Glen Rovers' recent relegation from the Cork Premier Senior Hurling Championship ended a 97-year stay at the highest grade.
It was an unwelcome milestone for the club of Christy Ring, Jack Lynch and Patrick Horgan, who have won 27 titles and are only second in the roll of honour to Blackrock (33).
But the two-time All-Ireland champions' fall also ensured another unfortunate piece of local history.
Next year, for the first time in almost a century, no club from the north side of the Rebel City will compete in the top tier in either football or hurling.
Na Piarsaigh, home to the Ó hAilpíns, John Gardiner and Tony O’Sullivan, dropped out of the top tier in 2022 after 65 years and will play Senior A again in 2024.
2017 All-Ireland JHC winners Mayfield are in the fourth-tier Intermediate A but all the other Northside clubs, including former senior dual sides St Vincent’s and Brian Dillons are playing Junior A hurling, which is broken down into divisional championships.
The Na Piarsaigh footballers were the highest-ranked city club in the third-tier Premier Inter but lost a relegation final to Macroom today and will now join St Vincent’s at Inter A. St Nicholas are the football arm of Glen Rovers and the five-time county champions were senior as recently as 2019 but are now Premier Junior (fifth tier). The rest are all Junior A.
Diarmuid O’Donovan is a former player, coach and administrator at club and county level and the current Glen/St Nick's underage chair. The journalist and historian has lived most of his life within a kilometre of The Glen’s pitch in Ballyvolane.
"It’s a big change," he tells RTÉ Sport of the club's drop. "The ambition would have been at the start of every year for the Glen to win the county. Now the Glen aren’t going to be playing in it. That’s a whole new ball-game for everybody.
"Every thought about the club was based upon the fact that it was senior club with a long tradition that stretched back more than your lifetime."
O'Donovan observes that The Glen struggled in the first half of the noughties but regrading was optional until the introduction of relegation from 2006.
However, they contested three successive senior finals from 2019-21 and were quarter-finalists last year - when O'Donovan was a selector - so their relegation was a surprise.
The club also still field four adult teams and have contested three of the last six minor finals so the future is not all doom and gloom.
"It’s not the first time that the Glen are not as strong as they would like to be or thought they were," he adds.
"You can look at it two ways. I would see it as an opportunity. We have spent a lot of money in the last two years on infrastructure. It should focus everybody into realising we’re not infallible. The unthinkable of being out of the senior championship happened on our watch and we have to reset and refocus on getting things done. That’s where you would hope the thing would go.
"We are still a big club. Ultimately, the resources and the know-how should be there to turn it around and put us back in senior. Whether it happens in one year or not you just don’t know."
"It's extremely sad to see in a club that was predominantly hurling at one stage"
It’s a different story for Delanys. The Glen’s nearest neighbours played senior hurling from 2003-2007 when they were also intermediate in football. But the club who supplied forward Barry Egan to the 1993 All-Star selection couldn't field an adult team in hurling this year.
Paul Cummins is a former player and coach with Delanys, who managed both the football (Junior A) and hurling (Junior B) teams last year.
"It’s the first time they’ve been without a hurling team," he told RTÉ Sport. "It’s extremely sad to see in a club that was predominantly hurling at one stage.
"They seem to get guys into the football easier. It’s tough [to play both]. The way it’s run now is football one week and hurling the next, you get no break.
"Trying to get people in to manage is a task in itself as well. When you’re in a club of that size, and people are working, it’s extremely hard to run a team."
Can he imagine a hurling revival?
"I find it hard to see. You’d want somebody very special to step in and try to get players back out again to get an adult team.
"We survived with dual players, guys playing into their 40s and all credit to them. But they don’t last forever and if you have no underage coming through you’re not going to survive.
"I’d be 45 and walk along to watch some match and I’d be called on to play. Dillons are going down the same route and I’d say the same will happen to Mayfield eventually.
"The football team is young enough. I would be hopeful that can keep going for a while."
Cummins now coaches an underage camogie team at St Finbarr’s on the south side of the Lee and says playing numbers are an issue for all city clubs.
"Years ago, the senior clubs had three teams in an age group, A, B and C. They now have only one or maybe a B as well. And the knock-on effect means the smaller club barely has a team or has no team. It has gone down an awful lot all over the city. You can see the drop-off with the Glen and Piarsaigh being relegated from senior.
