Drom & Inch GAA Club

Sunday Times Article

Sunday Times journalist, Christy O'Connor wrote a piece on the club in the run up to the Munster Final (The Sunday Times - 13th July 2008).

MILESTONE FOR INCH

Munster
Four players on the Tipperary side today are from Drom-Inch, a small club that has shown the way forward.

Paudie Butler's front room at his home in The Ragg in Tipperary is furnished with the usual and unusual trappings of a home-office; books, shelves, a computer and a goldfish tank in the corner. This is effectively the national hurling development control centre but there are no master blueprints lying around or large technical sheets decorating the walls. Hurling's development has always depended more on blue-collar ethic than high-tech strategy and a framed photograph beside the door neatly showcases the potential of those values.

The picture includes the Drom-Inch and Sixmilebridge U-14 teams that shared the 1995 Feile na Gael Division one title after a period of extra-time had failed to separate them. In the competition's 37-year history, Drom-Inch's achievement is still a standout monument because Division One has always been dominated by the urban club powerhouses. Ballyhale Shamrocks, Tullaroan and Oulart-the-Ballagh are the only other clubs from a non-urban base to win the competition but they were all nourished from a rich heritage. Drom-Inch had, neither prestige nor population: their achievement flew in the face of tradition and it represented a glorious beginning.

The flag they stuck on top of the mountain 13 years ago is fluttering just as strongly in the breeze now. Strong rural clubs have always relied on a particular generation of players to sustain ambition and accelerate development but Drom-Inch have moved the club from the periphery of Tipperary hurling to the very centre in a short time. Four of their players — Eamonn Buckley, Seamus Butler, Seamus Callinan and James Woodlock — start today's Munster final.

That achievement is further illuminated when compared with club representation trends in Tipperary over the past 40 years. Toomevara won 10 county titles in a 15-year period between 1992 and 2006 but they never once had four starters on a Tipperary championship team in that time. Roscrea and Kilruane-MCDonagh's dominated club hurling in the 1970s and for a period in the early 1980s but Roscrea had four players on a Tipperary championship team just once —against Cork in 1979. Kilmane won an All-Ireland club title, like Roscrea, but never had more than three starters.

Mullinahone did provide five players to the starting Tipp teams against Laois and Galway in the 2003 qualifiers but one of those players — Denis Byrne — was an import from Kilkenny and it was a year after Mullinahone had won their first county title. Drom-Inch's achievement is even more elevated given that they're still waiting for their first county senior title.

"For years, having one player on the squad would have been a huge bonus but having four on the team is just a dream," says Damien Young, a former Tipp sub goalkeeper under Brendan Cummins. "Jesus, it's unheard of. You'd expect that from the likes of Toome [Toomevara] or Mullinahone but not from a club like us. It's the talk of everyone around the place. They're so proud of the lads. They're all heroes to the young lads here."

Tipperary never expected Drom-Inch to produce hurlers for the county and the club were never persecuted with guilt in the past when they didn't. Mick Kennedy, Phil Farrell and Tom Barry were all locals but they won their All-Irelands with Limerick and Dublin. Seamus Bannon from The Ragg won three All-Irelands with Tipp in 1949-51 but he played his club hurling with St Mary's Nenagh and Young Irelands Dublin during those three years.

In 1975, Tommy Butler became their first championship player in over two decades. Butler won an All-Star in 1978 but his career was played out during a huge Tipp recession and he never won a championship game in his six-year career. It took a generation for the club to produce another championship player when Tommy's son, Seamus, made his debut in 2004.

Located just four miles from Thurles, Drom-Inch were always hemmed in by clubs bursting with tradition and with the deeds and feats of old hurlers deposited like minerals in the soil. The parish borders Toomevara, Borrisileigh, Holycross-Ballycahill and Loughmore-Castleliney, all clubs that had won county titles. "If our forefathers played Thurles Sarsfields or Holycross or Boherlahan, they would be talking about it as a lifetime ambition of having just played against them," says Paudie Butler. "That would have been sufficient for them."

