The ash and the oakleaf: Micheal Scullion with Gráinne McGoldrick.

One of my favourite clients is Scullion Hurls. I love the craft part of the business. Micheal Scullion is a young hurley maker and like myself is making his way working for himself.

We hooked up almost by accident a few years back when I was over buying some hurls off him for our club Eoghan Rua.

Since then I have been helping him out with bits of marketing and advertising. I write copy for ads and articles for him and he bounces a few ideas of me from time to time.

In turn I have done a coupld of marketing plans that we have tried to work through.

Micheal works out of a workshop over at the family place at Loughgiel in Antrim, the business is located directly across the road from the Loughgiel Shamrocks Hurling Pitch.

It’s as if you could break your stick, run over to Micheal and lift a spare and be back on the hurling field before play resumes.

When you gonna take the photo Joe?

We had a nice wee bit of profile in the Irish News, Micheal supplies hurls to Derry Camogie All Star Gráinne McGoldrick who’s a niece of mine through marriage.

Gráinne and I had a very pleasant morning over picking up sticks and generally shooting the breeze with Micheal.

It was all the more gratifying when the piece we prepared appeared complete with pic in the Irish News the day before the Ulster Camogie Final.

Unfortunately Derry didn’t win the match but Micheal was a winner. Since then he has had further success with a number of Antrim team using Scullion Hurls in their defeat of Dublin to make the All Ireland Hurling Quarter final. At the time of writing who knows what might happen next for Antrim and Scullion Hurls.