There’s some mix in that Ardmore senior hurling team.
Seven of the Waterford club’s players who will take to the field in the Munster Junior Hurling final on Sunday against Ballybacon-Grange were playing 16 years ago when the side won the county title.
The rest of them, they’re only chaps. They’ve the old heads and the young legs.
“Out of the 25 on the panel, there’s probably 16 of them aged from 22 or 23 down,” says Déise legend Seamus Prendergarst.
Prendergast is 38 now. He won an under-21 title with his club in the year 2000. Himself and seven more from that team are still plying away for Ardmore. Most of the others are between 15 and 20 years younger.
Where are the lads aged between 23 to 38?
Seamus Prendergast made 57 championship appearances & scored 2-47 over 15 seasons in white & blue 4 Munster titles one NHL & one Railway Cup
— Tomás McCarthy (@tomasmcc) October 15, 2014
“There’s a couple of lads gone off to Canada and America and different places. A few fellas have given up, they’ve fell out of love with it and are playing something else or doing something else,”
Prendergast certainly hasn’t fallen out of love. The buzz of winning drives him on. The younger fellas are driving him on.
“I really enjoy it. There’s a lot less pressure on you, now. You can go out and enjoy the game and train. There’s not the same level of pressure or commitment on you. For the older lads, if you get to, let’s say two out of the three sessions in the week, then they’ll be happy with you, once you’re in decent shape. When you’re winning, it makes it a lot easier as well,” added the former Déise centre forward.
They’re winning at the moment alright, but the club have come through some tough times.
“We won the intermediate in 2013, and it was a roller-coaster for us. Clinton Hennessy (Former Waterford ‘keeper) retired in 2014, and we’d a couple of injuries, and yeah, we had a bad year. We went straight back down after a couple of bad beatings.
“After that, then, we were plying away in the intermediate going nowhere, really, we were struggling.
“It was just one of those years, things didn’t really go right. We were relegated back to junior and we only had one option then,” added the Waterford man.
Their aim is to get back to where they were, back to the top level of Waterford hurling. They’re going the right way about it, with the hunger of youth driving on the likes of Prendergast and his brother Declan.
“We had a meeting in November last year. It was the first time ever the club picked the manager well before the AGM, and he organised us with Strength and Conditioning training in the local hall.
“He started us off, in November last year, with push-ups, sit-ups and the usual, simple enough stuff. We all bought into that, that got us started. It was a good push by the young lads, maybe they saw that we had a good chance of winning something at the start of the year,” he added at a recent AIB Launch.
Win they did. The West Waterford club won the county Junior Championship. They trounced Clare champions Bodyke in the Munster semi-final, and now, now they’re gunning for Tipperary champs Ballybacon-Grange in Sunday’s Munster final.
One of the nicest and most soundest players I've ever refereed retired this week a gentleman the great Seamus Prendergast#lossforthedeise
— Brian Gavin (@referee34) October 15, 2014
“It’d probably mean more than any Munster medal I ever won with Waterford. I’ve been playing with Declan, my brother, and the other older lads, Cathal, Wayne, and Richie since I was five. You can’t beat that, I’m playing with them 30 years or whatever – You’ll never beat that with a county team,” he added.
And isn’t that magic? That unbreakable bond of teammates, of brothers. The culture that the younger players are coming into, are being welcomed into. That will stand them in good stead in the future.
The older statesmen do struggle with the new WhatsApp culture, though, he admits. The emojis, the slang, the abbreviations – It’s not first nature to them.
“We do, we can barely understand what they’re putting on. They’ve a new language on WhatsApp as far as I can see. It’s great craic, the younger lads would be pulling the piss out of us older boys. Any of the older lads are married and have kids, and the rest of them, sure Jesus, we’re nearly old enough to be their fathers, so yeah there’s good old craic in it,” he adds.
They stick together, though. Almost every GAA player in the club plays both hurling and football, football being the number one.
“We’ve been competing senior for 25 years now. We only have 25 players, and 24 out of the 25 are playing both,” he adds.
Prendergast, famed for his trojan work-rate in the blue and white of Waterford, retired from inter-county duty in 2014.
Two legends of the game! Seamus Prendergast's Ardmore are all set to face off with Tipperary's Ballybacon-Grange & Brendan Cummins this Sunday in the AIB Munster Junior Hurling Club Final. #TheToughest pic.twitter.com/P8pI6DHl90
— sportsfile (@sportsfile) November 29, 2017
“It was an enjoyable time. I would never have done it if I didn’t like doing it. We had great days, we had four Munster medals, a National League. We played in an All-Ireland final. It didn’t go our way, but there were probably other occasions when we should have made it again. I played with a great bunch of lads. Times were good. There was some great memories there,” he added.
There’ll be no stopping him in the Ardmore jersey. Times are still good. He still feeds off the buzz.
“It’ll keep the thing going, anyway. We’ve a couple of minors to come onto the panel next year, they’re decent enough hurlers, committed lads so if this run gets a few more like that, it’ll be great for the club,” he concluded.
WhatsApp is the only thing that can hold him down.
Ardmore’s Seamus Prendergast ahead of the AIB GAA Munster Junior Hurling Club Championship Final on Sunday, December 3rd.
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