THE Kehoe Cup. The Ryan Cup. The All-Ireland Club JHC. Division 2B. Division 3A. The Nicky Rackard Cup. The Christy Ring Cup. The All-Ireland U20 B Championship.
Eight competitions in which Ulster sides had the chance to claim titles against non-Ulster competition, eight final losses. And that’s just the finals they managed to reach.
The only adult hurling silverware that came north in 2019 – apart from St Mary’s win in the third tier of university competition – was the Conor McGurk Cup – a tournament only northern teams were involved in.
It was a barren 12 months, when the high points were fleeting.
The 2020 season has already begun with five counties and two universities well into their campaign – in the case of Antrim and Down, on two fronts. The year itself will be less than a week old when Slaughtneil get the first chance to strike a blow of Ulster hurling but it’s going to be a serious challenge, and the rest of 2020 is likely to be much the same for teams from the north.
Slaughtneil’s predecessors as Ulster club champions, Cushendall, produced a rousing display in their All-Ireland semi-final against 2013 champions St Thomas’, but they still lost.
That the one-point defeat to the Galway side, who went on to a final trimming by Slaughtneil’s upcoming opponents Ballyhale, was one of best performances by an Ulster team all year, says a lot.
Everything is relative, of course, especially in hurling, and the disparity between the tiers of the game means every side can only sensibly be judged at their own grade.
But even at that, with goals set at achievable levels, Ulster sides fell short of even their own expectations again and again.
Antrim, the province’s de facto standard bearers – though there was again no Ulster senior championship to make it official – went into the season chasing promotion back up to Division One and the MacCarthy Cup but failed the make the finals in League or Championship.
The first listed in Ulster’s tale of woe at the top of this page, the Kehoe Cup, brought a final penalty shootout loss for the Saffrons against Westmeath. The Lake county would haunt Neal Peden’s side in 2019, with two back-breaking home losses ruining their Division 2A and Joe McDonagh campaigns as well.
The opening day defeat to Kerry in the League, when Antrim played without their Cushendall contingent and with 14 men for almost the entire match, was the real killer for their promotion hopes. It, like the subsequent Westmeath loses, came at home and the Saffrons’ failure to defend their home patch, whether it was Corrigan Park or Dunloy, cost them massively in 2019.
The high point was one of those fleeting ones. Down in Tullamore Antrim turned over Offaly in a thrilling encounter but the reaction to it, outside the camp at least, was bizarrely over the top.
The worst Faithful team in generations slid out of both Division One and the Joe McDonagh Cup, so claims of a great 1989-esque victory could only be attributed to an (understandable) dose of supporters’ giddiness, a complete lack of awareness of the current hurling landscape, or both.
That win put them on the brink of a final spot but, seven days later, Westmeath hammered them in Dunloy. Peden stepped down to be succeeded by his selector and former Tipperary goalkeeper Darren Gleeson, who spent the rest of the summer helping his native county win the Liam MacCarthy Cup.
Below Antrim, things never got much better than a bright day here and there.
Down were on the cusp of a final place in Division 2B of the League but conspired to lose to Kildare in their last game, handing Wicklow, who they had hammered away from home earlier in the campaign, a place in the decider against Derry where, as you’ll know by now, they beat the Ulster side.
The Ulster pair did gain a measure of revenge against the Garden county by finishing one-two in their Christy Ring Cup group, but both lost to Meath in the competition’s knockout stages.
Down at least got to the Croke Park showpiece but they ran out of steam as the Royals returned to the Joe McDonagh Cup.
Armagh were at Croke Park that day too, but threw away a three-point injury-time lead to lose to Sligo in the Nicky Rackard final to add to their NHL Division 3A defeat to Roscommon in the spring.
The other final losses for Ulster sides came in the higher education second tier Ryan Cup for Ulster University, the All-Ireland junior club for Castleblayney and the All-Ireland U20 B Championship for Down.
That loss, to Kerry, was the best underage effort an Ulster side could muster, with Antrim nowhere against Leinster competition either at minor (along with Down) or U20s, and the Celtic Challenge U17 competition – which just two years was a happy hunting ground for northern teams, producing just a third tier win for Derry and a fifth tier win for Antrim – who had romped to victory in the second tier in 2017.
Those bare facts don’t prove an inexorable decline, while the dearth of underage success doesn’t mean the future is inevitably bleak, but it’s clear that nothing will come easy to Ulster hurling sides in the year ahead, starting when Slaughtneil take on Ballyhale five days into it. But a big performance and a memorable day isn’t beyond Michael McShane’s side. Coleraine (junior) and St Enda’s (intermediate) will feel the same in their semi-finals the previous day.
If any of those Ulster champions can bring home All-Ireland honours before the end of January it will already make 2020 more successful than 2019. And that has to be the goal of every northern hurling team after a difficult 12 months.
