Changed times at a football academy

SCHOOL REPORT/ST JARLATH'S COLLEGE, TUAM:St Jarlath's have a record 12 Hogan Cup titles but football is not as all-consuming as it used to be.

DIFFERENCE defines St Jarlath's College. It was different from other schools in its tradition of idiosyncratic football excellence, of which its 12 Hogan Cup titles are an eloquent expression. It is different from how it once was, in a new time when its boarding status has faded into history and the priests who so influenced its football dwindle in numbers.

Some things change, others stay the same. Lunchtime, and the Jarlath's boys troop un-uniformed into Tuam, many sporting jackets in the school's blue and white football colours, a splash of colour and pride in the drizzle-grey Galway afternoon.

And on Saturday, the seniors will take on St Brendan's of Killarney in the All-Ireland semi-final at Kilmallock (2.30pm).

School president Fr Conal Eustace retains the passion for football he has had across the long span of his time in the school, as pupil and staff member for 24 years. He talks amusedly of the tradition he has inherited as manager of the senior team. Unlike many of his predecessors, he has not yet presided over a Hogan Cup-winning team in five years as president. The school's last win was in 2002.

"Fellas are conscious of the tradition. You need to win one. You don't need to leave it too long before winning them, you know. The pressure comes on. If years go by and nothing appears, they'll say, 'Oh, football is finished in Jarlath's.' This happens on a regular basis, where if you go a number of years without winning, suddenly there's a crisis. The last one was in 2002, so it's nearly time for a crisis again."

He speaks of these high expectations with warm good humour. Nonetheless, football in the school has long been taken with a sharp edge of seriousness.

"A fair few fellas have come back to repeat their Leaving, possibly with football in mind as well. Every so often fellas feel they left a Hogan Cup behind them and they might come back the following year to see could they get it that year. It mightn't be the whole factor in them coming back to repeat, but it could swing it. It shows how important football is, that they would actually think of repeating to play football."

Ray Silke, Galway's 1998 All-Ireland-winning captain and a Jarlath's past pupil, teaches and trains football in the school. He echoes the president's words.

"You'd have had students who came here to win a Hogan Cup. That was uimhir a haon, and uimhir a dó was, if we get a Leaving Cert, so be it. Not as much now with the boarding gone, the decline in vocations and because there's no one to do evening work. But in the 60s, 70s and 80s, people definitely came to Jarlath's for football."

Boarding ended in 2005. The school can no longer magnetically draw football talent to it from around Connacht as it once did. Silke puts it succinctly.

"Michael Meehan, for example, is from Caltra, which is 25 or 30 miles from Tuam. There's no way Jarlath's would have won the Hogan Cup in 2002 against Coláiste na Sceilge had it not been for Michael Meehan, and there's no way Meehan would have been here only for boarding. So you can see how the school is going to be constrained significantly by the end of boarding."

Conal has a fond recall of his own time as a boarder in the 1960s. Football was squeezed into every spare minute. Informal kickabouts were organised on days when there was no training. It was a ritual so imbued with meaning it was given a name: "going out on stump".

"I think I organised more stumps here than anyone else, because I couldn't bear a day when I wouldn't be out at the football. A day never went by that you wouldn't tog out. It'd be unthinkable . . . teams trained seven days a week. I don't think we ever had a day off. You had to keep the boarders occupied."

There is a subtle note of elegy when Silke and Fr Eustace speak about the ineluctable change that has come over Jarlath's in recent years. It has crept in over the high, venerable walls and the place will never again be as it once was.

Most of the priests who trained so many teams have also gone. Many lay teachers do not have the time priests had for training.

Jarlath's priests always seemed progressive, innovating, thinking deeply about the game. In the 1930s, Fr Michael Malone brought an analytical rigour to football in the school. He would stride the college with a tactical scrapbook tucked under an arm. It was nicknamed "the Koran".

Later, other priests travelled to Loughborough University in England to learn new athletics coaching techniques. Inevitably, the methods were appropriated in the cause of football.

The school's legacy of excellence informs its present, and Saturday's game is proof, but the future is less clear. In a few years' time Jarlath's may cease to exist in its current form; an amalgamation with Tuam's other boys' school, St Patrick's CBS, is mooted. Football remains hugely important, but Silke feels it is perhaps not now all-consuming, as it once was.

"It's hugely part of the fabric of the school. When you talk to the lads themselves, it means an awful lot to them, but to say it's as big as it was 20 years ago, I wouldn't necessarily think so. It's been diluted by a wide variety of factors that no one could change: the loss of boarding, the change with the priests, the lack of teachers available to give the commitment, parental attitude - and the clubs have got quite strong. But the lads are still massively proud."

The tradition of "going out on stump" has all but withered with the years, but others remain. "Spiffs" - another arcane piece of college argot - still precede big matches, as they have done for decades. Senior students give speeches to the school designed to fire up support for the team. The senior side embarks for games with the rabble duly roused.

The days of 10 busloads of pupils filing off to Hogan Cup finals, which Silke recalls from the 1980s, are gone. And the competition has perhaps lost a little of the lustre it had when finals were televised from Croke Park. Nonetheless, as Fr Eustace notes, there are still places in school history to be staked.

"The commitment now is every bit as good as it was. Even more so, because these fellas could go home and play with their clubs. At least with boarders, they had no choice in a sense. We're still one of the few schools who train after school, as opposed to having it during school or lunchtime.

"We're very fortunate that lads are prepared to stay in and that parents will come and collect them. And never a complaint."

Different days now, but football life in Jarlath's goes on just the same.

St Jarlath's College, Tuam, Co Galway

Founded:1800

Number of pupils:410

Sports played:Football, athletics, tennis, swimming, golf

School sports colours:Blue and white

Major sporting honours:St Jarlath's have won 12 Hogan Cup titles, more than any other school

Notable past pupils (sport):Numerous famous Galway football names, including Seán Purcell, Enda Colleran, Michael Donnellan, Ray Silke, Seán Óg de Paor, Pádraig Joyce and Michael Meehan

Notable past pupils (non-sport):Government Chief Whip, Tom Kitt; RTÉ broadcaster Michael Lyster.