The Club

by Christy O'Connor

  We were sitting beneath the large TV in the bar and, just as the meeting finished, Sam Allardyce, whose Blackburn Rovers side were taking on Blythe Spartans in the third round of the FA Cup, was being interviewed on Sky Sports.

  ‘I wonder, would Big Sam do the job for us if we approached him,’ said Martin Coffey, the club treasurer.

  ‘He might be worth a try,’ I said to Martin. ‘But I think he’d be slightly out of our reach.’

  By the time I made it to the lobby of the hotel, a sizeable group of players had gathered. They knew beforehand that some kind of meeting had been called and most of the players started looking at me to kick it off. I just nodded over to Cathal. ‘Lads,’ he said, ‘whatever decision is taken here tonight, we’ve all got to row in behind it.’

  The room was packed once we got inside. There were about 50 chairs laid out in eight rows, but there was double the crowd that had attended the AGM, and some people were standing at the back. Tommy Duggan opened the meeting and he got straight down to business. He asked Kevin to name his backroom team.

  Kevin named his coach. ‘It’s been a very difficult few weeks for me,’ he said.

  Dan O’Connor responded immediately. ‘It’s been a very difficult few weeks for a lot of us, especially Tommy. We didn’t know what was happening with regard to you getting a coach. And that’s something that can’t be decided on a whim.’

  ‘I don’t know if he’s going to be looking for expenses or not,’ said Kevin. ‘And if the club aren’t in agreement with the arrangement, I’m not going to cause any trouble. I only want what’s best for the club.’

  Before that debate could be resolved, another subplot was emerging. The father of one of the best young players on the team got up and left the meeting. On his way out the door, he told Tommy that he had to make a phone call. When he returned two minutes later, he sat back down and then put his hand up to speak. He informed everyone that he had just been talking to his son, who said that he wouldn’t hurl with the senior team this season if Kevin’s coach was involved. His son felt that the coach had previously deprived him of the opportunity of getting on a Clare underage team.

  It was a big moment. The player in question had been our outstanding performer the previous season and there was no way we could afford to be without his services for the season. If there were any floating voters within the room, this news would have swung them towards Patsy.

  Then Tommy Duggan asked Patsy to name his backroom team. Patsy had been sitting at the end of the front row, closest to the door. When he stood up, he turned around and faced everyone to address them. After he named his backroom team, he spoke honestly and passionately.

  ‘Lads, it’s a massive honour to be asked to manage this club and it’s something I’m very serious about. I know the club had a good season last year and I know we can be even better again this year. If everyone rows in behind me, I’m very confident that we can do great things here. Ye all know that I was asked to become part of last year’s management team but I just felt that I needed to come with a clean slate, a fresh start. All I want in return is total commitment. I don’t want any expenses. I thought about it and I just said to myself, “No, it wouldn’t be right.” I want to coach this group of players because a lot of ye are my friends. This club means a lot to me and my family and I want to win with ye. I want to win for Doora-Barefield. And I’m sure that’s what we all want.’

  There’s no doubting Patsy Fahey’s commitment to St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield, because the club is essentially what has him in this country. When he was only 12, his family moved to New York, where they have strong roots – his two brothers, Mike and Tommy, who played with the club, were already based there.

  He continued to play hurling in New York, but when the family came home for a summer holiday in 1993 when Patsy was 17, he lined out for the club minor team. The team kept winning, and by the time they’d reached the county final the holiday was over and Patsy refused to return to New York with his parents. His decision was already made, the deal sealed in his mind, binding like a contract. Hurling with St Joseph’s was all he wanted to do. Nothing else really mattered.

  So at 17, he moved back into the family home on his own and began his new life. The culture change must have been massive, because he went from living among the close, sheltered Irish community in the Bronx to running a home on the extreme periphery of the parish in Doora. He hadn’t finished high school, so he got a job in a local factory and cycled to work every day, no matter what the conditions.

