GAA president Jarlath Burns has set the long-term goal of expanding the number of hurling counties competing for Liam MacCarthy by 2034, the association's 150th anniversary.
Burns was speaking at a briefing by the Hurling Development Committee, where it was announced that the new role of a National Head of Hurling would be filled in the coming months.
Burns said that the committee, which includes notable former players and managers like Brian Cody, Neil McManus and Darragh Egan, were tackling what he considers one of his "three key objectives" as president, to grow hurling outside of its traditional heartlands.
Only 17 counties currently compete for the top prize, and only 10 have reached the All-Ireland final over the last 72 years. Antrim (1943 and '89) are the sole Ulster county to have played in a decider.
"We might start to see the basis of results on the 150th anniversary of the GAA, or we may not. But the long-term objective here has to be that we are going to have more counties participating in the Liam MacCarthy Cup.
"When I go around the counties and I go in to help them with their strategic plans, and out-and-out football counties who might only have six or seven clubs, I always ask the question, ‘Where is the section on hurling, where you are actually going to do something tangible and proper for hurling?’ What you get back often is 'we don't really know how to do that'. That's the answer you always get.
"This committee is the catalyst by which counties who have a genuine desire to see hurling and camogie develop within their counties have somewhere to go, have somebody to ask, can get advice and guidance, and finance if needed, to set up a hurling or a camogie element within their club or a new club in places where demographics allow that. That's really what this is about."
"If the issue of developing camogie and hurling could be solved with money, we would have solved it years ago"
Burns said expanding the number of clubs playing hurling is "one of the priorities" and something that is often a challenge where they have not developed organically.
"I think one of the difficulties we have in Ireland is that an awful lot of our clubs are set in their ways. They're either a football club or a camogie club or a hurling club and it's hard to get the next code in. Because we are all in the business of competitive games and there's always a feeling in one code that if you introduce the other code we would become diluted.
"That is a pity because the opposite is very much the case - whenever you introduce the next code into a club it actually makes the club bigger.
"If we go into counties and say we have identified certain areas where there could be four hurling clubs in this area, maybe two involved with the football clubs because of the numbers that are there, and maybe two on their own, I think counties will be open to it because counties do want to do what they can for hurling but they don’t really know how to do it. I think we can give them that guidance."
Burns promised that funding for hurling would be ring-fenced, rather than left up to county boards that might have different priorities but cautioned: "If the issue of developing camogie and hurling could be solved with money, we would have solved it years ago.
"I remember [former president] Christy Cooney made a massive injection of cash into my own county and it did work for a while, but, then, after a few years we went back to the way we were.
"It requires money at a particular stage. Obviously for equipment and start-up and foundation. Before that, it requires structure and strategy and will and people who are willing to actually volunteer to get these hurling clubs up and running.
"It's a long-term challenge, but my ideal would be that there would be money that could be applied for whenever the club is up and running."
Burns’ son Jarly Óg was on the Armagh team that ended the county’s long wait for Sam Maguire in July but he is also a talented hurler.
However, hurling is often the poor relation in counties with a stronger football tradition.
Burns Snr revealed that Jarly, and his younger son Conall, had to play on successive days last weekend as there was a fixture clash between Silverbridge and their hurling counterparts Craobh Rua.
"As somebody who never had an opportunity to play hurling myself, I certainly made sure my own children wouldn't have it the same, and they all played hurling and they enjoyed playing hurling," Jarlath Burns said.
"Unfortunately, Craobh Rua were put out in the championship on Sunday and my two sons played football championship on the Saturday and a hurling championship match on Sunday. That is unhelpful at times whenever those sort of fixture clashes come.
"Whenever you're playing football for one club and hurling for another it is very difficult for CCCs to cater for all. I wouldn’t condemn anybody for that but it shows how difficult it can be trying to work out for fixtures when you’re playing football for one team and hurling for another."
Camogie president Brian Molloy said that it was "hugely important from a camogie perspective that we are operating in step with the GAA and with hurling in this development."
Rathcline man Molloy spoke of how the number of hurling clubs in his native Longford had declined from over 20 in the 1980s to just a handful now, but said that initiatives to grow the game - in one of the five counties briefly threatened with exclusion from the Allianz Hurling League - were bearing fruit.
"I see now that Rathcline have the nursery going on the hurling side of things again, just in the last year. And if you look at the pictures they have up on Facebook, about 40 to 50% of the participants are girls.
"This is about putting in place structures to enable every girl and every boy in the country to be given the opportunity to play our national sports, camogie, hurling, football, ladies football, no matter where you come from."
The HDC chair, Antrim man Terry Reilly, insisted that the new head of hurling development, which the GAA said it welcomed applications for, would have the full backing of the association.
"I would have thought that the conditions are primed now for the person in this role to have 'teeth' like never before," he said.
"Because you have a president who is fully behind what we're doing. You have a member of management chairing it who is very focused, and we have a committee that's keen, eager, willing and able to assist this person to bring the best possible programme we have ever."
He said that the job would be "distinctly different" to the position of national hurling development manager held by Martin Fogarty (who remains a HDC member) from 2016-21.
"Martin didn't have, as far as we can establish, the strategic back-up of a committee that rolled out a programme on a strategy basis as opposed to games development," said Reilly.
"This person will be more strategic in nature. It's not someone who will be going out and rolling out programmes on the ground.
"It's somebody who is working with provinces and counties in order to coach the coaches in order to roll out the programmes. So it will be much broader in nature.
"Martin couldn't have possibly covered all of those bases where we will go to."
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