After Loughmore-Castleiney won the Tipperary hurling championship their manager, Eamonn Kelly, struck a wary note of admiration for his team.
“They love both codes,” said Kelly, “so there was no point in me going in there if I was going to try and push against that. They’re like no one I’ve managed before. They’re just an absolute dream.”
The club was a week away from adding the football title and emulating the double, previously achieved in 2021 and 2013.
On Sunday they will travel to Waterford to take on the Munster champions of the past three years, Ballygunner. In a week’s time they will be on the road again, to another provincial semi-final, this time in Ennis against Clare football champions Éire Óg – coincidentally the two identical fixtures that ended their provincial campaigns three years ago.
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That they are a remarkable club has long been noted. They have high-achieving, All-Ireland hurling winners and All Stars, like Noel and John McGrath, but the latter is also one of the club footballers, who lined out in the All-Ireland minor football defeat of a Dublin team that included several of Dublin’s record-shattering senior teams of the decade to come.
And Kelly was right not to attempt to disrupt their equilibrium. Loughmore and its players have a most unusual commitment to both football and hurling. This year they broke new ground for the club by asking different people to manage either team.
Michael Dempsey, a former Laois footballer and manager as well as a Kilkenny hurling selector, who was physical trainer to eight of Brian Cody’s All-Ireland winning teams, got involved with the club after they asked him to help with an under-age development plan, and is now in charge of the Loughmore footballers.
“They love both games and whoever is there has to respect the culture of the club and the wishes of the players,” he says. “They pride themselves on playing the two games and have as much love for one as the other.”
Dempsey, who also chaired the GAA’s Talent Academy and Player Development Review Committee, goes as far as to suggest that the club’s dedication to alternating both games is conceivably a challenge to prevailing orthodoxies about the need to specialise and focus on one game at the expense of the other.
[ From the archive: Elite intercounty Gaelic games are not the heartbeat of GAAOpens in new window ]
He looks at it from the manager’s point of view.
“It’s interesting and makes me question some of the intensity. When you’re dealing with one team, you have more time to work on plays, like kick-outs or puck-outs. But then you may ask yourself, is all this time necessary? You have to keep training going, so the likes of Loughmore are switching from one to the other and you don’t have as much time.
“Maybe there is a cross-transfer in terms of the two games. The principles are the same, even though different skills are involved, and maybe the momentum of being successful in both compensates for not having as much time to work on certain things.
“I think it asks a bigger question: how much time do you actually need to put in to reach the optimal level? Maybe we’re a slave to received ideas about what is necessary to get results. It poses an interesting question but I don’t have a definitive answer.”
The club hasn’t had quite the crazy schedules of three years ago when they alternated football and hurling for 19 consecutive weeks – Sunday is four weeks since the Tipp football final – but it has been demanding.
One aspect of the dual management that Dempsey believes has been important is the presence of one strength and conditioning director, Paul Treacy, for both teams.
“The physical aspect is being dealt with by the one person, Paul. If you have two different people, I think there is the potential for conflict in terms of load and priority. One supervisor means that the loads can be more closely monitored. He knows the players and whether they need a break or need to be pushed.
“Plus, there’s more clarity, particularly around the preseason work and an understanding that the players may well be involved in both championships for an extended period.”
Dempsey also refers to the hard-core duality of the players. All 20 who appeared in the county football final were listed in the hurling final programme. That universality brings all sorts of benefits, he says.
“In a dual club, you may have a number of players who don’t play both. How do you deal with them when you’re getting ready for a match in the other code the following week?
“The advantage for Loughmore is that it is the same group of players so there’s a positivity and enjoyment about the different challenges. It’s the same group moving on; there’s no one left out.”
The most prominent hurlers in the club are John and Noel McGrath and their enthusiasm for the club’s perpetual motion is obvious.
“You don’t get to these days often enough to be worrying about next week. You have to celebrate these wins when they come around because they’re unbelievable days for the team and the parish,” was John’s response to the imminent football final after he was named man of the match in the hurlers’ win over Toomevara.
When, a week later, Loughmore saw off the formidable challenge of Clonmel Commercials to clinch the double, Noel spoke to Tipp FM’s Paul Carroll.
“It’s hard to explain,” he said. “I know we’ve done it before but you just don’t get sick of doing it. We are so happy. These are unbelievable days. We’ll never get these days back.”
Unbelievable days.
