On Monday last 9/2/15 45 brave souls ascended to the cold and ice that is the all weather pitch in Stepaside in February to sacrifice themselves to the hurling gods. For the first training session of the year it was a great turnout and it is hoped that this level of commitment will continue. Training continues on Monday and Wednesday until 15 April in the 9-10pm slot. For any further information or directions to the pitch feel free to look at other news items below or contact anyone on the committee. New members are always welcome. Three teams on the go so although 45 is a great turnout looking for nearer to 60 come league time.
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Right lads,
Realt Dearg have been challenged by Craobh Rua Craobh Rua - Belgium GAA - European Hurling Champions 2014! Was in Brussels and Bruges there before Christmas and the Beer is unreal. If you are still unsure whether to go or not they have a Camogie team....... More info on them: http://www.hurling.be/club.htm So to the details : Match Date : Saturday 21st March - fly out Friday lunchtime/evening 20th March / return evening Sunday 22nd March Cost: €200 including flights and accommodation If you want to go email David Roche at [email protected] to confirm. Two flights out on the Friday so specify if want to go on the 12.45 or 17.40 flight. Not many seats left on the 17.40 flight. The money is going to be required in advance so if going try and get the transfer today to the Realt Dearg Account: Payment details: IBAN : IE39AIBK93104739098067BIC : AIBKIE2DXXX labelled as 'BEL_Your Name' Realt Dearg Abu. 2014 C Team Report – by Liam Lanigan
I remember once having a few quiet pints with a teammate, the dirtiest cornerback I’d ever marked whether in training or match (they are a dirty breed, and the Tipperary brand are the dirtiest of all), in the very early days of Réalt Dearg. Never one to shy away from his reputation, he was explaining why he plays the way he does, why doing the necessary is always necessary. It boiled down to this: “look, Lanigan, hurling is serious business; there’s no such thing as a casual game of hurling.” Players will do what they can to be as good as they can be when Sunday morning rolls round and the ref is calling in the captains for the coin toss. We know, as junior hurlers, that life and jobs and relationships and happy hour 2-for-1 White Russian offers can sometimes intrude on that ambition, but all we ask of the players that take the field with us is that once the ball is thrown in, your heart, your mind, your soul and your lungs will be emptied of everything to do as well as you can. If you can’t look your teammate in the eye and say “I did what I could,” then you may as well have stayed in the scratcher, and winning or losing means very little in comparison with that. Serious business, even when it’s not that serious. No such thing as casual. Hurling badly will ruin your day. First things, as always, first. Hurlers want to hurl. Réalt Dearg, like any club, wants to win matches, leagues, championships. And like any club, particularly one growing at the incredible rate of the Stars, that desire puts pressure on managers, caught between a need to make sure hurlers hurl, and the competing need to make sure their teams win. There’s no room for sentiment, and there’s no level where chasing victory doesn’t matter. The game demands too much of its players, in skill, strength, and commitment, for anyone to take it lightly. One of the unfortunate effects of this is that good, committed players who have churned up the practice field and felt their sides burn on the third minute of planks, or put in the last ounce they have on one more shuttle run, or went for fifty more left hand strikes at the ball alley before dinner, have found themselves standing on the line come Sunday. Watching. Idle. Counting the subs and calculating the odds of their getting on the field and despairing. Sometimes calculating their odds of ever displacing these guys, and walking away. A young club (not always young players) can’t grow, can’t build itself into a community when they have too many people who feel like spectators in fancy dress, togging out for show. If I was asked to come up with a motto for Réalt Dearg, it would be this apparently redundant descriptor: “hurlers hurling.” We have great men running our club, growing it and caring for it, and turning it into a central feature of the community. That will take time, though, years of bringing players through the ranks (and through the doors of Vaughan’s), of building relationships with that community, and establishing an identity between club and place. While that’s happening, we are all about making sure that hurlers have a chance to hurl. When hurlers hurl, they become part of a bigger project. When you’ve lifted yourself out of the muck on the 21 yard line and brushed the dirt off the crest and went back into the battle enough times, a hurler will become a part of something that is more than just leather and ash and sweat and blood. But it has to be about those things first, and that only happens when you have hurlers hurling. So, in 2014, with the club seeing up to 60 people at training sessions half way up the mountains in the snow and ice of February in Stepaside, Réalt Dearg started a third team. In its earliest days, the idea seemed far-fetched, and the notion that the team might be serious, or even win a game, seemed much more so. And its beginnings weren’t promising: I had been asked to step in as manager. Our first scheduled match was, in the end, one of the lowest points I had as a member of the club, when we were unable to muster enough players to field a team of any sort at all. So much for giving players games. So much for hurlers hurling. So much for the C team. But we went back to the drawing board. Improved communication issues, sent out a shouty, preachy email about commitment and determination. On the 6th of April 2014 the C team played its first ever match, donning the earliest, sash-design Réalt Dearg jersey (still, to me, the “real” RD shirt) to face Whitehall Colmcille at their grounds. League games can be played 13 a side. We had 12 players. It was a clear day but the pitch