Cunningham embraces busy club scene and the new rules
In a lot of cases, stepping back from intercounty management to club management would mean a reduction of responsibilities and pressure, but when it comes to elite clubs like the two that are set to meet in Sunday’s Roscommon SFC final at King & Moffatt Dr Hyde Park, the same rules don’t necessarily apply.
Taking charge of St Brigid’s or Pádraig Pearses involves managing panels that are packed full of future, current and past county players, and one where there is no masking the ambition of those players. So for Anthony Cunningham, going back to Kiltoom to take over St Brigid’s feels very similar to his previous roles with Galway and Roscommon.
“It's getting as busy now as an intercounty job, I think with the long season, it's longer for the club players,” said Cunningham, whose home club St Thomas’ have enjoyed a lot of success in hurling over recent years.
“No matter what happens everyone takes a break at Christmas time and then come the 1st of January they're fed up, they want to go train and they want to do a bit of exercise and they've had enough of being out. They'll just demand to do a night anyway. Then it goes to two nights. The next thing the league starts. The league was very well run and we had a huge amount of matches, so it is a very, very long season. So while they’ve condensed the intercounty (season), I don't know if the balance is still right there.”
Having first taken over from Jerome Stack in 2024, 2025 might have been seen as the season when things could settle down and his tenure could take shape. Instead, the new rules meant that for Cunningham, as with every other club manager across Ireland, he faced into a blank slate in January.
“You're trying to get to as many live matches in particular early on. I remember coming here to Brigid’s in January, Galway played a couple of challenge matches here and the following week Roscommon played. Any bit of a challenge match you could find, you'd go to it. You don't really see it until you go to the match.”
And his takeaways? “There was a lot in it but the majority is really, really good. It has become an attacking game more so than an defending game. The play starts again within a second of a foul. There's probably less hits, but attacking-wise and counter attacks have been really, really good. But yeah, you were following as much as you could.
“Strength and conditioning is key but being able to attack I think is huge. Even if you're an out and out defender and you're nearest the break, you have to be able to carry that ball.
“You probably see less high balls in now deep into the full forward line. Even the (David) Clifford scores in the All-Ireland were where he was coming off the arc. So there was different nuances as the year went on, like it’s probably harder to get the short kickouts off in the way that it's set up and there's a lot more fight for your possession in midfield. In the traditional older game, you could ping any of the six defenders; a strong goalie could pick out any of the six or eight different shorter positions.”
Some have argued that hurling could take something from the new rules, particularly in aspects such as the stronger punishments for disciplinary infringements and in creating more contests for possession.
Cunningham was an obvious person to ask given his high level experience of playing and coaching the small ball game. His take is that people need to be on guard, but that for now, hurling is still in rude health.
“I don't think hurling needs to change at the moment," said Cunningham, adding that elements such as the scoring rate and the skill level mean it is in "pretty good nick".
"Hurling, like football, has gone very possession based,” he acknowledges. “Limerick were the first really big exponents of a possession game, a counter-attacking game. If there's someone who's only five metres ahead of you, he's going to get it.
“They have the skill to ping the ball, that skill isn't in most teams. But it's gone very possession based, like most field games. Actually, field games have moved on. If you watch soccer even, and you watch the 70s and 80s highlights, they're hoofing a lot of balls out. Whereas now, they're building from the back.
"Traditionally, a corner-back would just get it and whip it away, the same with a corner-back in football, would hoof it as long as he could. Now, no, you see some very skilful corner-backs now in football who are able to get up and score and create a really good pass,” he added.