The mystery of the Dublin hurling czar

TOM HUMPHRIES LOCKERROOM: I know a man who has a secret. The man knows the name of the new Dublin director of hurling. He's keeping schtum, though. He's not divulging. He declines brown envelopes full of cash. He resists torture. He is immune to flattery. He's wary of an excess of hard liquor in case it makes him gabby.

He hasn't even uttered the name to his wife. He has seen the name and swallowed the paper it was written on and then he has run his tongue through a shredder and had his lips heat-sealed.

I know another man who reckons he knows who it is. He says (and this is pretty shady, now that I think of it) that somebody whispered it in his ear as he came out of a crowded saloon bar. Harry Lime. He ran the name past "the man who knows the name" and he thought he saw a cloud pass quickly over the man's eyes. Just a momentary thing, but he knew when he saw it that if he pressed any further "the man who knows" would have to kill him. They've been friends for a long time. He walked away. Neither of them will tell me the name. Another exclusive dies.

The name of the new Dublin hurling czar is like the third secret of Fatima only far more important. I like that it's a secret, even if I'm not in on it. After yesterday in Parnell Park, when Dublin staged a convincing recreation of the worst of the bad old days, there is still a sense of something brewing in Dublin hurling. On the long march, they weren't whistling all the way.

It's good that the name isn't being leaked all over the shop. The secrecy is like a little drumroll. It adds to the sense that Dublin hurling is getting its act together, that the pieces are falling into place.

Some day soon the city will have a culture of hurling again. There will be clubs where kids can go to be hurlers and they can just be hurlers, getting 30 to 40 games a year and, most radically of all, playing hurling in the summer.

Dublin will play Leinster Senior finals against Laois. Gracious Dubs will hope for the revival of Kilkenny hurling.

Meanwhile, I don't know who the new hurling supremo is but I know that it's not Nicky English. He told me this personally. He told me not to write anything that left people with the impression that he is going to be the hurling czar. He's not.

He's doing something just as important, though. He's going into the field doing missionary work. After spending so much energy on Tipperary, who have so much wealth that they could never be truly grateful, Nicky is starting work where it is needed the most, in the downtrodden barrios of hurling, at the bottom of the Dublin schools system.

Here's the plan: a development programme for talented first year hurlers in second level schools in Dublin. The scheme is born of a brainwave by Tom O'Donnell, Dublin Schools GAA Officer, and the genius of it is getting Nicky English to head the thing up, helping players to develop their skills, assisting with the training of third level students as hurling coaches, supervising some of the coaching sessions. Nicky's name is still luminous. Every decent young hurling talent in the county will want to get on board.

If you've seen the desert which schools hurling in Dublin has become over the past couple of decades you'll know that this is water on parched earth. It well complements the excellent work which Colm Ó Sealaigh of Coláiste Eoin did getting a Combined Dublin Colleges team out of Leinster in 2001, and dovetails nicely with the county board's development squads. By the 2004/2005 season, Dublin hope to have two teams competing in the Leinster Schools Junior A championship.

The new scheme has beauties both long-term and short-term. The idea is to target and identify talented hurlers in first year from second level schools in Dublin while also developing a pool of good hurling coaches in third level colleges - DCU, UCD and the teacher training colleges - who will be involved in the coaching of these players. All manner of good things will percolate down.

It is hoped to further target and identify talented players in sixth class in Dublin primary schools for inclusion on the programme in its second year.

Apart from schools competitions, it is hoped that the scheme will link into development squads/schools of excellence in Dublin.

Imagine. Hurling in Dublin has had to compete not just with soccer but with Gaelic football for so long. And, after Saturday, rugby and Ronan O'Gara will have seized more than a few imaginations. Yet with the senior hurling side showing signs of moving up in the world (yesterday notwithstanding), and with a 24 carat name like Nicky English beguiling kids in schools, there's a chance to put hurling back into the centre of kids' imaginations.

Dublin has had good hurlers over the years, but the county has struggled to present kids with anyone of genuine star quality. If the game is to thrive, Dublin needs a few pied pipers.

This whole thing is so important. It's the start of the death to lip service. Dublin city is full of people who profess to love hurling and value hurling, and most of them do nothing for hurling except talk about it.

The country is full of people who say that it's tragic that hurling struggles in Dublin, but nevertheless they'd like to see Tipp and Kilkenny in the All-Ireland every year.

Hurling needs to start selling itself for what it is, the greatest game in the world.

It's possible to love soccer and all its glitz, possible to be knocked out by Ronan O'Gara's chutzpah while simultaneously recognising that hurling is not only in competition with those sports for the attention of kids to play it but that the game is of cultural importance. One of the last shreds of our uniqueness.

In Dublin, at last, we are waking up slowly. We are awash with ideas which have yet to be implemented. We have blueprints. Pending appointments. A nascent supporters club. Development squads. A realisation that the old ways will have to go.

Dublin hurling has to look outside itself and learn, or days like yesterday in Parnell Park will be the staple.

Nicky English proposes group coaching sessions to be organised during the summer holidays and arranging competitive matches against similar squads in strong hurling counties. Summer games! Trips to play better teams!

Now we're sucking diesel.

I remember, in about 1990, Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh predicted the Clare breakthrough on the basis of a couple of Féile titles and what was going on generally at underage level in the Banner county.

Dublin have never had that smooth, integrated production line to success. Players have emerged despite the system rather than because of it.

Nicky will enjoy his work. Perhaps he won't enjoy it as much as he enjoyed bringing another All-Ireland to Tipperary, but he should.

To revive hurling in Dublin schools is a greater service to the game than winning another Liam McCarthy for Tipp.

Plus, as a manager who never said very much to the press, Nicky will have the privilege of working with some of the most secretive men in the world.

Things are not as bad as yesterday made them seem. Don't be afraid. Will the new director of hurling in Dublin please make himself known?