Pucking great - Rochestown return to hurling

The opening round of Division 3 of the AOS Security Seandún Hurling League was a special occasion for Rochestown.

While recent times have seen the club focus only on football, small-ball activity has retured.

“I would say that the early-to-mid-1990s was probably the last time I remember a hurling team in Rochestown,” says club PRO Declan Murphy.

“There was just an appetite last year and the question went around the club, would guys be interested? When we were over in Ballinlough for a couple of games, a couple of the Seandún officers – Mick Buckley, Eddie Murphy – mentioned it and asked if we had any hurlers.

“Obviously, there'd be a very strong pedigree in Rochestown over the years with hurling. When you look at somewhere like St Gerard's Place in Rochestown, there were 20 houses and ‘Blondie’ John Horgan, Joe Murphy, my uncle Weeshie – three from those houses represented Cork.

“You had Justin McCarthy just up the road, you had the three Lombard brothers, the Coughlans, the Clarkes, the Collinses, all very, very good hurlers.

“Rochestown did the double in 1980 in junior B, hurling and football, and going back to my dad's time, in the 1960s they had a very strong hurling team.

“They got to two city division finals in a row in the 1970s but the hurling died off after that, the players weren't there and the commitment wasn't there.

“We put it around last year – why not give it a go, let's enter a team. It was driven by Paul Hartnett, a former Killavullen man, who has been the heartbeat of Rochestown now for a number of years.

“He just grasped it last year and just said to get a group of hurlers together and get training. We decided to enter a team into the league and they played their first match against Douglas a couple of weeks ago.

“The vibe was, ‘Lads, let's worry about the occasion, the result doesn't matter – Rochestown are back as a dual club, it's a very proud day for the club, let's get out there, let's hurl, the result is insignificant.’”

Uptake has certainly been positive, according to Murphy. Hartnett is now living in St Gerard’s Place too and his efforts show how those who come to the club can become embedded in it.

“Paul is driving the hurling,” he says, “and hopefully my uncle Weeshie is going to get involved as well.

“He’s one of the best hurlers ever to come out of Rochestown. He won Oireachtas medals with Cork and was a fantastic hurler of his time.

“He has spoken the last number of years of what it would mean to him to see a Rochestown team out hurling again.

“Our chairman Michael Corkery and his brother Gerard, fantastic hurlers in their time as well, they would have been part of the team that won the double back in ’80, so it’s a proud moment to see a tradition and a club like Rochester rising again, considering a number of years ago, the club was folding.””

The return to hurling, on the back of last year’s county junior C final appearance, is now another string to the bow.

“We had 25 or 26 togged out for the first league match,” Murphy says.

“There's guys who were picking up a hurley for the first time in a while, guys who have hurled with other clubs and are throwing in their lot with Rochestown.

“The amazing thing about it was, when we started bandying around the idea last year, there were guys who had retired completely from playing and said, ‘Lads, if Rochestown are hurling, I'll join.’

“We've actually got a lot of new members now by being a dual club and some of them now will fall in with the footballers as well. There's a panel of over 40 guys there.