  When the U-21 team began training for the championship at the beginning of the following season, he would strap his gear-bag to the back of the bike, pack some food into a bag, and carry his two hurleys across the crossbars to attend the weekday sessions. He still hadn’t turned 18 and was nowhere near the team but, after work, when he’d still have a couple of hours to kill, he’d go to the field early and use the time to practise his skills. And when training had finished, often in the pitch dark, he’d cycle home again, arriving into the house 16 hours after his day had begun.

  Although he made his senior debut in 1996, it wasn’t until 2001 that Patsy really established himself as a first-team player. Yet he was always regarded as one of the central characters within the panel, mainly because he had a charisma that few people possess.

  One story sums him up best. Back in 1998, he entered a competition on the Ian Dempsey breakfast show on 2FM. Each competitor was asked to mimic commentary on a horse race using the names of actors and actresses, and Patsy had the nation in raptures. ‘Tom Cruise is coming hard on the outside and Wesley Snipes has just edged through the pack with his sheepskin noseband. Madonna, who is liable to do anything, is coming strong but Frank Sinatra is making a break for it. Demi Moore is right on his back but Sinatra, who was nearly put down last year, is now in the clear and he’s striding for the line. SINATRA IS GOING FOR IT, HE’S NEARLY THERE. AND SINATRA HAS IT!’

  When some of the lads, who were driving to work, heard him, they nearly went in over a ditch. The prize was a three-day trip to the Cheltenham festival for two, with £500 spending money. Before Ian Dempsey announced the winner on Friday morning, the whole factory where Patsy worked more or less shut down to listen to the result. When Dempsey said that there ‘was only one real winner – and it had to be Patsy’, the place exploded.

  That’s the type of warm, feel-good factor that Patsy creates, a charisma that enables him to bring people along with him. But most importantly, he was coming on board more as a coach than as a manager.

  Before the vote took place, I wanted to have my say, particularly to people who hadn’t been at the AGM. ‘I’m vice-chairman now and the only reason I took that job was because the club have decided to look into appointing a part-time underage coach,’ I said. ‘The lack of coaching done in the schools really concerns me. Our poor underage record in recent years also concerns me. As far as I’m concerned, appointing a coach for the schools and our underage academy is more important than anything else. And that is going to cost money. Serious money. So I can see where the club are coming from when they’re concerned that maybe having to pay expenses to an outside coach could be detrimental to that process. The long term is always more important than the short term, particularly where we’re coming from at the moment. When my son grows up, please God, I hope that he will play hurling and that he’ll be playing with a great club here. That he can aspire to All-Irelands, and win them, like we did. And if we plan and do things right, I’m sure we’ll get back to those great days again.

  ‘The one thing that really worries me at the moment, though, are these rumours that I’m hearing. And I’m sure that ye’ve all heard them. That four or five lads are not going to play this year if one candidate gets the job. That’s the greatest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard in my life and it’s an insult to this club. Look, no one in this room has had more run-ins with Kevin than me. But nobody in this room respects Kevin more than I do either. And if he gets the job here
tonight, I’ll back him 100 per cent. If Patsy gets the job, I’ll do the same for him. But if guys start taking sides and start looking to settle old scores, we can forget about it, because we’ll be on the road to nowhere.

  ‘Look around the room. Look at the players that are here. None of us are getting any younger. Time is running out for us to win another county title, and if we are divided after tonight, it will be a long time before we win one again. It will wreck this club. Whoever gets the job here tonight, we back that man. No matter what, we have to stick together.’

  Darragh O’Driscoll, who had played on the team for the last ten years, was sitting beside me and he began talking as soon as I had finished: ‘I want to reiterate everything Christy has said. We have to stick together. And if some guys are talking about not playing this year, well then I don’t know my teammates.’

