By John Harrington

Vigorous green shoots of hurling and camogie growth were everywhere to be seen in Saul, County Down last weekend.

A hurling and camogie family fun day featuring St. Patrick's GAC Saul, East Belfast GAA club, and St. Kevin’s Camogie club highlighted that all soil, regardless of the county, is fertile for hurling if you only take the time to water and nurture it.

All three clubs were founded in the last two years and in a very short period of time have brought hurling and camogie to hundreds of children in their communities.

Saul are the baby of the trio, with last Saturday’s blitz their first steps as a born again hurling and camogie club for the first time in 30 years.

It’s very early days yet, but they already have close to 100 children attending training sessions and a dedicated team of coaches committed to their development.

That doesn’t happen by accident. It takes vision and commitment, two qualities clearly possessed by Shay Deegan, the main driving the rebirth of hurling and camogie in Saul.

A native of Wexford, life brought him to Belfast where he hurled with O’Donovan Rossa before he and his wife eventually settled out in Saul.

Impressed by the club’s underage football set-up, it struck him that a club as well organised should also be offering hurling and camogie to its members.

“Myself and another guy, Danny Bohill, approached our club chairperson, Dr. Eddie Harney, and he backed us straight from the start and said absolutely, I'll support you,” Deegan told GAA.ie.

“We started about September, October last year putting down some foundations.

“We got funding through a charity for helmets and we got some other people to put a bit of money in.

“We bought sliotars and hurls just to kind of break down the barriers to entry for the parents and then set up a social hurling group that allowed us to get more coaches in.

“We now probably have about 10 to 15 coaches helping out on any given day and a lot of those guys were people who maybe haven't played hurling in 30 years.

“Then we just set out a development plan, got stuck in from there, and we now have up to 80 kids aged between seven and 12 at training sessions.

“We know that there will be peaks and troughs as things go along and our aim with the development plan is just to do as much as we can to incentivise hurling and camogie.

“More trips away, more blitzes, more fun events, everything that's going to keep the kids interested because we know in County Down that it's a football county primarily and we kind of have to do more than you would if you're starting up a new club in a Wexford or Tipperary or Kilkenny.

“We've had great support from the Ulster coaches Kevin Kelly, Danny Toner, Eamon Blaney, and Oisin McManus.

“And then we've had great support from the wider kind of GAA community up here. People have rowed in and offered support, coaching, games, all that sort of stuff.

“Our aim now is to get a couple of teams to Go Games this year and really build from that.”

The impressive level of organisation behind last weekend’s hurling blitz bodes very well for the future of hurling and camogie in St. Patrick's, Saul.

Down hurling manager Ronan Sheehan, Down player Eoghan Sands, and highly esteemed hurling coach and former GAA National Hurling Development Manager, Martin Fogarty, held coaching clincs for all the young players who took part.

Saul’s young players were kitted out in new jersey’s sponsored by Niall’s Fund and DSC Cars Downpatrick, a barbecue and face-painting raise over €600 for Cian’s Journey, and goodie bags were given to all who participated.

A small army of St. Patrick's, Saul hurling coaches helped make the whole day run smoothly, and there’s surely a lesson for others in how the club has gone about creating a vibrant hurling community almost overnight.

One of the biggest challenges for start-up hurling and camogie clubs or clubs trying to reintroduce hurling and camogie is finding enough mentors and coaches willing to drive the thing on.

By setting up a now thriving social hurling team at the same time as introducing juvenile hurling and camogie to the club, Saul got parents of children involved in the sport in a fun way which has really boosted enthusiasm for the project.

“It's been brilliant,” says Deegan. “We probably have a group of 50 or 60 people now and 30 playing every week.

“We went to the blitz in Naomh Olaf last week and we had 30 guys travel down there and out of that 10 of those guys had never played hurling before. You're talking guys over the age of 40 who always wanted to play. Some of them never had the opportunity because of religion, some guys because it just wasn't in their club.

“You see the ability of those guys develop quickly once you have some bit of sport. Some of them might play golf or picked up a hurl when they were 10 or 12 and they just pick it straight back up again, no hassle whatsoever.

“That's giving our coaches confidence. I've been coaching them which then allows them to pass that on, it's giving them some ideas. It's also just giving guys the love of the game. The amount of them who go out and just say I wish I had played hurling 20 years ago is huge.

“It makes them think well I have the opportunity now to pass this on to some kids and to make sure that they have the opportunity to play hurling and camogie that I didn’t.

“And that's what it's all about. We all know the benefits of hurling and camogie. And I'm always trying to pass that on to kids and give them a chance to play."

In a recent converstation with GAA.ie, Down senior hurling team manager, Ronan Sheehan, outlined his belief that there's a opporunity to grow hurling in the Mourne County, especially in urban areas where it has very little presence currently.

Deegan is preaching from the same hymn-book. St. Patrick's, Saul are located on the outskirts of Downpatrick and he hopes they'll be able to draw in young hurlers and camógs from the town who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to play our national sport.

“The key for me is getting into the schools," he says. "There needs to be coaching in the schools and a joined up connection between the schools, the clubs and the counties.

“That’s a big part of our plan - to get out to the schools to attract more kids in because we're five minutes outside Downpatrick.

“There’s one other hurling club past us called Kilcief and they're about a 10 minute drive away from.

“From us to Downpatrick, the other side of Downpatrick, there's no hurling club for 15/20 miles. Downpatrick is a town of probably 15/20,000 people. Within that radius there's probably six or seven football teams so we have an opportunity to draw from other clubs.

“The big thing I would say is kids love hurling and camogie. They love coming up. Will every child that comes up take to it, no, absolutely not. is there enough for even a small regional club like us to have teams at every age group? Absolutely there is.”

Deegan is well aware that it’ll take a lot of hard work to nurture hurling and camogie in Saul to the point that the player pathway is completed through every age-grade right up to senior level.

He’s optimistic it can be done though because everyone in the club has been so supportive of the venture thus far.

“Our Chairperson and club committee have been great,” he says. “We have the support, we have the kids, we have the interest.

"The Ulster GAA guys have been great but I think we need a little bit more help locally. There's probably four or five feeder schools locally that if we could get a bit of hurling in there, it would get more kids up to us at earlier ages which would help us get them through.

“That's really where I would probably look to the Down County Board for support. I think that's the bit we need to work on.

“We know we have to do more with less to drive the game forward to keep the interest there because without that it will just peter out at some point.

“As a kid you don't remember specific matches, you remember the trips away, you remember the trips to Corke Park, you remember the blitzes, you remember the Feiles.

“We know that we need to organize things like that even at an early stage to keep the kids interested. That's just all been supported by the people in the community. It's been great.”