Hurling in the county will benefit from all-Tipperary Harty Cup final

Perhaps nothing underlines the uniqueness or the local rivalry attached to Sunday’s all-Tipperary TUS Dr Harty Cup final more than the close connections between key figures who are in opposite camps.

In a contest that will be fought out between neighbours’ children, Brendan Ryan, the manager of Cashel Community School, is plotting the downfall of a Thurles CBS team that includes his nephew Robbie Ryan, the scorer of an impressive 1-5 in the semi-final defeat of Midleton.

However, uncle and nephew have been staying apart and will continue to keep their distance from one another in the build-up to Sunday.

“I’ll leave Robbie alone,” says Brendan.

“He’s only 16 years of age, and fair play to him. If we concentrate on any one Thurles player someone else will leave us with regrets. We have to perform to the best of our ability.

“If we worry about Thurles and the talented players they have, we might be taking our eye off our own performance. Thurles are a class outfit and deserve to be in the final.

“We have to perform. If we don’t we will come up short.”

The crossover between the teams doesn’t end with the Ryans. The Thurles CBS goalkeeper is Eoin Horgan, who will be up against his Knockavilla/Donaskeigh club mates Adam Daly - the pair played alongside each other on the Tipperary minor team that won last year’s All-Ireland championship - and Shane Buckley, who are both important players for Cashel Community School.

Brendan Ryan also points out: “There’s a Cashel player (Oisin Dwan) and a Boherlahan player (Eugene O’Dwyer) in the Thurles CBS panel and their teammates (who include Cashel King Cormacs’ Ronan Connolly, Oisin O’Donoghue, David McGrath, Fabian Ryan and Anthony Walsh and Boherlahan/Dualla’s Tommy Breen, Ger O’Dwyer, Dylan Fogarty and Ross Darcy) are with us. It’s unique, it’s brilliant.

“Isn’t it great that it’s an all-Tipp final. If we don’t win there will still be Tipperary Harty Cup winners this year, and I’m sure Thurles will be saying the same. There will be young lads around Tipp who are Harty Cup champions, and isn’t that better than them being from Cork or Limerick.”

While Thurles CBS are trying to win their ninth Harty Cup title, and bridge an eight-year gap since their last success, Cashel Community School are appearing in the first final, although Cashel CBS were beaten in the 1973 final by St Finbarr’s of Farranferris.

“As a school and as a community we’re massively delighted to be here,” says Brendan Ryan.

“It’s something we’ve been looking in at and dreaming of for years, playing Harty and getting to the knockout stages. The school will be 30 years old next year and this year was our second-ever semi-final and the third time we got to the quarter-final stage, and this is our first final. It’s just brilliant for these players.

“The last five or six years we’ve had players who worked really hard to get us up out of B to Harty, and I’m just delighted for everyone. It’s the result of the efforts of players and parents over the last six years.

“This month five years ago we lost to Mitchelstown CBS in a B final by one point in injury time.

“(Joint captain) Ronan Connolly’s older brother Eoghan was the captain that day, and the following year we lost by two points in the B semi-final, and the following year we beat Doon in the B final, just before Covid hit, in February 2020.

“That team won an All-Ireland semi-final but never got to play the All-Ireland final. There was no colleges hurling the next year, and last year we were in the Harty Cup for the first time in years and it was brilliant.

"The lads, as a young team last year, did really well and got to a quarter-final against Thurles, who were way the better team on the day and deserving winners. They’ve learned and have come back determined this year.”

Brendan, who has been teaching in the school since September 2001, has vast experience in this Munster Colleges Senior A competition.

“We reached the Harty semi-final in January 2002, and we lost to St Colman’s College, Fermoy. Andrew O’Shaughnessy (the former Limerick hurler) destroyed us that day.

“Then in January 2005 I was over Cashel when we got to a quarter-final, and (current Thurles CBS manager) Eamon Buckley was over Thurles, and they beat us. Paudie Maher, who is with Eamon now on the management team, was a player that day. They also had Michael Collins, Pa Bourke, Timmy Hammersley.

“We had John O’Keeffe and Ryan O’Dwyer who also went on to hurl for Tipperary.
“Last year was our first year back in a quarter-final since then.

