Damien Casey of Tyrone bursts clear of Mike Lyons of Louth during the Allianz Hurling League Division 3A Round 2 match between Tyrone and Louth at Healy Park in Omagh, Tyrone.
By Michael Devlin
Damien Casey’s work colleagues in the UK knew a bit about hurling. They’d seen it on TV from time to time, and they know Casey plays the game when he’s back home.
What they mightn’t know however is that up until this year he’d scored 21-526 in seven seasons with the Tyrone senior team. They mightn’t know he captained the Red Hand hurlers to a Nicky Rackard Cup title aged just 21, and two national league titles, or that that he’s won four Nicky Rackard Cup Champions 15 awards.
“I’d say we are maybe a bit too far down the pecking order for anybody to know about that!” jokes Casey, an after-sales manager with Matpro Machinery, a material processing machinery supplier based in Cheshire. The Dungannon man had relocated to near the company’s headquarters there up until last year and he routinely, regimentally, travelled home for Tyrone training sessions and matches each and every time.
He has since taken up a new role of Sales Manager in Ireland, where he is the main point of contact for all of the company’s Irish activity. The role still requires hours and hours of travelling each week, including regular trips back over to the UK. There he is met with questions from his curious work mates who caught glimpses of last summer’s hurling classics.
“People couldn’t get their head around the sport, they thought we were all a wee bit mad what we were at!” remarks the 25-year-old. “From those top tier games that were on TV, there were a few occasions that it was mentioned and ones in work knew that I’d played it. They were asking plenty of questions.”
Limerick’s Liam MacCarthy quest captured the hearts of the nation, including many onlookers who mightn’t have paid much attention to the small ball game previously. The calibre of the 2018 season, the grandstand moments of drama and magic, of passion and exhilaration, gave us three months of thrills that will live long in the memory.
Casey though believes it also handed the game a shot in the arm in counties like Tyrone, where hurling has long been an exiguous afterthought to the darling of Gaelic football.
“At the end of the day, with what Limerick did, it was great,” said Casey. “For hurling, last summer was as good a year for a long, long time in the quality of games that there was.
“Hurling is getting the publicity across the water, but also here. If young lads are seeing it on TV and they want to play hurling, they are going to have to go to their local clubs and schools to do that.”
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Tyrone senior hurling team from the mid 1990's. Tomas Colton is pictured in the back row, third from left.
Tomas Colton has been integral within the Tyrone hurling scene for almost 30 years. He hurled with the county for over two decades, winning a Junior Hurling All-Ireland medal in 1996.
He has also held key roles in the Gaelic Players’ Association and the Tyrone County Board, developing players and games. He remembers a very different time for hurling within the county.
“There were no facilities or nothing back then. You were begging to get onto football club’s pitches or training fields, and they weren’t always available. There were times when we were running about car parks at Omagh St Enda’s and Carrickmore for fitness training with just streetlights on, because we couldn’t get anywhere else to go.”
Colton is also the current chairman for Casey’s club, Dungannon Eoghan Ruadh. Established in 1944, they eventually opened facilities they could call their own in May 2017, having previously played their games at O’Neill Park, home to the Thomas Clarkes football club.
Present at the club’s opening weekend as a guest of honour was Kilkenny legend Henry Shefflin. The ‘King’ fittingly posed on a Game of Thrones-style throne made of hurls at the ground, which also boasts a walking track and 40-metre skills area. New changing rooms are to be unveiled at the beginning of April.
It was the culmination of years of tireless fundraising within the club, and the development and coaching of Eoghan Ruadh’s underage teams has also shone through, with the club dominating the youth hurling scene in Tyrone for the past decade.
“Damian came through in a real good minor team, and a few boys came through out of that and established themselves right away as Tyrone county players,” says Colton. “This year’s minor team is probably one of the best that has ever come through the club, they’d be top two or three in Ulster. We are hoping to get an Ulster title out of them.”
Henry Shefflin pictured at the opening of Dungannon Eoghan Ruadh's new facilities in May 2017.
Aside from Tyrone competitions, Eoghan Ruadh take their teams to play in blitz’ and competitions in Antrim and Derry in order to get a higher standard of games. The initiative laid many of the foundations for the club’s senior county title success last year - their first since 2013 - where they put a halt to Tyrone’s other hurling stronghold Carrickmore Éire Óg's drive for five with a two-point win. Casey of course was the star of the show with a haul of 1-9 as Dungannon reclaimed the Benburb Cup.
While Dungannon and Carrickmore are the two long established clubs in the county, there are several green shoots springing up across Tyrone hurling’s barren soil.
Three new clubs have formed in the last few years; Tulach Óg based in the Cookstown area, Cúchulainn an Ghleanna in the Clogher Valley, and the Dúiche Néill club that encompasses the Benburb, Eglish and Moy area. Omagh have also been putting a lot of work into their hurling structures at juvenile level and are attracting healthy numbers.
The stark reality remains though that established clubs like Cappagh, Strabane and Naomh Colmcille are struggling to field at various youth levels, and Tyrone County Board has recently installed an extra coach to help reinvigorate the game in those areas.
