“There’s five or six guys there who aren’t available to us because they’re playing football with Dublin.”
The Dublin footballers are the most glamorous GAA team in the country. They draw the crowds, they attract the sponsors and they lure the best players from throughout the capital city.
Inevitably, there’s a crossover between good footballers and good hurlers. It’s just natural. The majority of top quality sportsmen can turn their hand to any sports. They are gifted. They are all-rounders.
There is an abundance of all-rounders and multi-talented sportspeople in Dublin, many of whom are gifted hurlers.
The plight of Dublin hurling is that they are up against the mammoth strength of the Dublin footballers in their attempts to attract these sportsmen to their set-up. More often than not, they lose out.
Ger Cunningham, the Dublin senior hurling manager was speaking on The GAA Hour Hurling Show on Thursday when he delved into the difficulties and frustrations that abound in Dublin hurling circles when they lose player after player to the county’s all-conquering footballers.
“There’s five or six guys there who aren’t available to us because they’re playing football with Dublin. You’d love to have them available to see how they would get on playing inter-county hurling but I suppose it kind of goes with the territory. I suppose playing football with Dublin is obviously a huge profile and when they’re successful at the moment and they’re going for three-in-a-row… people want to be a part of that,” he said.
“They’re good at both sports but unfortunately for the hurling people in Dublin and around the country in general, they won’t get the chance to see these lads playing hurling,” said the Corkman.
The former All-Ireland winning goalkeeper with Cork has come to terms with the fact that he will never be playing with a full deck of cards as Dublin hurling manager. He’s had to.
Anthony Daly and many managers before him dealt with the same plight. Cunningham still regrets not having the likes of Ciaran Kilkenny, Cormac Costello, Con O’Callaghan and many, many more who have seen the football set-up as a greener pasture. Diarmuid Connolly, one of the country’s best footballers, is another.
“Mark and Paul are two guys we would’ve loved to have had involved but they haven’t been involved with us since last July. Paul has had a number of different injuries for the last few years and between shoulder and hand injuries he hasn’t been able to commit to inter-county hurling… Mark had been doing his final exams in May so that was the main priority for him after the club Championship,” said the manager.
Mark Schutte, the dynamic forward who was key to Cuala’s All-Ireland winning club campaign is another who has deserted the hurlers in favour of joining the footballers. His brother Paul has also left the panel.
“He played a club football game last week and got invited to the panel. That’s probably one of the downsides when you’ve a high profile team (Dublin footballers) alongside you in the same county…Mark is a very talented footballer as well, obviously, he had been in with the Dublin footballers four or five years ago, so, maybe playing with the Dublin footballers was something he wanted to try again,” claimed Cunningham.
That’s the situation that Dublin hurling finds itself in, however, and the outlook won’t be changing any time soon, with the footballers chasing their third straight All-Ireland title. They’ll just have to make do with what they have.
It’s a role reversal to the situation in Cunningham’s native Cork. Cunningham is hoping that the work they are putting in, will eventually be rewarded.
“It’s probably in reverse order (the culture in Dublin, compared to Cork). You can see even by last Sunday, the support that was there for Cork.
“Football was the poor relation in some parts down there…I suppose it’s in reverse order in Dublin, the football is huge in Dublin in relation to the support they get and it’s obviously a football county and the tradition is there.
“There’s an awful lot of very good hurling people in Dublin as well, they’ve a great passion for hurling and they’ve a lot of people behind the scenes who are working closely with trying to promote hurling…Hopefully, at some stage, it will be reflected on the pitch that the time and the effort that’s going into building hurling in Dublin will be rewarded.”
Listen to the full Cunningham interview here from 12’55”.
