HURLING in Ulster may have to make as radical a move as abandoning the idea of dual clubs if it is to progress, believes Terence McNaughton.
While Slaughtneil defied the preconceptions about whether dual players could excel in both codes by winning Ulster in football and hurling last autumn, it was an unprecedented achievement.
The former Antrim wing-back, and now joint-manager of the county again, hailed the Oak Leaf club’s success but believes that if hurling is to grow in the province, the time is nearing where it has to make a completely clean break from football at club level.
“The GAA is becoming a football organisation with hurling tagged on at the end. There’s a time coming where hurling people have to take care of hurling,” said the Cushendall native.
“I don’t have a problem with football, but I do a problem with football-orientated people in football counties and even provinces looking after hurling.
“For hurling to grow in our own province, the likes of Tyrone, Armagh and Donegal who are doing work, they need a pathway where there’s a bit of respectability and limelight, and a wee bit of glory attached to it.
“Do we have to go where if you’re playing with a county hurling team, you don’t play football? Are we going down the road where the dual club is gone? If you want to play hurling, you have your fixtures whenever you want.
“I’d like to see Belfast be five football clubs and five hurling clubs, and then people make their choice.
“I have to make a choice between rugby or hurling, or soccer or hurling, but it’s not a choice between Gaelic football and hurling?
“It’s ok for people to make choices with other sports but not Gaelic football? We have to change our mindset. We’re kind of caught up in the romance of it.”
Ulster Council has attempted to implement an all-Ulster club league in recent years but the lack of buy-in from the stronger clubs in Antrim and Down undermined the idea.
Those clubs made that decision largely on the basis of the quality of games the Antrim league – in which the Ards clubs play – offer, and the difficulty in working around club football fixtures in Derry and Tyrone.
“Slaughtneil, Cushendall, Loughgiel, Kevin Lynch’s and those teams in a hurling league would be great. We could go to Slaughtneil a lot handier than Ballycran,” says McNaughton.
“Why are Slaughtneil not having three goes every year at Loughgiel and Cushendall and Rossa and those teams? It would help Derry hurling and Antrim hurling.
“But if Derry teams came into an Ulster League, there’d be a game on a Friday night and they’d arrive with half a team because they’ve an important football match on a Sunday. Then it falls to an arse.
“You imagine the crowd we’d have here if we played Slaughtneil in a league match. You could be really radical and link it to the Ulster Championship and that meant Cushendall were travelling with Neil McManus and Arron Graffin and every county hurler we have because we know we have to get two points.
“Do you think that wouldn’t draw a crowd? Do you think that wouldn’t promote hurling?
”It can be done. People throw up Slaughtneil but they’re the one team in my lifetime that has done what they’ve done. The chances of that ever happening again are very slim, to have a group of players come along that are so dedicated. The norm is that you end up falling between two stools.
“What Slaughtneil have done is a smashing achievement, but it’s not the norm.”