"It’s hard. The Glen are our closest neighbour and I presume they get first preference in hurling. We wouldn’t be getting a lot [of players]. You’re competing with the Glen, Dillons, Mayfield, Vincent’s, Na Piarsaigh. White’s Cross are only out the road, Whitechurch, Rathpeacon. They’re all in the vicinity.
"There are a lot of clubs up on the north side and not enough young people basically. There is not a whole lot of housing that has been built on the north side compared to the south side. You look at Douglas, who have 1700 [playing] members, Delanys have 42!"
"The culture that drove kids into the GAA is not as strong as it was"
O’Donovan is a member of several school boards in the north city and agrees that the demographics there have changed, in favour of suburban clubs.
"There is no doubt that the traditional areas that the Glen, Na Piarsaigh and St Vincent’s drew from have got older. The population is there but it has shifted. There is a younger population on the south side. Places like Douglas and Bishopstown expanded, Togher and Blackrock developed. They would have big catchment areas of 15,000-25,000 whereas we wouldn’t have, and would have more clubs feeding off it.
"There is a school that at its height from the 1950s to 80s would have had up to 700 boys and now their enrolment is 300 at best. When that school was in its pomp, The Glen and Na Piarsaigh were winning national féile hurling titles. It’s not producing the volume of players that it was.
"Newer areas have developed near them but some of them are not producing anything because they are short-term leases and stuff like that. There would be large tracts of social housing in the area and collectively they’re not as interested in playing organised games.
"The culture that drove kids into the GAA is not as strong as it was in the 1970s when I was playing. They’re not playing as much [sport in general] and you see a massive drop-off once they get to 13, 14, 15 years old."
Basketball used to be seen as a big rival but less so nowadays: "Getting them to play any game is often the problem."
O'Donovan suggests a new approach is needed to attract young city dwellers into Gaelic Games.
"I know there are clubs in Dublin that have really harnessed that but probably because the Glen and Na Piarsaigh were rumbling along pretty competitively they probably didn’t pay attention to harvesting the new areas as good as they should have. Maybe we should take more cognisance of what they have done in places in Ballymun.
"The existential problems exacerbate the internal problems. I wouldn’t say social changes in the area are responsible for the Glen’s problems. We’re responsible for our own but it makes the environment that we operate in more difficult. As an organisation we’re maybe not as well equipped as we should be to see these things and develop them.
"You could argue that the collapse in football happened 10 years ago and should have been a warning sign to everybody.
"Even though there were all sorts of plans produced by the county board, both when I was there and since, you have seen nothing done by the county board to arrest the decline of football. I would say that is part of the dry rot that has now set into the hurling."
Dublin Hill-based Delanys have amalgamated some underage teams with Brian Dillons of Montenotte. Cummins suggested a merger of the clubs almost a decade ago but fears the numbers may now have dwindled irreversibly.
"At the time I felt that had we amalgamated we would probably now be playing intermediate hurling and intermediate football. Unfortunately they didn’t go for it and the clubs went into decline.
"It’s up to the current crop of members now but I feel it’s too late and should have been done a while back. The players are all now after pushing on."
"I think the county board might feel there are too many clubs in the city"
The senior clubs can field their players in their second, third or fourth teams at junior level, leading to mismatches that Cummins thinks contributed to Delanys pulling out of the Junior B hurling.
"Lough Rovers would be like ourselves and when you see the hammerings they got in the league this year, I think that’s why Delanys pulled out. They asked Seandún [the city division] if they could go down a league and they wouldn’t let them.
"You had a chance a couple of years ago when there was a rule that you couldn’t play Junior B or C if you played senior, intermediate or inter-county. But that rule is gone now so the senior clubs can play guys down in the B competitions and that has kind of wrecked the small club because it doesn’t give them a chance any more.
"I think the county board might feel there are too many clubs in the city, and are looking for a way to try and rid them. So that the senior clubs would become bigger again."
O'Donovan is more optimistic around Glen's long-term future but warns that they cannot afford to sit and wait for housing regeneration.
"In our area [Blackpool] there will be north of 1,200 houses built. But the time lag from breaking soil to recruiting players is essentially 10 years.
"Eventually there might be a good opportunity to recruit. But you can’t be looking ahead for ever, we have to do what we have to do in the middle of all this as well."