“We fell back into the B for a while then. The B is just so difficult to come out of. There are less and less teams every year in the Harty, the B has become really competitive. You have Doon, Hospital, Charleville, Dungarvan CBS. These are all huge schools, these are all Harty schools and they’re all back in B now. To come out of B now is a bigger challenge than it used to be, and that’s why we struggled for a few years to come up.”

For Brendan Ryan, it was a case that the grass was greener on the other side during their spell in the B competition.

“Even though we weren’t playing Harty, we were going to Harty matches on Saturdays in January and February every year, looking in and just wishing to be part of these days.

“We can only admire all the schools that are doing it year after year, because as you see this year it’s fantastic, but it takes some work at Harty Cup level, from the players and the parents.

“We’re just thrilled that we’re now there, and we’re happy to do anything that’s needed to play here.”

The manager has heaped huge praise on the new GAA teachers who have joined the school staff in recent years.

“Anthony Roche came on board five years ago, and I couldn’t say enough good about him. He’s a serious coach who has played a big part in this. Robbie Costigan and Eoin Fitzpatrick were helping out last year, while still training younger school teams, and this year they have come in fully as coaches on the Harty team.

"They’ve also been brilliant and have added so much. Having four of us is a huge help managing and training big numbers of players.”

Brendan is also very grateful to Tipperary Under 20 manager Brendan Cummins and the minor hurling management (including Conor O’Brien) for their cooperation with players who are also involved with those county teams.

As can be expected, anticipation has been building in the school since the semi-final victory.

“There’s a massive buzz in the school and it just comes so quickly. We had a real battle against Cork CBC in the quarter-final and won by three points, and then within ten days we were playing in the semi-final.

"To win there and suddenly, there’s really no time to stand back and take on board what’s happening. We just have had to go straight away and try and get these lads ready to perform to the best of their ability.

“The performance our lads put in to come through tight battles in the quarter-final and semi-final was huge. These are young lads, and when they do something like that they have to be praised, and it’s just finding the balance. They want to perform to the best of their ability again on Sunday, and they want to perform on the biggest stage.”

Two teams from the county participating in the final, coupled with the county’s success in last year’s All-Ireland minor final, demonstrates that underage hurling in Tipperary isn’t in the worst of places.

“This time last year we had lost to Thurles when they beat us comfortably in the quarter-final,” says the Cashel manager.

“Ardscoil Rís got a good start on Thurles in the semi-final (a match won by the Limerick school before they were beaten by Tulla in the final).

“There was a lot of talk then that Tipp were way behind in these age groups, and that we had a lot of work to do to catch up with the Corks and Limericks.

“But James Woodlock (the Tipp minor manager) and the lads went on and what a great day it was in Nowlan Park to win an All-Ireland title.

“Now you have two Tipp schools in the Harty final. There’s a bounce there at the moment and a lot of it came from that minor success last year. The previous year Tipp had a difficult minor campaign.

“The energy that comes back…we have a couple of lads coming off the back of that and Thurles are the same. Templemore had the same and they got to a Harty quarter-final.

“Having All-Ireland champions in your school in the last week of August when we returned from the holidays was just brilliant.

“Those lads in every school are role models, and everyone looks up to them and wants to be playing with them as best they can. Templemore led Ardscoil Rís for 45 minutes in the quarter-final, so there’s three Tipperary schools, and Nenagh were very unlucky not to come out of their group.”

Brendan expects a huge crowd to flock to Thurles on Sunday, and says it’s every young player’s dream to play in FBD Semple Stadium.

The manager was speaking at a press event held at the TUS Tipperary Campus Thurles SportsLab last week.

The event was also attended by the team’s joint captains Ronan Connolly and Ben Currivan.

However, despite both players (who were described by their manager as role models) having sat their Leaving Cert English mock exam that morning, it was a case of no rest for the wicked, with both players returning to school in Cashel once their media duties in Thurles were fulfilled.

“Ben and Ronan were in school at 8am this morning to start that exam, and they’re going back.

“Ronan has an exam in the afternoon. He got out of his mother’s car this morning eating a bowl of cereal and then handed the bowl back to her,” Brendan added.