Newcestown’s magical success is huge boost to hurling fraternity in Carbery

TOM LYONS explains how significant Newcestown’s brilliant senior county title success is to hurling in the Carbery division

NOBODY denies that Carbery is primarily a football division. With Castlehaven winning the premier senior football final, Dohenys and Newcestown contesting the senior A final and Bantry Blues unluckily losing the premier intermediate final by a point, the claim that it is the top football division in the county is now stronger than ever.

All GAA supporters in the division are delighted with these successes but spare a thought for the minority hurling fraternity in the area. What do they have to celebrate?

The county senior hurling championship was over 130 years on the go before being split into two three years ago: premier senior and senior A. Only once in those 130 years did the title – and the Seán Óg Murphy Cup – come west of the viaduct when the divisional side, Carbery, won in 1994. Newcestown’s win on Saturday in the senior A championship is only the second senior hurling title ever to come to Carbery.

The story gets slightly better as you go down the grades. The premier intermediate grade has been in existence since 2004 and both Newcestown (2015) and Bandon (2016) have won it. The intermediate A grade, since 2004, has been won three times, by Argideen Rangers in 2005, Kilbrittain in 2010 and Bandon in 2011. The ordinary intermediate grade came into existence in 1909 and from then to 2003, it was won only three times – by Bandon (1952 and 1974) and Kilbrittain (1995).

The junior grade, begun way back in 1895, has proved a little more fruitful for Carbery teams with five clubs winning ten county junior A titles – Bandon (1929, 1949, 1971, 1999); Newcestown (1972, 1980, 1992); Kilbrittain (1985), Argideen Rangers (1996) and Barryroe (2007). Nine Carbery clubs have won 11 junior B hurling titles since 1984 – St Oliver Plunkett’s (2002, 2023); Randal Óg (1992, 2000); O’Donovan Rossa (2004, 2013); Kilbree (1984), Gabriel Rangers (1989), St Colum’s (2003), St James (2005) and Dohenys (2006).

That gives a grand total of 31 county hurling titles coming to Carbery since 1887. While that is not a disaster, it is pretty poor pickings from approximately 440 titles in all grades. Newcestown’s win on Sunday, only the second county hurling title to come to Carbery since 2015, after Plunkett’s junior B win last July, is a huge boost to the success starved hurling community in Carbery.

Winning a senior hurling title is as rare as hen’s teeth here in the west and when it happens, it should be celebrated in style. Why? Because it proves that there are hurlers here in West Cork as good as any in the county at the top level, senior, and with the right belief, other clubs could follow their example.

From a young age, hurlers from Carbery are led to believe that they are second-class citizens and belong in the lower grades of Rebel Óg championships. That common belief among the aristocrats of hurling in this county results in very few young lads being included on county panels. In fact, it is a belief here in Carbery that a young lad from West Cork has to be twice as good as a young lad from a hurling division like Imokilly to get on a Cork panel but we would prefer to believe the real reason is that young lads playing in lower grades are no match for young lads playing in premier, even though they might have just as much hurling potential.

It is a fact that exposure to higher grade hurling will produce better hurlers and it is no coincidence that Carbery’s only Cork senior hurler, Luke Meade, is a member of our most successful hurling club, Newcestown, who play at the senior grade.

Once upon a time we saw players from West Cork regularly being picked for Cork minor hurling teams but those players usually attended Farranferris college in Cork, a hurling nursery for Cork hurlers along with the North Mon. The closure of Farranferris was a huge blow to the development of hurling here in West Cork. Apart, maybe, from Hamilton High School in Bandon, players now have to win their way onto Cork underage teams through their own clubs or Carbery development squads. Newcestown are producing the environment needed by those young hurlers to develop – how many other clubs in Carbery can say the same? Yes, we have seen Cork minors coming from small clubs like Plunkett’s and St Colum’s during the past decade, and Sean Daly emerging with Randal Óg, but that was the rare exception rather than the rule.

Young lads coming through need heroes to look up to in order to improve their standards by trying to emulate those heroes. While we have loads of football heroes here in West Cork, and we need only mention the Hurley brothers of Castlehaven, hurling heroes like Luke Meade are in short supply. Yes, we can claim Damien and Conor Cahalane as our own, too, but they are not home-grown and play their club hurling in the city.

To promote hurling in Carbery, to make the Cork hurling world sit up and take notice of us, we need our top hurling clubs like Newcestown, Bandon, Kilbrittain, Argideen and Barryroe to start winning county titles at the highest level. We need our top junior clubs like Ballinascarthy, Clonakilty, Kilbree and St James to start winning county titles again. The junior A county hasn’t been won since Barryroe landed the title in 2007. We need those hurling clubs to produce hurling heroes who will inspire our young players. The more one looks at it, the achievement of St Oliver Plunkett’s in winning the county junior B hurling title this season deserved much more acclaim than it received.

This year a determined effort is being made to get Sciath na Scol hurling on a firm footing here in Carbery. The football equivalent has been thriving since 1990 but hurling has never gotten off the ground. Now teachers like Alan Foley in Skibbereen, Paudie Aherne in Clonakilty and Diarmuid Duggan in Enniskeane are doing a great job in getting schools involved. It isn’t an easy task but it would certainly help if those kids at primary school level had West Cork hurling heroes to look up to.

By winning the county senior A title and progressing to premier senior level where they will rub shoulders with the Sars, the Blackrocks, the Midletons and the Barrs of this world, Newcestown have taken a huge step in providing the hurling heroes we need. The names of not alone Luke Meade but David Buckley, Edmund Kenneally, Tadhg Twomey, Cathal Wilson, Richard O’Sullivan, Jack Meade, Mícheál McSweeney and Seán O’Donovan should become household names here in Carbery in the future just like Brian Hurley, Mark Collins, Michael Hurley, Rory Maguire and Jack Cahalane.

Newcestown have started the ball truly rolling and it is now up to other hurling clubs to look upwards, to set their sights higher, to make heroes of their hurlers and to give our young West Cork hurlers something to aspire to. If Newcestown can do it, why not us? Take a big bow, Charlie Wilson and his crew, you have struck a real blow for Carbery hurling.