Pat Ryan

Brother James Dahmer, who was in this more, John, I don't know if you were aware, he was in this more teaching as well for 20, 30 years.

He taught Dave Bennett, Dan Shanahan, these fellas.

He came to do, and he was in doing here for almost 30 years as well.

What he done for us in this area, again, I can only speak about our own area, was unbelievable.

Hurling before school started, hurling at break time, hurling at lunchtime.

After Christmas, and we'd say from February on, every Friday when I was in primary school, and it's still continued on now, it's a great primary school here, we got to go down and go hurling from one o'clock on from half one to three o'clock, doing the field leagues before Christmas.

There was yard leagues where there was teams picked and maybe Tuesday or Thursday after school, there was yard leagues played out.

So, you know, it's not fancy.

It's not about Craw Park and throwing it back at these fellas.

It's not about systems and records and means and where teams have come up.

It's that when I was in primary school, we only had between 50 and 60 young fellas in the primary school and 90 to 95% of them were playing hurling five days a week.

you know so you know I think and especially hurling it's such a harder sport to master skill sets wise from such a young age it just takes more effort if you see young fellas now they can master the basics of soccer and even getting football a lot easier than hurling so it takes consistency of effort so

wherever this development money goes we'll see when it goes back into grassroots if I was to say one thing it would have to be to put GA players if it's a thing that certain GA players maybe even college players that are trying to earn money or they're getting grants and if they can get more on their grant put them into the schools send them into school every Friday into schools in Leash and Carlow

have teams picked, go in, play as much games as possible.

Like a letter went, when we were in primary school here, I remember a letter went home one time.

School didn't start until quarter past nine.

They sent out a letter to say, stop sending your schools to kids.

Stop sending the kids to school at half eight, quarter past eight.

There's no teachers there to look after them.

Because we were going down and we were playing the game that we had finished the day before.