faithfulfanatic wrote: ↑Tue Dec 05, 2023 12:43 pm
Not having appreciation for the dual culture is interesting, especially coming from a mainly football county in Roscommon.
How does that work in Four Roads? As I presume lads are coming from multiple football clubs to hurl with them?
Is it that those lads hurling with them anyway are mainly hurling-oriented, where at least 10-12 of them would be with the county side and they are basically warned off any serious form of football?
I'm conscious of the fact here that since I'm part of the executive in St. Aidan's (the football club at the other end of Four Roads' parish) I've to be a little bit circumspect, but I can certainly stand over my saying that in this parish generally, there absolutely is NOT the ethos that I see in Ferbane and Belmont, where it is widely understood that more players playing both sports is better for everyone.
A lot of it is reflective of the fact that in Roscommon as a whole, the majority of clubs are not just football-only clubs, but they are clubs in areas where football is the only sport played, so hurling gets a raw deal generally. The two sports are also run very independently, unlike in Offaly, so playing both sports is not facilitated to anything like the same extent.
Just to address the point of fact by the way, Four Roads pick from our parish, which is geographically big but not heavily populated, and theoretically, they also pull from the St. Brigid's club. In practice, very, very few from St. Brigid's parish hurl, and the majority of those that do at underage level, go into Southern Gaels in Athlone, rather than coming out to Four Roads.
Four Roads as a club is also conscious of the fact that they are in a county where there are seven adult hurling clubs, three of which amalgamate at underage level, and the other three, football is the undisputed number one sport, albeit they have the population to make that work. This parish does not have that, it's probably at a similar level to Kinnitty in terms of numbers. So what that means is that they do a lot of hurling in Galway, adult and underage, to try and keep their standards up, and because they're playing a full programme of games in both counties, they are stretched, and playing football and hurling in this parish is a hell of a lot more difficult than it is in Ferbane, or Belmont, or Cloghan, or Banagher, or Mucklagh etc.
Yes, Four Roads have a lot of county hurlers, but it's a statement of fact to say that the majority of county hurlers who are members of Roscommon clubs other than Four Roads, also played adult football in 2023.
In contrast, out of the team that started this year's county final for Four Roads, two of them would have also been involved with St. Aidan's first team, and there may have been one or two that togged out for the juniors, though I don't think so. It's also a statement of fact that while there are some of those players that never played football, at least a half a dozen of them have done in recent years, but didn't in 2023.