A Rebel with a cause

Hurling

Kevin Óg Carney

Watergrasshill put a spring in the step of John Kearney. It helped him become a county title-winning starlet with his local GAA club in that part of Cork; catapulted him forward to become a colleges’ hurling medallist with famed nursery St Colman’s and, thereafter, an international athlete.

Winding the tape fast forward and Kearney, the mature Rebel, appears like a man to the manor born is his role as the current Chief Executive of Cavan Monaghan Education and Training Board – a body spawned when Cavan VEC and Monaghan VEC were dissolved in 2013.

The CMETB chief cuts a very familiar figure in the local educational sphere. However, it’s Kearney’s involvement in Cavan GAA circles over the guts of the past 20 years which makes him a stand-out among the masses locally.

Since the early noughties he has been bringing his sporting nous to bear on the royal blue-tinted playing fields of his adopted county.

A coterie of current senior players who previously played for Kearney at underage level in both hurling and football for Cavan in years gone by will testify to the fact that Cork’s loss has been the Breffni county’s gain.

For the last two years, Kearney has worn the hat of ‘selector’ as part of Cavan hurling boss Ollie Bellew’s senior county management think-tank.

Above all other sports, Kearney espouses a grá for the most ancient of Gaelic games. It’s a craft, an art form, he moots:

“Hurling is a completely different game from any other. It’s such a skills-based game, so much artistry involved at the highest level. And when it’s played well and you have fellas with a love of the game and who have a love of representing their county, there’s an awful lot to be admired about being involved.”

Kearney’s involvement with Cavan Hurling Inc. is by design, well-intended, seriously addressed and suffused with ambition.

In coming from a part of the country where hurling is encoded in the DNA of so many, Kearney could be forgiven for accepting the notion that Cavan hurlers are forever destined to be found meandering down the B-roads. Instead, the former Cavan minor hurling manager reckons the motorway is not beyond them down the line. His appraisal of the current talent pool in Cavan has definition and depth:

“It’s such a big challenge for dual players in Cavan to stick with the hurling in such a mad footballing county but I saw the potential of a lot of our current seniors quite a number of years ago.

“We’re fortunate in Cavan right now that we have a panel (of 30) of players who are passionate about the game, have a determination to succeed and a personal ambition that makes them real assets to hurling in the county.”

The profile of hurling in Cavan has improved immeasurably over the last five years or thereabouts and Bellew’s boys have shown themselves to be razor keen to keep raising the bar with the county’s positive results in the NHL and Lory Meagher Cup competitions of late fairly reflective of the progress being made.

“We have enough skilful players on board right now to have a good, decent hurling team but more importantly we have players who want to be part of a team representing their county, as a collective, and who want to achieve their own targets,” Kearney opines.

“The current squad of players is a very proud and ambitious group of players. They want to carve out success for themselves and leave a legacy in the county for the up-and-coming young hurlers in Cavan.

“I have known quite a few of these players as minor players and now they are county seniors and I know that they are not content with second best. They want to win and are desperately disappointed when they happen to fall short.”

These are unreal, challenging times. While team sports are fundamentally about working together in groups and feeding off one and another’s energy and zest, the words remote and working are, sadly, the watchwords of today’s sporting and non-sporting worlds.

In the climate of uncertainty which has smothered the national GAA landscape over the past year, there is a sense that fledgling management systems such as that put in train by Antrim native Bellew in 2019 were particularly hard done by as a result of the onset and subsequent ravages of Covid.

“We never felt sorry for ourselves,” Kearney counters. “Covid wasn’t what we wanted of course and but it came at the wrong time for everyone. It’s whoever responds now the best will rise to the top.

“We want to hit the ground running when it comes to the time games get the green light. We’ll probably only have a five or six weeks window between getting the go-ahead and the first of our competitive games so we need to be ready to fly out of the traps.”

As the commencement of the intercounty season draws tantalisingly closer into focus, how is the Cavan management team planning to calibrate the county’s season in 2021?

“We’re happy where we are right now in terms of the lads’ fitness and the improvement in their hurling skills and the idea is to be absolutely ready for the league and championship when the time comes around.

“We had some good performances last year and we want to build on them but we had some disappointments too and we have been working on learning lessons from those outings.

“We can’t wait to get back onto the training pitch and hopefully that time is not too far ahead.

“The players are 12 weeks into their individual programme and the management has been very impressed with how the lads have been pushing themselves in doing their own individual work at home.

“There’s a great level of expectation within the panel and a strong resolve. I also think there’s a bit more conviction about this year’s panel; attendances at our on-line meetings have been fantastic and, ironically, I feel we’ve all gotten to know each other much better through our weekly Zoom meetings and What’s app group discussions. There’s a fantastic buzz within the group at present.

“I’m convinced that Cavan will eventually win the Lory Meagher Cup; and sooner rather than later, I hope.

“But for now, it’s about taking it step by step, putting the building blocks in place and making sure that whatever opposition comes along in whatever competition, we are in a position to perform to the best of our ability.”

For all the good vibes, investor confidence in Cavan Hurling remains fragile.

Listening to Kearney though, there is a distinct sense that the current county senior hurlers may well have decided that they’re in possession of too good a feel-good story to let go of.