While tens of thousands of Mayo supporters descended on Croke Park, as towns, villages and crossroads emptied in hope that a 75-year wait for Sam Maguire might finally end, anticipation had already reached a fever pitch a week earlier in the tiny rural community of Tooreen, near the Roscommon border.
For while Mayo is, and always will be, a football county, there is one small corner of the county where hurling reigns supreme.
Nestled between Ballyhaunis and the Roscommon border, Tooreen has long been an anomaly in the west of Ireland. Surrounded by football country, the village has preserved a fierce hurling tradition that has endured for generations, a testament to the resilience of a game that developed in relative isolation from Ireland’s traditional hurling heartlands.
There is little to the village itself: a pub, a now-closed shop, a hurling pitch that is rarely quiet, and an old dance hall whose place in local folklore has become almost as famous as the club itself.
Legend tells of a mysterious handsome stranger who arrived at a dance there in 1954. After dancing with a local girl, he vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving behind nothing but cloven hoofprints scorched into the floor. The stranger, locals say, was the Devil himself.
Today, that devil adorns the crest of Tooreen Hurling Club, the only exclusively hurling club in the county. The Blue Devils have claimed 35 Mayo titles and six Connacht championships, producing some of the county’s finest hurlers along the way.
Tooreen
Among the current generation is Shane Boland, one of Mayo’s most recognisable hurlers. Since making his senior inter-county debut in 2014, Boland has helped Mayo win two Nicky Rackard Cups and two National Hurling League titles.
With Tooreen, he has enjoyed an equally remarkable spell, winning eight Mayo championships and six Connacht crowns in nine seasons, while twice reaching the All-Ireland Intermediate Club final, falling agonisingly short against Monaleen of Limerick and Upperchurch-Drombane of Tipperary.
No matter how successful we’ve been, even at county level, we’d still only draw a couple of hundred people”
Yet despite that success, hurling in Mayo remains an uphill battle in a county where football dominates almost every conversation. In Tooreen, however, there has never been any doubt about which game comes first.
“We’re so used to people barely taking any notice of us that we’re not even insulted by it anymore. Up here, everyone follows the football team religiously. You only have to look at the crowds they attract. No matter how successful we’ve been, even at county level, we’d still only draw a couple of hundred people.”
“It’s hard to understand really because Tooreen is such a massive hurling pocket out on its own. There’s such a grá for the game and for the club. Everyone is incredibly passionate about it. Sometimes it feels like we should be down in Limerick or Kilkenny because hurling is so ingrained in the community. It’s almost part of our identity in Tooreen.”
“It’s only a small place, and really all we have is the hurling. It’s absolutely massive for the whole community. Since our group came through around 2017, we’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy a lot of success, and that has only strengthened the bond people have with the club.”
“The facilities we have are fantastic, and the volunteers are unbelievable. They’ve put huge work into the club over the years. The standards this current group has set have filtered right through the underage teams, and the younger players now have something to aspire to because they’ve grown up watching us win. For a community of just over 600 people, the numbers involved in hurling are remarkable.”
Legacy
At a time when rural GAA clubs face mounting challenges from emigration, changing demographics and the steady drift of population towards Ireland’s eastern seaboard, Tooreen have managed to hold on to the nucleus of a remarkable generation. Even those who leave for work or study invariably return home to pull on the blue jersey.
The club has done so during an era in which the demands of elite inter-county sport have never been greater. As preparation becomes increasingly professional, the room for balance has steadily disappeared. The dual player has become an endangered species, not only at inter-county level but, increasingly, within clubs themselves.
While the pursuit of excellence is admirable in an amateur organisation, it has also come at a cost. In many of Ireland’s emerging hurling counties, where the game already fights for recognition, promising young players are often forced to choose between hurling and football before they have the chance to fully develop in either code.
For Boland, that reality is all too familiar. In a county where football understandably dominates the landscape, hurling often finds itself competing for the same limited pool of players and resources.
Everything has gone so serious to the point where the enjoyment is nearly taken out of it”
“We only have four lads who play football and everyone else is hurling, which is unheard of in Mayo. We’re just all stone mad for hurling and East Mayo really is really the only pocket. There are a few other teams that have popped up in the last few years but they all really struggle for numbers, but you’ll find two or three people who are just die-hard volunteers within these clubs are the ones keeping it going.”
“A lot of the clubs that are in junior hurling now are town clubs who are mainly football. It’s hard for them to push on when lads are nabbed at eighteen and given the choice: hurling or football.”
“You don’t see many dual players nowadays. Everything has gone so serious to the point where the enjoyment is nearly taken out of it. You’re being asked to put four or five days a week into one sport and lads are just not able to balance the two.”
Tooreen look well placed to remain the dominant force in Mayo and Connacht hurling for years to come. For Boland, however, success with the club is only part of the ambition. His greater hope is that Mayo can continue climbing the hurling ladder and establish themselves as a consistent Christy Ring Cup side.
Motivation
The westerners suffered heartbreaking defeats in successive seasons, losing the 2025 Nicky Rackard Cup final to neighbours Roscommon by a single point before New York, who entered the competition after the round-robin stage, ended their hopes in this year’s semi-final.
“Obviously the county is football mad and that’s fair enough, but that’s just the challenge that we have. I feel we should have won the Nicky Rackard the past few years, but in Mayo you never really know who you have on board. You have a good core of lads who you know will play, but then you also have lads who might drop off and focus on club football for a year.”
“If we had a full deck to pick from we’d be competing a lot more. You look at Kildare who we played in the Christy Ring final a few years ago, and they are such an example to the likes of ourselves. We’d only love to get to where they are at.”
“But look, you’re always just caught with the footballers. Senior football, even for clubs in Mayo, is so serious now that lads are being given the motivation to pick that over going into hurling.”
