Jason Daly is one of the unsung heroes in the St Vincent's GAA Club

THERE are many unsung heroes in various GAA clubs in every corner of Ireland but for St Vincent’s stalwart Jason Daly it is a labour of love.

It all started for Jason as a raw youngster living on Kilmore Road in Knocknaheeney when he was approached by Tadgh O’Shea to get involved with the Street Leagues.

From there it was playing at schools level with the North Mon before progressing his club career with the Saints under the late Davy McCarthy.

For many years Jason donned the green and white jersey of St Vincent’s with many great players like the late Donnacha Murphy and Barry Coutts.

There is little doubt that football took over hurling in recent years at the club as Jason explained.

Daly said: “Most lads played both codes in my time but many of them chose football because in my book it’s an easier game to play.” When Keith Ricken joined the club football went to another level according to Daly.

“Keith got involved first with an U13 football team that would have had John Paul Murphy and Paddy O’Shea in the squad and from a young age he produced a team of real quality.” 

The end result proved crucial for the club.

“We won the Premier Minor football in 1998 and that team were the backbone of the club for many years going forward as Keith is an outstanding coach and person and many players then just concentrated solely on playing football.” 

In 2006 Jason was approached by Keith to get involved with the Intermediate football team.

“When I look back having being captain of our Intermediate hurling team at the time and with a couple of hurlers refusing to play football it was a shrewd move by Keith to have me involved.

“Getting me involved as a selector gave a message out to the hurlers that were not keen on playing football and in the end we ended up winning the county in 2006.” To this day Daly is hurling crazy and sadly he has seen that code in the club deteriorate even after he called it a day.

“Nowadays I am involved with the club underage section and in my book you have to love hurling and put a lot more time into it on the training ground to progress because the skill level it much higher than football.” Mixing with a dual club is pretty tough for all competing clubs.

“I think Sars, Midleton and the Glen to name a few are lucky they have one code to concentrate on because believe me getting young lads focused in modern times is not an easy task.” The work that is done at the juvenile level of any club is phenomenal and Jason praised the work done by his fellow clubmates.

“We have many volunteers but people like Wayne Murphy and Barry Coutts do trojan work that cannot be underestimated and hopefully one day I will witness my two sons Sean and Adam help bring some silverware back to our club.” When former players retire and get married before moving to various parts of the city and county and Jason feels that has weakened the influx of youngsters coming through the club programme.

“Just take Tomas O’Connell he married and is living in Kilshannig and he has four boys that are crazy for the GAA but look that’s life and it’s just a pity.

“I have lived in Tower for the past 20 years but look its only 15 minutes in the road so it was easy for me to keep my lads involved in our club.” The skills of Daly seemed to have rubbed off on son Sean as he is looking a decent prospect and is presently involved with the Cork U16 Development side under John Meyler and Seanie McGrath.

“I think for any youngster to be getting coaching of high quality at that age is a great plus but on the other side of the coin when the squad is cut there is going to many of these lads disappointed.

“Sadly some players get totally engrossed with the ambition of playing for Cork and there is a huge void to fill when they are told they are not on the panel.” On a final note Jason pointed out that Rebel Og despite doing great work have taken the local rivalry out of city hurling.

“I have two sons that never played against the Glen or Na Piarsaigh because with Rebel Og they have so many grades and to me the old Bord Na nOg was far better for city hurling but let me add the lads in Rebel Og are doing ferocious work for the sport.”