In review: Naas still dominate local hurling landscape but St Martins prove too good again in Leinster

It was Saturday 22nd of September 2018. A furious Theresa May was at loggerheads with the EU as Brexit negotiations dragged on, Harry and Meghan were settling down to married life and Ireland’s grand slam rugby side were being hotly tipped as the next World Cup winners. At least in Dublin 4.

Dublin had been crowned All Ireland football champions for the fourth year in succession and Limerick had ended a 45 year wait for the hurling crown to spark their period of dominance.

Closer to home Kildare were the first ever All Ireland under-20 football champions, but the highlight of the year was Newbridge or Nowhere. The county hurlers were Christy Ring winners for only the second time but had been denied promotion having lost a play-off to Antrim six days later.

An unremarkable event happened that day in St Conleth’s Park. Naas hurlers lost a championship match. Unremarkable in that it merely dragged their wait for a senior county title out to sixteen years. Unremarkable in that their conquerors Ardclough had defied the underdog tag in the final the year before.

Here we are 2,656 days later. Or seven years, 3 months and eight days. Britain has had four Prime Ministers since May; Harry and Meghan have had millions of words of newsprint dedicated to them. And Irish rugby still haven’t broken the World Cup quarter-final ceiling.

Meanwhile, Naas hurlers have not lost another championship match in Kildare since that Ardclough semi-final. It is a remarkable run, bringing them seven successive county titles. But it is not by accident.

Aside from the benefit of population and the drawing of players from neighbouring football-only clubs, particularly Eadestown, the initiative to play underage games in the Kilkenny competitions was a significant factor in them developing into the all-powerful force they are today.

There’s no doubt it’s getting a bit boring now and there are parallels with Dublin’s hegemony in Leinster football. But that’s not the fault of Naas. And there was plenty of entertainment outside of Naas in the 2025 championship.

We wondered would there be a closing of the gap in 2026. Undoubtedly clubs are doing their level best to bridge that chasm. Coill Dubh, beaten finalists in 2025, had all their county players focusing on the club this year, which felt like a concerted and deliberate effort to knock Naas off their mantle.

Maynooth for some time have been the ‘team most likely’, at least in the medium term, with their increasing population and underage success. Could Celbridge come again after a disastrous 2025 championship? Éire Óg Corra Choill seemed to be on an upward curve.

Still, Naas were Naas and despite the losses of Conan Boran and James Burke through injury, and Daire Guerin travelling, no one was betting against them as the Senior A championship threw in.

Coill Dubh put it up to them briefly in the Preliminary Round, a rusty Naas emerging 0-22 to 1-10 winners. Confey were brutally dispatched by 5-28 to 0-7 as the groups got underway and Celbridge got to within nine points before Éire Óg Corra Choill leaked seven goals in 28-point show of force.

That put Naas through to a semi-final against Coill Dubh where five more goals made it twenty in four games as they eased into another final.

Éire Óg took the other semi-final place in the winners group A, courtesy mainly of a seven-point win over Celbridge. That followed on from arguably the match of the year in the Preliminary Round when the Caragh/Prosperous men drew with Ardclough after extra-time, winning through 4-2 on penalties.

Celbridge, who lost all of their group games in 2025 and their first two in 2026, snuck into third place in the group and with it a quarter-final spot, thanks to a comprehensive win over Confey.

Meanwhile the losers’ group B had the novelty of Moorefield’s return to the top tier but after running Confey to four points in an entertaining preliminary round they found the going tough against Maynooth, who ran out convincing winners.

In round two, however, they gave Coill Dubh the fright of their lives before losing out by a point before the Newbridge side proved no match for Ardclough in round three. They drop back to Senior B for 2026.

Coill Dubh’s win over Ardclough in the opening group game proved vital as they secured place behind a Maynooth team who won all three games, though they only squeezed past Ardclough in another of the games of the season, by 4-25 to 4-22.

In a season when most of the entertainment was provided by games not involving the champions, the quarter-final between Coill Dubh and Celbridge was another thriller, with the Blackwood men showing all their experience in fighting back from a ten-point deficit to sneak it by 3-19 to 1-17.

Unfortunately, that only set them on course for that semi-final hammering by Tom Mulhall’s side as Naas flexed their muscles.

Maynooth impressively disposed of a battling Éire Óg in the other semi-final, with youngsters Tom Power and Oran Byrne impressing alongside the more experienced Cathal McCabe and the Forde brothers, both of whom rattled the net in a six-point win.

Maynooth were now in their third final in four years against Naas having lost by eight points in 202 and seventeen in 2024. Could they at least close that gap and make it interesting?

It was certainly a more competitive encounter than the previous year’s final, but whether Maynooth had closed the gap is debatable. Goals from Killian Harrington, Ferran O’Sullivan and Cian Boran essentially put the game to bed by the 39th minute despite a valiant Maynooth effort with Naas having notched 1-4 in the last four minutes before the interval to give their opponents a mountain to climb.

Maynooth have youth on their side and perhaps the departure of Mullally will weaken Naas. On the other hand they haven’t exactly been backward in developing younger talent themselves. Mullally hinted at them perhaps having reached a ceiling, though that might have been tongue-in-cheek, even if there performance against St Martin’s in Leinster hinted at a little battle-weariness.

If the Senior A was predictable, the B championship was nothing of the sort and with Naas seconds being edged out we had a real, competitive final with Clane up against Leixlip, who had come down the year before. With promotion on the line the sides up an absolute thriller, possibly the game of the season, before the men in white got over the line. A run to a Leinster Junior Final made it a year to remember for the team who still top the senior championship roll of honour on sixteen wins, though Naas are now only three behind and closing fast.

Kudos too to Naas for winning the Intermediate title, beating St Laurence’s in the final while Leixlip won the Junior title and Naas the Junior A. Not to forget Coill Dubh who took the Senior Hurling League title, beating Naas in the final in June.

2,656 days and counting. Let’s see what 2026 brings.