from nothing.

“When I went down there first all they had was a farmer's field down a back lane with a portacabin as a dressing-room.

“The hills on the field were so bad, they had two juvenile pitches set up on it, that when you were standing on one pitch you could just see the tops of the goals on the other. That's a fact! It was unbelievable!

“I just get some kick out of seeing how far they've come in such a short space of time, and it’s the same for another new club, St. Finbarr’s, up in Derry.

“A few people had gotten hurling going in an existing Gaelic Football only club in Derry, but then their club banned the hurling. Those people should hang their heads in shame.

“Local Regional Hurling Officer Kevin Hinphey did tremendous work in the background and on the field since, and thankfully a neighbouring club opened their doors to those who wanted to play hurling and allowed them to use their facilities.

“When they made that move, they quickly went from having 15 players to 50 players and now I think they have 150 players and are competing now up to U-15 level.

“For me the real joy is looking at the dedication of the GAA hurling staff and club volunteers in those disenfranchised areas because, with my hand on my heart, if I was living in some of those counties, I couldn't say I'd be involved in hurling because it's so difficult.

“When you have a young lad of 13 or 15 coming over to you after a Táin Óg game and saying thanks for organising it, it’s very moving what it means to them. You wouldn't see that in Kilkenny, Galway, or Tipp because players take hurling for granted. How the youngsters even know you were involved, and thanking you for organising it, I mean that would bring a tear to your eye.

“I remember after one of the Táin Óg Finals a couple of years ago up in Breffni Park when a team from Donegal played a team from Louth and they were beaten fairly well.

“Their mentor came over to me after and said they were delighted, they didn't mind getting beaten well because now they could see the level they had to rise to. Sure, God, that would tear the heart out of you! That's what would lift me.”

Fogarty’s remit as National Hurling Development Manager was so broad and his passion for spreading the hurling gospel so zealous that it’s difficult to sum up all that he did over the last five years.

He was a driving-force behind the huge success of the Táin Óg and Cúchulainn Cups but is keen to credit Armagh native Ryan Gaffney and Monaghan duo Pauric Dowdall and Aidan Morgan, regional development officers at the time, for coming up with the concept in the first place and doing the early heavy lifting.

When Fogarty saw its value he quickly drew Connacht clubs into it via Connacht Hurling Development Manager Damien Coleman who needed no convincing of its value.

It has thrived since with over sixty clubs involved and driven by a small very dedicated hurling staff who pull out all the stops to make the games happen.

Fogarty also supported Provincial and County Games Development Administrators roll out their various initiatives.

He offered his coaching expertise to countless club teams as well as county senior and underage teams and squads.

He established hurling coaching courses for teachers and coaching work-shops tailored to the specific needs of clubs, counties, and provinces.

Perhaps one of his most lasting impacts will be the work he did to promote ring-fencing Monday nights as a hurling-only night in the Táin Óg League counties.

Previously, hurling competitions and matches were shunted here, there, and everywhere with the result that sometimes they fell through the cracks altogether.

But now there’s a broad acceptance that hurling has its own day in the week which has proven invaluable for those trying to grow the game in those developing counties.

Attitudes in some areas have been slow to change, but Fogarty is hopeful now that hurling is no longer perceived as the annoyance, or even the threat to football, it once was by many.

“I'm fairly confident that we're at a stage where we have 90 per cent buy-in in terms of Monday nights being ring-fenced for hurling in those counties,” says Fogarty.

“That is happening and I'm pretty confident now that people are starting to see the benefits.

“I've always given the example of Slaughtneil. That in a small club not only are they able to play the two games, but they were also within a puck of a ball or two from being All-Ireland champions in both codes.

“It's not that you're expecting all teams to be at that level, but Slaughtneil are at that level. At the weekend you saw Loughmore-Castleiney doing the same by showing they can't just compete in both codes, they can be absolutely among the best clubs in the country in both codes.

“That's something I think all clubs and all counties should take on board. They don't have to play the two games equally, but they can definitely play the two games.”

Covid-19 has been challenging in lots of different ways to developing hurling, most obviously in how it curtailed the Táin Óg and Cúchulainn competitions, but there have still been so many good hurling news stories in the past couple of years.

