We caught up recently with the last man to lead Wexford to All-Ireland glory in 1996, Liam Griffin.
The former Wexford manager has shared his thoughts about the slide in participation rates in hurling and what needs to be done to tackle it. The intention is for them to be on the Clár of Annual Congress next year.
This comes after he has fashioned two motions, one aimed at fully identifying the problem and the other to begin addressing it.
“The Irish Sports Council, together with the Sheffield Hallam University, they did a study on our game. It came out that we in hurling have dropped out of the top ten sports in Ireland. My point is, is that not an alarm bell ringing?”
“Why do we not know why people are dropping out and what’s happening? We need to start doing our own intelligence gathering if we are not going to accept the intelligence gathering of others. I do not want to see our game go.”
“If you look around the country and see the counties that are strong in hurling since I was a child, very little has changed. We have not seen any inroads in getting more people to play the game.”
The second motion calls for every GAA club to be required to have or establish a hurling nursery for children up to and including the age of 12.
The full interview will be played in two parts on Scoreline over the weekend, and it’s both fascinating and staggering.
