{"id":71,"date":"2009-08-01T09:59:34","date_gmt":"2009-08-01T08:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/?p=71"},"modified":"2009-08-01T10:01:12","modified_gmt":"2009-08-01T09:01:12","slug":"hurling-in-tallow-co-waterford-ned-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/?p=71","title":{"rendered":"Hurling in Tallow, Co. Waterford & Ned Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

Excerpt from “My Father: A Hurling Revolutionary”<\/a><\/p>\n

From the word go, he started to instil a love of hurling into the hearts and minds of the youth of Tallow.\u00a0 It was hurling country anyway, so he was certainly not preaching a new religion to people in West Waterford.\u00a0 The generation that he was dealing with, however, had known only failure to the be the lot of the Tallow GAA in terms of performance on the field \u2013 a generation believing that they were inferior to other clubs in the county.<\/p>\n

Tallow GAA did not have any field of their own at that time.\u00a0 Moreover, there was no money around for many children to be able to afford the basics of a hurley and a ball.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour father used to train in Aquin Murphy\u2019s field,\u201d Eddie Cunningham told me.\u00a0 There was also a field known as Curley\u2019s Field, but which was used on and off by the local club as disputes erupted and became resolved and then erupted again.\u00a0 \u201cWhen you think of it now\u2026 We used two coats for the goals.\u00a0 Your father would go in goals and I\u2019d be taking shots at him.\u00a0 We practised up there; we practised in Keefe\u2019s field behind the graveyard of the Church \u2013 he was allowed in there; Mort Kelleher allowed him into the Bride Valley Field alongside the graveyard; we hurled in the big Barracks field.\u00a0 Just the two of us \u2013 I was only a youngfella at the time \u2013 and there was nowhere else to train.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facilities did not, of course, include such luxuries as a changing room.\u00a0 It was a case of togging off by the ditch at the side of the field.\u00a0 With Curley\u2019s field, there were stables and if the horse wasn\u2019t there, then you could tog off in the relative comfort of the stable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always said he (Ned) was a man before his time where coaching was concerned,\u201d says Eddie Cunningham.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt about that,\u201d says Johnny Curley.\u00a0 He was born around the time that my father first came to Tallow and was one of the first generation to grow up under the direct influence of my father as a teacher and a hurling coach \u2013 two roles that blended seamlessly into one in reality.\u00a0 \u201cThe schools thing was something that came across big time, because he was always ball-and-hurley.\u00a0 Ground hurling was his first love; catching the hurley the right way.\u00a0 In fact, some fella could be very good and still catching the hurley the wrong way, but your father would be there saying: \u2018You can\u2019t hurl like that, you\u2019re catching the hurley the wrong way!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

By the early 1960\u2019s, my dad was firmly established as a Tallow player and a star of one of the best inter-county senior hurling teams in the country.\u00a0 Moreover, as a teacher and a member of the GAA club, his presence was beginning to be felt in the beginnings of what was to become a series of skilful Tallow hurling sides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpt from “My Father: A Hurling Revolutionary” From the word go, he started to instil a love of hurling into the hearts and minds of the youth of Tallow.\u00a0 It was hurling country anyway, so he was certainly not preaching … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9kxa7-19","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/conorpower.ie\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}