That’s all Joe Baldwin would allow himself. He had a stroke in mid-January. Everything had to stop.
“The health is pretty good at the minute but there will be a realisation that come two o’clock on Sunday, there will need to be a sit-down and figure out a way of stopping this from happening again.”Conal was his 12-year-old son and constant companion that came everywhere with Joe and the teams he managed. Although to Conal, they came as a management team.
“Darragh doesn’t play Gaelic Games at all. He is a showjumper and very successful in his own right,” says Joe. And then think of the Central Competitions Control Committee’s proposal at the tail-end of last year that flew a kite around excluding Fermanagh, Cavan, Longford, Louth and Leitrim from the National Hurling Leagues.
“At our level, there is a blueprint that was published a few years ago in Fermanagh about the development of the game. We have the eight juvenile clubs now. If you wanted to look at how to do it, Fermanagh was probably a brilliant template.” Baldwin with Conor McShea after Fermanagh beat Cavan in the 2021 Meagher final. Tommy Dickson / INPHO Tommy Dickson / INPHO / INPHO