Fighting Against The Tide

Uncle John, me, Dad and my brother John in The White House, 1999

The blog is heavily focused on football activity, more because I’m training the team than anything else and as a result there is more to discuss on an ongoing basis. However, it gives rise to my father accusing me of being more of a big ball merchant than a small ball one. It irritates me no end.

Hurling has always been a sensitive thing for me and I suspect my brother John too. The pitch at home is named after our Grandfather who hurled with Cork and won an All-Ireland medal in 1941 and a litany of Railway Cup medals. He even had the honour of captaining Munster to one of the victories, back in a day when the Railway Cup nearly had equal billing with the All-Ireland. Later, my Uncle John would win an All-Ireland Minor at his second attempt. Dad didn’t represent Cork but played his share of Fitzgibbon and Senior Hurling. The stories of his tough, uncompromising style are often told.

I always felt a need to prove myself as a hurler more than a footballer, but also a frustration that I never managed to. It’s against that backdrop that my irritation burns I think. Events never lent themselves to me matching those that came before though. The first blow was in 1986 when Jimmy Barry won his final All-Ireland against Galway. I got left at home that day. Imagine how that experience could influence a 5 year old.

With one school blitz to my name I was whisked off to Indianapolis, Indiana for just short of three years. My head was turned to Basketball and Soccer, even though we did keep in touch with 5am drives to Gaelic Park in Chicago to see the All –Ireland.
Back into sixth class and a solitary outing against Courcies before being sent off to a Protestant orientated boarding school. Rugby and Hockey followed for the next five years until Gaelic Football was brought into the schools. No hurling though and I wouldn’t play again until Ballinhassig beat us in the Minor in ’98. So by the time ’99 came around I had two competitive hurling matches to my name.

With John at the helm, myself and the team made rapid progress that year, beating Tracton in a massive tussle in the South-East final. To a man, the players on that team would probably say it was their finest day in our club jersey.

As if intentionally trying to halt my momentum, Dad took over the adult team a couple of years later. I was handed the goal keepers jerseys against all sorts of protestation from me. Secretly though, I probably loved it and found a position on the team where i could have a decisive impact on a game, be it with saves or carefully placed puck-outs. Donal Og’s puck-out strategy was still only in his dreams when I was hitting short ones into wing forwards hands and out over the sideline, to the furious objection of the Kinsale crowd!!!

So, the final nail in the coffin didn’t quite fit. Even off the field, the first team I trained was our U-16 hurlers in Kinsale, at a time when only the most committed would work away in the face of the footballing tornado in the club. Despite having my head turned away at every opportunity, my interest never waned though. I may find myself training a football team now but that’s because it’s the job that needs doing. Simple as.

I think what Dad wants me to admit is that the joy of winning a hurling championship trumps all else. I said already that the ’99 win was the greatest of all. Add to that one of the biggest upsets I was involved in, when we beat Courcies in the U-21 in 2001, and you have two of the top three memories. I’d swap all the South-East football medals for a hurling one. Toyota and Belgium deprived me of my place on the 2005 team and again when they won it in 2007. Every time I think about that bus trip to Shannon in 05, with the lads in Innishannon playing Shamrocks, I curse my luck. I was named in the programme that day but events conspired against me once more.

Dad will complain that this entry is too long winded but it is important to recount the evidence of his work. Add to all of the above his retirement from farming to pursue a desk job and you know why I don’t carry the rugged look of a fella who spent his idle time lifting bails and hopping gates. The absence of that experience is reflected in my style of hurling. With no quick route back to make amends for unfulfilled ambitions, I must be happy in my skin. The challenge is no longer to be pursued with Kinsale, it’s now to be chased across Europe and will be done as always, with equal vigour in both codes.