Here is the remarkable story of a Kildare club side that will compete for a Kilkenny hurling title next weekend

Next Saturday will mark a historic day for not only Naas hurling, but hurling in Kildare as a whole, as the Naas under 16 side take on Kilkenny kingpins Ballyhale Shamrocks in the Kilkenny Division One League shield final. Naas were granted entry into the Kilkenny competition this year by both the Kildare county board and the Kilkenny county board in a bid to give the club’s under 16 side the chance to play at a higher standard and compete against some of the finest underage hurlers in the country. Austin Bergin, who is the juvenile hurling chairman for Naas GAA club, explained how it all came about. “It started last year with the under 15 league in Kildare. Both Naas 1 and Naas 2 came first and second so there was no final. In fairness to the Kildare county board, we brought it to them and said, ‘look there’s going to be no meaningful under league or championship in Kildare in 2015.” “We approached Kilkenny about getting them in, and the Kilkenny county board had no problem. The Kildare board backed us as well, so we went into division one, into the lion’s den of it.” The youngsters and their management were very confident in their own ability and knew they had a talented squad assembled that could compete in the county of the Cats, but Bergin admitted he never expected things to work out quite so well. “Going down we were hoping to be competitive, but it worked beyond our dreams in terms of competitiveness. We won four out of our five games and got into the division shield final.” “The four games we won were against James Stephens, Dicksboro, Erin’s Own and Bennettsbridge. We were in the harder division one group, but look, we asked to go down and the only team that beat us was O’Loughlin Gaels and they are the under 16 division one champions.” [caption id="attachment_47704" align="alignnone" width="300"] Henry Shefflin is a legend of Ballyhale Shamrocks.[/caption] Next Saturday’s final will be held in Naas GAA club at 3pm, and while it might seem a bit odd that the final of a Kilkenny competition is being played on Kildare soil, it was actually the decision of the Ballyhale club to play the final in Naas. “They asked if the final could be in Naas. We said we’d gladly host them if the Kilkenny county board pass it. They don’t travel away to matches often, and Naas travel down a lot. We played all our matches away. We were glad to do that, and the parents in Naas are great supporters and they gladly travelled down”, said Bergin. "Ballyhale are All-Ireland champions. TJ Reid’s father Sean is one of the mentors with the team so it’s a great opportunity for us to promote juvenile hurling in Naas so we’re pulling out all the stops to have them, so anything we need to do, we’ll do. We’re expecting to have a good crowd at it, and hopefully the weather stays good so we can have a good crack at it.” The work that Bergin and others like him have been doing in the club this year is paying off, but it has been a work in progress over the last number of years that will hopefully pay dividends for the club in future years, and their efforts begin right at grass roots level. “We play practice matches every year in roughly 25 counties. We do go the hard way about it. The footballers do give us great help, particularly Alan Napier, the juvenile football chairman. There’s great work being done to manage the dual players”, Bergin remarked. “The under 8’s, 9’s, 10’s, and 11’s play in the Dublin league. That’s part of the process of building them up. This year in division one of the Féile(U-14 All-Ireland competition) we made the semi-final. We could have won it, but we didn’t. Eight of those lads played in division one of the under 16 Kildare county final last Saturday.” The fear in clubs such as Naas, who are highly competitive at all age groups in football, is that some of the more talented hurlers will be drawn towards the larger O’Neills when they get to a certain age, but Bergin insists that the players committed to playing hurling are very talented and that proper structures are in place to help them when they reach an age where they may have to decide between the two. “That’s always a chance because of the level that football is played at in the county. Certainly it will influence the standard, but there is a plan to have some sort of under 17 intercounty team next year for May, June and July. The current under 16 Kildare squad is very strong and they hurled this year with the tier 1 counties. The under 15 development squad won their blitz at the tier 2 county level so they’ll be going into tier 1 county level next year as well. Naas would be the backbone of both of those teams.”