By Michael Devlin

This Sunday will mark the first time the hurlers of Slaughtneil venture into an All-Ireland club series without a football campaign in tandem.

In 2017 and 2018, both squads progressed to the last four in each competition as dual Ulster champions. Only one of those four games, the 2017 football semi-final against St Vincent’s of Dublin, saw the Derry club come out on top and reach the decider.

While absent from the Ulster football circuit this season due to a Derry county semi-final defeat to Glen back in October, understandably the silver lining is that Slaughtneil are now able to apply full focus to making the breakthrough in hurling, or “closing the gap” as Chrissy McKaigue labels it.

This weekend the side are attempting to scale the highest mountain in club hurling, taking on reigning All-Ireland club champions Ballyhale Shamrocks.

“It's certainly helped. I suppose you can focus on your craft a bit better,” says McKaigue. “For a hurling club from Derry and Ulster, you're not privy to the same intensity or same number of high-quality games as you would be if you were from different parts of Ireland.

“We'd go away and focus on the deficiencies in our game and tried to close the gap that is present between ourselves and the likes of Ballyhale, the so-called stronger, traditional areas of hurling. That's the most refreshing thing, and not having any distractions.

“We're aware that we have a huge amount of work to do to close the gap with Ballyhale. At least we've been given the chance this time to do it. If you're being really selfish, you'd like to be contending in the football too but it's difficult to fight on both fronts. We're just happy that we have hurling at the moment.

“To retain our Derry title, make history and become the first team to win seven in a row, to win our third Ulster hurling title in four years, and to still be the only Derry team to win the Ulster club hurling title - we're getting a lot of things right.

“Our biggest challenge is to close the gap at national level. That's the biggest challenge of them all.”

While the Kilkenny men boast a glittering array of hurling talent, and have enjoyed remarkable success in recent years, Slaughtneil are rightly been held up as an example of an exceptional club in their own right, praised from all corners of the country as a small, rural parish with an outstanding passion for Gaelic Games.

Aside from their simultaneous hurling and football successes in recent years, as well as a hugely decorated Camogie side, the Slaughtneil club are the embodiment of a community with Gaelic games at its heart, the be-all and end-all.

McKaigue regards the hurlers’ maiden Ulster title in 2016 as a particularly important moment in the Emmetts’ recent trophy-laden golden era.

“There's a pride with being the first group of players to do something. We're the first group of players to ever win seven Derry hurling titles in a row; our club had won hurling titles before but there was a long number of barren years.

“We're the first ever Derry club to win the Ulster Club Hurling Championship in 2016. We then won back-to-back Ulster club hurling titles, and now we've won three in four years.

“That's where the pride stems from. There's maybe a pride to be taken from the fact that just because you're not from a traditional hurling or football stronghold that you can play the games and you have the right to go out and compete with the best. We've broken the glass ceiling in many ways; for me and the boys, that's where the pride stems from.

“We're doing a lot of things right as a GAA club. We're doing a lot of things right to do our best at all three codes; how long that can last with the number of dual players, we're acutely aware of that. You're aware that you need to take these opportunities when they come along. Again, there's more challenges for our hurlers than our footballers.”

Hurling plays second fiddle to football in Derry, as is the case in practically all northern counties. Founded in 1953, Slaughtneil were active in the code since the 1960’s, and won four county titles during that decade.

However, the big ball game continued to hold sway in the area - and in Derry as a whole - and the next county titles didn’t come along until 1993 and then 2000, before McKaigue’s gifted generation broke through the dam 13 years after that.

“It’s just the nature of Derry hurling being a secondary sport to football, in many ways, it didn't gather as much momentum as the football. It had always been there - there was always a Derry Hurling Championship.

“There's a huge number of dual players, a huge number of underage players coming through the conveyor belt at the same time. We're hugely proud of what that group of players has achieved. No matter how we do at national level, at some stage we can look back on our careers as being a decent innings.”

That moment for reflection and laurel-resting is a long way off for McKaigue and his ambitious cohort though. On Sunday Ballyhale will come up to Newry’s Páirc Esler, an aspect that is particularly exciting in terms of boosting hurling in the province of Ulster, according to the Slaughtneil captain.

“It's great that the game's in Newry because there will be a bigger crowd going to it to see the likes of Henry Shefflin and TJ Reid, Adrian Mullen, the Fennellys. It's a great idea to have it in Newry from an Ulster hurling perspective.

“It's an unbelievably difficult draw again, every bit as difficult as the last couple campaigns against Cuala and Na Piarsaigh. We don't get an easy one. The forward line, the club - they're the most decorated club hurling team of all.

“As good as Ballyhale are - people will argue that they are better than Cuala and Na Piarsaigh - it doesn't really matter, everyone can be in agreement that those three teams are at the top end of club hurling.

“We had a really competitive game against Na Piarsaigh, maybe belief and a lack of structure in some ways [hurt us]. Probably contending with football didn't help our hand. We got an idea that day that if we get our house in order, we're able to compete at the top end. For us, that was a massive plus.

“From where we came from as a club - a hurling club in Derry which wasn't even the best hurling club in Derry for a long, long number of decades - to rise to this level has been some achievement and wasn't talked about as much. We're improved since then too.

“Ballyhale, we all know the task at hand. Sometimes, you're better just thinking about ourselves and what we can control. Certainly, from our own perspective, we can put our hands on our hearts and say that we're doing a lot of things right and that we've improved astronomically over the last six or seven years.”