They’ll have a tough year next year.
Thurles Sarsfields won the Junior B All-Ireland hurling title on Sunday. The Tipperary club defeated Galway champions Kilnadeema Leitrim by one point to complete an unheard of, unparalleled achievement.
For any club to win an All-Ireland is a magnificent achievement, but what’s unheard of and unparalleled about the Sars’ national triumph is that they did it with their club’s fourth team.
Congrats to @thurlessars in the Junior B All Ireland hurling final today against Kilnadeema/Leitrim. Well done lads. Brilliant game. pic.twitter.com/yBnlvcG6Ms
— CBS Thurles – An Edmund Rice School (@cbsthurles) February 18, 2018
Just think about that for a second. It may be Junior B grade, but for most clubs, it will be their second or even their first teams who are competing at this level. The mid-Tipperary town went onto win the whole thing out with their fourth selection.
All hurlers are ambitious. At the start of the year, few hurlers in Thurles would have been aiming to play with the Junior B team. The young lads would have been gunning to make a Junior A, Intermediate or even a senior team. There might have been a few veterans in the twilight stages of their career who would settle for this grade, but there wouldn’t have been a queue.
So you’d expect, anyway. It goes to show you the depth, the hunger, and the enthusiasm for hurling in Thurles that they had 37 of a Junior B panel.
In 2017, Thurles had teams in the four different grades in Tipperary. They won the senior title, they got to the closing stages of the Intermediate competition, they had a Junior A and a Junior B team.
That’s domination. Many will begrudge Thurles of their glory, referencing their huge pick, their town status, Semple Stadium and so on, but we all know big towns face retention problems that some rural clubs don’t. It doesn’t seem to be much of a problem for Thurles.
“From lads aged 45 to lads aged 18, we had 37 players on our panel,” said the club’s All-Ireland winning manager Pat Ryan to SportsJOE.
“It’s phenomenal, I was over the Junior A team in Thurles this year as well and we had them in training together. The numbers were huge at training and the enthusiasm for the game in the town is really just phenomenal.”
So how do Thurles overcome the problems that bring so many other town clubs down after years of underage success?
“It’s coming up from Durlas Óg. Durlas Óg fosters these young lads brilliantly and keeps them interested. There are so many young hurlers coming up through the ranks year after year. Some of the young lads start off with the juniors and it’s a great way to get their careers going,” he said.
A special congrats to all our past pupils. The Yard League skills are going strong! @thurlessars #hurling #sarsabú pic.twitter.com/MYk8Rc80bo
— Scoil Ailbhe – An Edmund Rice School (@ScoilAilbhe) February 18, 2018
And Ryan doesn’t believe in those ‘Junior’ stereotypes. His men were as motivated and as committed as a senior team. We all know a junior player who’s mad to just show up and play the games. That doesn’t happen anymore. They work hard now too.
“Sometimes, there’s that stigma attached to junior hurling, but for me, anyway, they’re senior development squads. These lads are committed and they want to win too. If you saw the game on Sunday, you wouldn’t have thought it was ‘junior hurling.’ It was played at a serious standard.”
They’ll celebrate the win alright but these lads will be back at it again in a few weeks time.
“We’ll be straight back into it now in two weeks. There’s no rest for us, we’ll be preparing for next year’s championship then. In fairness, it is a bit of a strange situation we’ll have there, too.”
And they’ve a tough year to come next year. Seeing as they won the Tipperary title, the club’s Junior B team are promoted to Junior A for next year. That means Thurles will have two teams in that competition, who could potentially meet each other at the knockout stages.
“Because we won the Junior B this year in Tipperary, that team are going to be promoted to Junior A. That means we’ll have two teams competing in the Junior A championship in Tipperary next year. So, conceivably, seeing as the teams are on opposite sides of the draw, Thurles Sarsfields could be playing against Thurles Sarsfields in the mid-Tipperary Junior A semi-final next year.”
Ryan questions why this is allowed to happen at junior level, but not at senior level, and feels it’s slightly discriminatory to junior players.
“That’s a headache for us. We’ll have more than 50 players playing in the one grade. The question I’d ask is whether there would be two senior teams in one competition… I don’t think there would be.”
Even though he readily admits that it’s a problem that every other club in the country would only love to have.
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