was heavy. Whitehall were fast, well-drilled and skilful. These were not words to burden any description of the RD team. We didn’t score. The deficit was 38 points, although the breakdown of goals and points has been mercifully lost to history. The kind of result you imagine the opposition in hysterics about down the pub, or worse still, a result so bad they didn’t even bother laughing. Could you look your teammates in the eye and say “I did what I could”? I could. And so could they. All 11 of them. There is only one way to go after a result like that. Well, two ways. Up, obviously. And then to the pub. Hurlers had hurled. RD’s other teams had played that day and there is a world of difference between sitting in the pub having hurled, and sitting there having watched others hurl. And you could see that in the faces and the voices of the C team players. There is no such thing as casual hurling. I suppose a run-down of all of the matches played during the year is what is normally called for here, but I don’t have the details to hand, and I don’t care about who we played on one day or another. The year was in the patterns. Some players from that day in Whitehall never played again, while new players arrived, more every month. The team struggled for numbers and players were rotated in from the B team while still eligible, sometimes dragged from their hungover bed on a Sunday morning. But there was a core of players, like captain Kevin McEvoy, selector Dave Sheehan, and newcomer and immediate veteran Leon Flanagan, for whom the team was an opportunity finally to develop into the players they are capable of becoming, which can only happen in the white heat of competitive matches (train all you like, but there’s nothing like a number on your back and a stranger in your face looking to make a dinner of you to hone your instincts). There were players who had never played hurling before in their lives, but who were becoming more assured and more skilful with every game. There were bad days, like when Ballinteer, a young, fast, sickeningly skilful and organised outfit, ran at the half back line like men possessed, and overran us like marauders. There were better days too, like running Kilmacud Crokes very close (still losing) in Silverpark. The objective was to show improvement, individually and collectively, to be able to look back on the day and be glad you had been there. Our hurling lives are short ones, if every ball and every game isn’t important to you now, it will be when you’re an ould lad and you can’t have them back. And we were getting better. At last count, five C team players went on to play for the B team in championship during the year, and a higher number played league for them. In the final game of the season we went to St. Anne’s Park to play Raheny and round out the season. I remember saying to my teammates that I realised we were, to some extent, regarded as a social team, or a punchline, nothing serious. But anyone in that circle of players that day would have seen that we didn’t see it that way. Hurling, as they say, is serious business. We only asked of ourselves that we leave the field knowing nobody could say we weren’t serious. I knew there was a bit of fire in us to prove that. But I hadn’t expected this. The first five minutes were a firestorm of hard tackling and fierce hunger. Hunger for ball, hunger for hits. I hadn’t expected it, and neither had Raheny. They rallied, they’re a strong team and they have no shortage of heart themselves. Half time, a point or two down. Jaysus lads, enough about playing for pride, we can win this. Thirty minutes and then you’ll have the whole winter to recover if you want (except about half of us were going to have to play another match that afternoon because of a shortage of B team players, but anyway), just get this done. No real memory of the second half. I was half forward and I wasn’t on much ball. Lots of hooking and blocking, lots of time watching Ronan Moloney, just back from an ACL tear, letting them know what the half back line is all about, lots of Jack Mc in midfield (MIDFIELD? Not a typo) scoring at will. No end to the energy of hurlers hurling. The A team had won the league the previous week. It was a momentous day for the club, our first trophy. The C team are about as far from a trophy as it is possible to be, but you’d never have thought so from the response to the final whistle. There’s nothing much to gain in sport by thinking back on what was achieved last week, or last month or last year. There’s only next week, and next month. But if next month we are lucky enough to have the privilege of hurling again, it’ll be because we are building on days like that. The club is a better place for having the C team. The B team and A team will be better for it being there, and as long as it exists nobody will ever walk away from the club because they cannot get a game. There is a lot to do. We need more players (doesn’t every club?), we need a solid core to the team, we need to get drink and smoke less and run that last shuttle and stay level to the end of that plank and do another hundred strikes off the left in the ball alley. But it’s some craic all the same. Players meeting is on at 7.45 Thursday 29/01/2015 in Rodys. Moved from Wednesday.
We start back training in Stepaside for Training twice a week for ten weeks starting Monday 9 and Wednesday 11 February up until the week of Monday 13 and Wednesday 15 April in the 9-10pm slot.
It will cost €5 a week for both or either nights to cover costs. This year we are offering an upfront payment discount of €45 for the 10 weeks training for anyone who wants to pay early and in one go. If you want to pay upfront it can be paid into the club account or else to either Ultan or Declan Ryan at the players meeting. If you pay it into the club account send an email to Ultan or Declan Ryan so they can keep tabs on who has paid. Players meeting is fixed for Wednesday 28th January. Time and venue to be confirmed.
If you are looking for Drimnagh Castle, it is on the left hand side coming in along the long mile road. Close to the Spin Roller Disco place behind Drimnagh Primary school.
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