  Before the vote began, Tommy Duggan said that neither he nor the secretary, Dan O’Connor, would be casting their vote but that they would both fully support the successful candidate. Tommy also said that only paid-up members of the club could vote and that Joe McNamara, the registrar, had a full list of that membership in front of him. If you weren’t on it, you didn’t get a white slip of paper to cast your vote. That immediately removed about 15 people, although that didn’t stop one of them down the back from trying to swipe a ballot.

  After the votes were cast and counted, the result was passed to Tommy. ‘OK, lads, here is the result. Kevin 14, Patsy 25.’

  Tommy thanked Kevin for his service, and a minute later Patsy stood up and was magnanimous in victory. Kevin said nothing. And with that, the meeting broke up and everyone went outside into the cold January air.

  No GAA club in the country is unstained by politics at some level, because the ecosystem is always bound by loyalty, friendship, family history and club tradition. The geography of a parish as big as Doora-Barefield will always place minor socio-political distinctions at the root of any conflict or difficult decision. At club level, that much is inevitable.

  But much of our season now would depend on how we reacted to what had happened over the past few weeks. On how well we could separate politics from the absolute necessity of being true to ourselves. And that could make or break us.

  3. Róisín and Ger

  The hardest game I ever had to play was against Sixmilebridge in the 2008 championship. The day before, my wife Olivia and I found out that our unborn baby daughter was not going to survive outside the womb. She had a terminal condition. It was the most devastating news I had ever received. I wanted to explode afterwards. I drove up to the pitch in Roslevan, the place where I had spent most of my childhood, to try and let it all out, to unleash the dam of anger and desolation. But I didn’t. Because we had a match the next day, I felt I had to keep my emotions in check. To tranquillize the fear. To try and keep focused. Sometimes, hurling just doesn’t make any sense.

  I tried to battle it out, to suppress the terror raging inside me. The anxiety of not knowing what the future would hold. Of having that projected future suddenly ripped apart. I took a sleeping tablet that night and still couldn’t sleep. The day of the game was miserable. It was wet and cold and windy, and it was the last place I wanted to be. I just put the head down and got on with it. Told nobody. We won. Won well. But winning didn’t matter. Hurling didn’t matter. I felt nothing. I drove home on my own and went to bed.

  How do you prepare for your daughter’s death? You can’t. I could not take it in, but you just try and get on with life as best you can. Keep to the routine. Keep hurling. A week later, we played Cratloe in the second round of the championship. We won again. Won well again. We were suddenly on a roll for the first time in four years. We felt we had a chance to win a county title because we’d taken apart two of the best teams in the championship. The emotion deep down inside of me would remain suppressed, coated over with layers of hope and promise through hurling. That was the best place to keep it. And hurling would eventually bring it out of me.

  But it doesn’t work like that. The hurling season always ends. And then dealing with the impending grief becomes unavoidable. The baby gets bigger. The kicks get stronger. Yet there is no future outside the womb. It’s all a slow march to inevitable grief. Almost madness.

  People congratulate us on the expected new life. You nod and try not to engage with them. Do ye know if it’s a boy or a girl? Have ye chosen a name? There are other priorities. Purchasing a white coffin. And a grave plot. Making prior funeral arrangements. By that stage, hope has long faded into anguish and it becomes harder to hide it.

  Róisín was born on 26 January 2009. A beautiful baby girl who only survived for five minutes. Olivia got to hold Róisín for two of those precious minutes before she died in the midwife’s arms. She had fought a heroic battle to stay alive for as long as she did, but her little heart just gave up and she slipped away.

  All along, I had tried to prepare for that moment with the mindset of a hurler getting ready for battle. It seems almost vulgar and selfish to make a comparison between hurling and a daughter’s impending death, but that was all I had to draw on. You become conditioned to steeling your mind, getting ready to deal with whatever is thrown at you. But you soon realize that it’s only wet sand against the tide of reality and the trauma of death.

  It’s difficult to lose your child, but it’s an unnatural act for a mother to watch the daughter she carried, and felt so vitally inside, die in front of her. In that context, Olivia became my priority. My grief was shelved. I could express it later, in my own time.