The common thread between them all is that if you give people, both young and old, the opportunity to play hurling, they’ll grasp it with both hands.

“You only have to look at the savage work done by (Games Promotion Officer) Adrian Hession in Mayo this year,” says Fogarty.

“Ballina were back playing at junior level after a big gap and so were Moytura. We had those guys training above in the Connacht GAA Dome last week and watching the buzz they got from it would lift you.

“Then there was Fermanagh this year. Their GDA, Emmet Conlon, and Hurling Officer, Kieran Farmer, got a South Fermanagh adult team going. And they got another adult team going, Erne Gaels, that have grown from a juvenile club. So that was two new teams playing in Fermanagh.

“They took part in a South Ulster League that the lads organised that was a trial for the Cúchulainn and that worked out brilliantly. The likes of that, you'd have a pep in your step walking when you're hearing those stories.”

While Covid-19 disrupted the games schedule and made it more difficult to get boots on pitches, necessity was also the mother of invention as Fogarty and the Provincial Hurling Development Managers made good use of technology to scatter more seeds than ever.

“We have to say it quietly but we actually got to spread the coaching gospel to way more coaches than before,” says Fogarty. “Chancing our arms with webinars and bluffing the technology we reached thousands of coaches. Damien Coleman from Connacht and myself organized a couple which rapidly grew into a series while Kevin Kelly with his staff did similar in Ulster.

“In one way it was easy - sitting in the living room with tea and biscuits, no rain or frost or travel and hurling away. However, behind the scenes it was savage work, preparing presentations, videos, bookings, et cetera. The chat after most presentations went on late into the nights with hurling people with no homes to go to!

“Two of the webinars stand out. One was a feature on Slaughtneil when almost 2,000 people were online, and the other was our ‘Hurling Around the World’ webinar where we had representatives from most of the hurling units across the world ‘in studio’."

His time is nearly up, but Fogarty is still brimming with ideas about how to develop hurling in both big ways and small.

Before Covid-19 hit he was ready to begin a pilot-programme in Longford he hoped could eventually be rolled out to other counties with a small number of hurling clubs.

The plan was to bring together the non-county players from all the clubs in the county under one umbrella for training sessions with high-profile coaches while their county players were in action in the Ring, Rackard, and Meagher Cups.

Another idea of his he hopes the GAA will pursue in the future is to harness the ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ status given to hurling by establishing UNESCO Hurling Heritage Hubs around the country.

These would target primary schools in non-traditional hurling areas by giving them start-up equipment, grouping these schools in clusters of at least three, and training teachers to deliver a coaching programme to the pupils.

By promoting hurling as an intrinsic part of our culture and including it in the school curriculum as a subject rather than simply a form of physical exercise, Fogarty believes new life could be breathed into the sport on a truly national scale.

There were frustrations along the way and some days were harder than others, but Fogarty ends his time as National Hurling Development Manager satisfied that he did his best, enthused by the pure love for hurling he found in all parts of the country, and in no doubt that it was a most enjoyable period of his life.

“Of course I enjoyed it, it was a privilege,” he says. “I'm not saying it wasn't hard work, of course it's hard work, but you enjoy it because you're meeting the heart and soul of the GAA.

“I’m not emigrating or anything, but I will miss meeting many that have become great friends. One such person that I didn’t get to say goodbye to and who sadly passed away during covid was Seamus McShane from Sheep Island Hostel in Ballintoy Co. Antrim.

“When working up in that area I generally stay at the hostel, not because Croke Park had me on a budget or anything but for the sheer atmosphere and beauty of the area and the hurling passion. It’s close to Ballycastle near the Giants Causeway looking over at the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland. I’ve actually take a few teams up to stay and play there and we paid tribute to Seamus on one of the webinars.

“I met great people all around the country. People that are pulling teams together from five football clubs and they're working on their own or with one or two others if they're lucky.

“You're meeting coaches and players who are just hungry for knowledge.

I wouldn't have called it a job, it was more of a vocation, really.

“It was an honour.”