Yet the interest was always huge and hurling in Drom-Inch was never about medals. The game was never segregated from the mainstream of life or scheduled into a slot. It was always with them like the weather. Only warmer. "I've never been in a community that will support a club as much, both financially and emotionally," says Matty Ryan, a former club chairman and juvenile secretary.

They always had a tradition; they just didn't have the underage structures to develop it. In a place as small as Drom-Inch, with only around 750 houses, it's always been a numbers game. Under those conditions, they sought to maximise their output through intensive underage and schools training and they had Butler on hand to lead the charge.

He is national hurling co-ordinator now but his initial grounding for the job began in Drom School in the 1980s. He based his school coaching model on the skill template that Neil Williams had so successfully established in Toomevara. Then, in 1988, the club developed a new club pitch in The Ragg, just across the road from the school.

A big, expansive field, it neatly complemented the club's athletic and skilful coaching model. The conveyor belt was up and running.
"I remember standing in the school yard one morning and thinking to myself, 'If we have our wits about us here, everything is possible'," says Butler. "Everything was on the cards because they were uniquely talented, both boys and girls. I was young and fresh and teaching in my own parish school. We knew then that it certainly would be the adults' fault if we didn't succeed because there was no question about our talent anymore."

In 1992 the club won the U-12 county title, their first A title. That group went on to win county titles in every A grade from U-12 to U-21, picking up Community Games and Feile na Gael titles along the way. Inevitably, Drom-Inch players began to make an impact on Tipperary underage teams; Young captained the Tipperary minors to the 1999 All-Ireland final, while Butler captained the U-21s two years later.

It naturally took them a while to find their feet at senior level. They were fighting relegation in 2002 and 2003 but they made it as far as a county quarter-final in 2004 and looked ready to take flight. They reached their first county final in 2005, which they lost to Thurles Sarsfields. They reached another county final last year but were heavily beaten by Loughmore-Castleliney.

"It was the most disappointing day of my life because I knew we weren't that bad," says Ryan. "These fellas just want to win but they froze on the day and it was horrible”

Two county final defeats in three years have increased the pressure and expectation on them to deliver but the average age of the side last year was 22 and they will arrive in time. "Up until 2005, the talk outside the parish would always have been, 'Drom-Inch are good underage but they'll never win senior'," says Damien Young. "Now they're saying, 'They still can't win it'. But this team is very young and if we don't win it this year, it isn't all gone. We still have time."

When they met Loughmore in the championship two weeks ago, the sides drew in the best club game played in Tipp this year. Loughmore won the Munster club title last year and Drom-Inch know that they're not too far away now.

"Last year's county final will be a defining threshold for these players," says former Tipp player, Raymie Ryan, who coached the team last year. "They'll learn from that and move forward because they' re great listeners and a fantastic bunch of hurlers. They’ve great coaching from Paudie Butler and that's standing to them now. There were nights when we had 46 guys training and they're obsessed with their hurling and obsessed with trying to win their first county title."

When Butler began his odyssey as a coaching evangelist around the country in the 1990s, he was able to measure the standards elsewhere against the ability in Drom-Inch. He soon realised that "we could take on anybody". They proved that as underage players and are close now to completing their ambition as a senior club. Having four players starting for Tipp in a Munster final legitimises that ambition even more.

The parish is clearly bursting with pride but they're not getting carried away with themselves because they want this trend to become the norm. "It's wonderful and it's a lovely time for us," says Butler. "The whole parish has worked so hard for this and we justwish now that the lads keep on developing as they are and keep growing into a new Tipperary team and become part of a new era.

"Our ambition is to win a county title for the parish and to produce as many good hurlers as we can for Tipperary, at every level. We don't want to be on the periphery any longer and we want to be central to the whole business of hurling in Tipperary. We want to be a driving force and to bring an energy and a vitality to Tipperary hurling."

Days like today, though, are eternal. The good times are here. And better days are coming.

Added By Micheál 14 Jul 2008