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A fortnight ago, Mattie Lennon’s Tyrone collected their second win on the trot in this year’s Allianz Hurling League Division 3A, comfortably seeing off Louth 2-22 to 1-11 on a frosty cold Sunday afternoon in Healy Park.
The game was played before the footballers’ Division One fixture with Mayo, and though there were question marks ahead of the double-header that the harsh weather may knock the hurling curtain-raiser off the bill, the sterling work of the Omagh groundsmen held through and the match went ahead as planned.
While there were no mass queues at the gate ahead of the 12.30pm throw-in, by halftime a reasonable crowd had made their way into the stand to see Tyrone surge on in the second half to win by double scores. Ironically, they had missed another Damien Casey masterclass, who had done the bulk of his scoring in the first 15 minutes with 1-6 of his team’s opening 1-7.
“The more profile we can get for hurling in the county, the better,” says Colton. “There wasn’t a big crowd at the start of the game, but after halftime there were a lot of people in watching the game. The players love that, and they got a good clap coming off the field. It’s a credit to the county for putting on that double header, and to the groundsmen for getting the pitch ready.”
Tyrone hurling manager, Mattie Lennon.
Casey was just as supportive of the initiative. “It doesn’t always get to work out fixtures wise, but it certainly helps,” says Casey. “It’s not too often you get to play in front of the crowd that was there. It’s another incentive for players to keep playing the game, to see those opportunities, they’ll want to be in that position. It’s certainly doing no harm, the more it can happen the better.”
In 2014 and 2015 when Tyrone won the Nicky Rackard Cup and a Division 3A League title was when Casey reckons support for hurling reached a high point.
“It was two massive achievements in a few years. There was constant support and headlines in papers and things like that. We were in a real good position, but it’s maybe hard to continue that for so long. There certainly are people there though that know about Tyrone hurling and know about the players, know about the work we’re doing.
“We haven’t really gone from strength to strength. There’s a lot of teams that ride on the crest of a wave for a year or two then falling back to where they would have been. It’s up to us to keep ourselves in Division 3A then potentially push onto Division 2B and try and get ourselves into the Christy Ring Cup.
Colton is also adamant that climbing the ranks and establishing themselves in hurling’s higher tiers is crucial to firming up the overall state of the game in the county.
“If Tyrone can get up and start playing Down and Derry and them ones at a more frequent level, it will improve them. In the ‘90s, we won a Division Four title, but they were re-jigged and we actually ended up in Division Two for a few seasons. We were playing the likes of Down, Wicklow, Kildare, Carlow, they were teams that were a level or two above us, but we always picked off one or two wins. It really took us on.
“The current team are a young side, and they’re safe in the division, but promotion would be a big bonus. To see Tyrone playing at a higher level can entice young boys to come in and play. A lot of them are playing club football, but if they see Tyrone going so well in hurling, they could gravitate towards it. There is a lot of players in the county who could be on the team, but they are putting their time into club football at the minute.
“Clubs have gone deadly serious in the last few years, especially senior clubs, so if a lad wants to go play county hurling it’s hard. If we got up a division or up into Christy Ring, it becomes more attractive. All we can do at the minute is keep at it.”
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Tyrone's Damien Casey pictured with the Nicky Rackard Cup they won in 2014.
Tyrone take on a win-less Monaghan side this weekend at Healy Park in the third round of the league, though the Farney men’s campaign has been hampered by Castleblayney’s involvement in the All-Ireland Club Junior Championship.
The two crunch ties that will determine a Red Hands’ promotion come in the form of an away trip to Roscommon and a home tie with Armagh, who were relegated from Division 2B in 2018. Then, another tilt at the Nicky Rackard Cup awaits, where Mayo, Louth and Sligo make up Tyrone’s group.
And it’s these yearly shots at glory that keep Damian Casey boarding the flights to get back for training, that keep him putting in the hours every week. He is a mercurial talent operating far away from the bright lights, far below the Limericks and Galways of this world.
Does he ever get envious however of the adulation and renown festooned on the hurling hierarchy? Does he ever wonder could he cut it at that level?
“For me anyway, you’re from where you’re from. That’s where you play. But don’t get me wrong, it’s great for them. I’m not envious of them as such, with the work that they’re doing they obviously deserve the recognition that they’re getting.
“It’s just the county that you’re in, that’s just the way it is. Not envious of those teams themselves, maybe more envious that those positions don’t really arise for us.
“You ask yourself all the time, no matter what walk of life it is, you wonder can you do better, and you try to get better. If it was an individual sport those opportunities would arise, but it’s obviously a team game, and until we as a team can get ourselves to that higher standard then we’ll not really know. You look at the likes of Cushendall last weekend - would you be making teams like that? - there’s plenty of questions that you’d be asking.
“For us, year in year out, there’s a real good chance of winning something. At the end of the day you want to win it and do well, otherwise you’re not going to be enjoying it.
“With the chance there to win trophies and get recognition at the lower level, and then to obviously progress, it’s appealing to all players. These competitions are important.”
