Charlie Ennis*, Brendan McKeon, Adam O’Connor, Kyle Donnelly, Padraig O’Hanrahan, Eamonn Og O’Donnchadh, Ethan Devine, Shane Whitty,Stephen T. Morris and Adam Gannon. That’s just off the top of my head. There may be more.
The above list? Those who were central tenets of the Meath senior hurling panel over the last couple of seasons who are nowhere to be seen this season. So far at least.
And the emigrated* Ennis is the only one whom this writer can account for thus far. That’s a fair whack for any team’s resources to take. Especially when, with due respect, the hurlers seldom get the same profile as the footballers. Even though, over the last decade or so, the hurlers have comfortably the more successful of the two.
However, we won’t plough up that old ground again. Other than to opine that great credit is due to Johhny Greville and his management team for not only managing such an abnormal throughput of players but also managed to keep them in the hunt for promotion going into the final round of regulation fixtures.
The reason for including all of the above? Like those old compare and contrast questions that seemed to populate every school exam since God was a Gasun. As a means of deciphering how the GAA world has arrived at a point where Leitrim considered themselves unable to field a team for the National League fixture against Fermanagh.
At this point, let it be said that I do not blame the Leitrim players one iota. They are the ones who’ve be been let down here. By their own Co Board and by part of the GAA’s basic makeup which drastically needs recalibration. Consider the following:
(a) The Brains Trust in the county need their heads examined for allowing Andy Moran to leave so easily.
(b) They were utterly betrayed by Mickey Graham in a despicable, disloyal act. But that in itself raises questions. (i) When were they informed Graham was renaguing on his commitment? And (ii) why were they not back onto Moran immediately after the Graham fiasco doing whatever the hell it took to implore the Ballaghadreen man to come back.
(c) Because of the unforeseen circumstances of the entire mess they were then left rifling through the shakings of the bag desperately seeking a replacement.
(d) Beggars can’t be choosers, hence how you end up with individuals such as the current incumbent in the Leitrim hotseat.
(e) What Pat Spillane might call “Spoofers” or “Bluffers” like Steven Poacher, Paddy Tally and Cian O’Neill generally get found out when the reins are thrown on their own necks as distinct from being able to skulk along as part of bloated backroom teams contributing nobody is exactly sure what.
(f) The needle is about to get stuck on the record again – all of this, as in, the decision taken by Leitrim last weekend, can be traced back to the Whacky Racers approach to competition structure and fixture making. Why in the name of all that is Holy do the U-20 Championships have to start before the end of the National Leagues? Slow down to f*ck, push the inter county season at all levels back two weeks (at least) and stop being led around by the nose like guide dogs by the GPA.
(g) Where I would agree with Colm Keys in terms of the Leitrim team inner sanctum carrying at least partial culpability for what transpired – or didn’t – last weekend is with regard to the following – surely there had to 15 or 20 footballers somewhere in the county who would’ve gladly answered their county’s call in their time of need.
At that stage, it wasn’t about winning or losing. Just fulfill the damn fixture. People like Fergus O’Rourke and Tom Gannon and Sean Nealon and Paddy Earley and Tom Gilooley must have been rolling in their graves at the thought of their beloved homeland conceding a walkover for, of all things, lack of players.
Jazus, every club this side of China have had to take drastic action to complete fixtures at some stage or other. It’s not all that long ago that both Colm O’Rourke and Martin O’Connell lined out in goal for Simonstown Gaels and St Michael’s respectively to ensure lower grade matches went ahead. While I can personally vouch for a team having to bring on a lad who was, shall we say, the worse for wear. To the extent that, when the opposition put the ball out over their own end line, the hero of the hour brought the ball to take a corner kick rather than a ’45’!
Before you ask, yes there are commensurate examples of drastic – if not quite as dramatic – action needing to be taken an inter county level also. From when Cork had to put together a ‘new’ panel when their regular one stood up to Co Board incompetence and went on strike.
Or when Sean Boylan was forced to construct an almost entirely new Meath panel for the 1996/’97 NFL after seven of our first team players were disproportionately suspended for something that was not of their making. Anyway, Sean and the lads had the last laugh when some of the reinforcements – Paul Shankey, Nigel Nestor and Ray McGee – went on to play their part in Meath’s All Ireland win in 1999.
(h) The following might be very much at the extreme end of the scale, but, in a time when the GPA has already floated the word ‘professionalism’ in the ether nothing can presumably be ruled out, so do not be shocked if talk of a transfer ‘market’ within GAA starts doing the rounds. Mind you, I’d rather have that than the unedifying spectacle of inter county teams conceding walkovers. If matters start down that slippery slope there may be no brakes powerful enough to halt the runaway train.
To go back to where this journey began, Colm Keys says in his article that there are 23 clubs in Leitrim from which players can be selected. If you include teams that only field in Intermediate or Junior level, the numbers are remarkably similar for the Meath hurlers. Yet Johnny Greville has not only managed to bring together a largely new panel to not only secure Div. 2 sustainability but give themselves the most unlikely of shots at promotion heading into the last round of regulation fixtures.
Of course, fleshing out of all of the above doesn’t sidestep the fact that the crazy, truncated fixture schedule is entirely to blame for what happened involving Leitrim last weekend. It is a young players nightmare. Because it literally casts them as both hero and villain. Leaving them wedged between two stools in such a manner that they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
Obviously, the fact that there is young talent coming through in a county is crucial to the future prosperity of same at the highest level, but it then becomes a question of which do you prioritise – keeping a good underage panel together in pursuance of success with them or catapult them into the senior setup with misguided hope of getting the fast fix to success there instead of cultivating a winning culture within a good group of players and allowing them continue their development as a group which will have longer lasting benefits in the longer term.
What you don’t want is exactly the scenario which appears to be playing out in Leitrim – young players are, to quote the lines of a famous old song – “Torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool. Loving both of you is breaking all the rules”.
The last part of the above quote doesn’t have to apply here, but, if you stretch the elastic in something too far one way or the other it will eventually snap.
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