  When you lose someone you love, yet never even got the chance to know or protect, there is a horrible surrealism to the daily routine. There was a sense of dread for so long and Olivia was in so much physical discomfort in the final weeks that the events of the initial days after Róisín’s passing brought us along with their own momentum. Life goes on, but initially you feel disgusted that the sun has the gall to rise, time appals you with its passing and every moment and experience seems to have the nerve to take your loved one further away from you. We had absolutely no concept about how to move forward, and certainly we thought life could not get any worse. And then life dealt another devastating blow.

  My brother James called to our house that Tuesday evening, 3 February, five days after Róisín was buried. I was in the kitchen, but Olivia was sitting in the front room and, about 30 seconds later, I heard her crying. I ran in immediately. James told me that Ger Hoey had died about an hour earlier.

  I didn’t believe it – didn’t want to believe it. Ger Hoey always seemed irrepressible, indestructible almost. How could he be gone? Was it really true? Yet James had just come from the hospital, where Ger lay, and the sense of shock and bewilderment that we felt was corroborated by the devastation reflected on his face and the sense of disbelief that came through in his body language. ‘I had planned on playing golf with that man and enjoying his company for the next 30 years,’ he said. ‘And now he’s gone.’

  Ger was our former teammate, but mostly he was our friend. On the St Joseph’s team which won the All-Ireland club title ten years ago, he was effectively the side’s spiritual leader. Despite the fact that that team was spearheaded by three of Clare’s greatest players, and three of the best hurlers of modern times, Ger was still regarded as the most inspirational member of the group, especially among the younger players. That was the status and respect he commanded. Unequalled.

  After Ciaran O’Neill, Ger was the oldest player on that panel, but he had the ability to connect with people, no matter what age they were. That was a recurring theme of his character: he always valued the quality of the person, the quality of their future. He was our leader and, while we took the same path, nobody ever filled the space like Ger did. And even now, with the reality slowly beginning to hit that he is dead, nobody will ever repair the hole that his parting leaves. How could they?

  It seems wrong that the man with the huge heart was claimed by a heart attack. Ger was training for
the Ballycotton 10-kilometre road race in Cork, which he’d run the previous few years for charity, when he collapsed on the side of the road and died instantly. As soon as the horrendous news began to spread, everyone flocked to the hospital. Most people ended up in the chapel along with the family, trying to lend any kind of support, somehow trying to help the Hoeys come to terms with the unimaginable grief.

  This certainly wasn’t supposed to be how his journey ended. Only 11 months earlier, when we gathered in the Shibeen bar in Doora, where his wife Siobhán had arranged his surprise 40th birthday party, we had largely come to celebrate the return of Ger into our embrace. For the previous 20 years, work had taken him away from Doora-Barefield; but a recent promotion meant he was finally returning home. Home to his family. Home to his club. Home to where his heart was.

  That ordinariness, that sense of who he was and where he had come from, was essential to understanding Ger Hoey. Ger was only 11 when he played corner-back on St Joseph’s U-14C team that won the 1979 county title, the club’s first underage title of any description for 21 years. When St Joseph’s finally reached the pinnacle of club hurling 20 years later, Ciaran O’Neill and Ger Hoey were still playing. They were the embodiment of Doora-Barefield’s ultimate journey.

  Although the team from the 1950s, which won the club’s first two county titles in 1954 and 1958, produced legendary Clare players such as Mick Hayes and Matt Nugent, O’Neill and Hoey were the groundbreakers for the new generation of young players in the club. They were the first players in our time to regularly appear on Clare underage teams. Ger captained the Clare minors and played for the county U-21s for four seasons. Probably one of the greatest memories for James and me was watching O’Neill and Hoey play out of their skins on the same half-back line on the Clare U-21 team that went down to Cork in an epic Munster semi-final in Kilmallock in 1988.