The Club

by Christy O'Connor

  The club had been sending people into the schools over the years, but it was only a sporadic exercise. There was no structure to the policy, and what we were doing clearly wasn’t working. When I raised the point again at the AGM about the necessity of employing a part-time coach, I was backed up by the minor chairman, Anthony O’Halloran. He had his folder on his lap and he detailed the figures the minor club had to cater for and the subsequent recruitment drive for mentors which that entailed. Apart from the difficulties involved in coaching young kids, recruiting 54 mentors in hurling and football for 240 kids was the sole responsibility of the minor chairman. He clearly needed assistance.

  The club agreed in principle at the AGM to explore the possibility of hiring a part-time coach, and the only reason I agreed to become vice-chairman was so I could try and assist in the development. Once a committee was then set up, the first person I contacted was Joey Carton.

  In February, we met in a hotel outside Limerick to discuss what the whole process would entail. The meeting was the first real indication of how hard the economic recession had hit. The lobby was dimly lit and freezing, the kitchen was closed and the hotel seemed to be functioning only to cater for its gym members, who were filing in and out at an impressive rate.

  Joey was asking me about the identity of some of the local club tracksuits worn by some members, and when we eventually got down to discussing the detail of our meeting, there were two obvious starting points. Firstly, hiring a coach was going to require a huge financial commitment from the club. Secondly, before we could even look at employing somebody, we needed to devise an overall underage coaching plan because the club needed to be adequately structured to benefit from any extra activity in the local schools.

  Joey gave me a questionnaire, which I subsequently forwarded to our minor club chairman and secretary, Anthony O’Halloran and Bernie Hallinan. There were 28 questions, which probed some key areas:

  How many active qualified coaches have you?

  How do you recruit your new players – and what about players not in schools in the parish?

  How do you recruit mentors?

  Have you a specialized group looking after the 6 to 10 age group?

  Do all of your players receive a proper programme of games?

  How receptive are principals and staff to regular visits during school hours?

  Have you a club/school liaison officer?

  Have you a club notice board in the schools?

  The last question of the questionnaire focused on how the club would have to be conditioned to adapt to change. When the questionnaire was returned to Joey Carton by Bernie Hallinan, his answer to that question touched on a hugely important issue. ‘We as a club need to be very careful to ensure that the employment of a coach does not have a negative effect on the huge voluntary pool of people who give freely and generously of their time working in the club in all capacities.’

  The hiring of a coach – whether part-time or full-time – should primarily assist and complement the volunteers, not replace them. The coach could not be seen as a panacea to all the coaching ills, where other members might back off and subsequently think that all the bases were now covered. That was a hugely important message to transmit.

  Finally, a critical decision had to be made with regard to defining the coach’s working brief. When the topic was raised at the AGM, one club member – Seánie Lyons – said that since we were a dual club, he assumed that a new coach would cater for both hurling and football. However, since the club was leaning towards hiring somebody on a part-time basis, and hurling needed far more time investment than football, it was decided that the new coach would be for hurling only.

  The decision was taken with all those reasons in mind, but it would have been easy for the football people in the club to perceive it as a politically motivated drive to promote hurling at the expense of football. However, Seánie Lyons was also a member of the minor club executive and, once he saw the reasoning behind it, we didn’t feel there was any reason to explain the decision to anyone else.

  When Joey Carton arrived to Gurteen on the last Wednesday in March, all of those topics were discussed at a meeting between him and the committee. He advised us on the best means of drawing up an overall coaching plan and he agreed to sit on the panel when we began interviewing for the job. His central theme, though, was the importance of the underage academy (U-6 to U-10) and the obsessive perseverance it takes to drive it.

  The meeting was hugely positive, but there was a lot of work to be done and the new coach probably wouldn’t be in place until September, when the schools would be starting back. But we couldn’t wait that long to begin up-skilling our underage coaches; Joey said he would return on 23 April to take a coaching workshop in the club. After waiting for so long, we’re now a club in a hurry.

  On the warmest day of the year so far – Saturday, 18 April – the senior team produced probably the coldest display in our history. Terrible stuff, absolutely dire. In the third round of the Clare Cup against Tulla, on a fast surface and on a perfect evening for hurling, we managed to score just five points. And we failed to score at all in the second half.

  Tulla only managed 1-6, but they could have had at least 20 scores if they’d showed a bit more composure, because they had all the possession. We hadn’t trained all week because we played Burgess from Tipperary in a challenge under lights on Wednesday night, when we performed really well against a side that had contested the north Tipperary final the previous year. Maybe we thought we’d reproduce the same kind of form now, but we were flat and the performance was nothing short of embarrassing.

  When he met us on the first night, Patsy said that he wanted this team to mirror him as a coach. The reflection staring back at him this evening was an embarrassment. ‘Jeez, lads, maybe there was a party on last night that I didn’t know about,’ he said. ‘Maybe I have to take some of the blame for having the challenge game on midweek and not training on Tuesday and Thursday night. But that still wasn’t good enough. Lads, we need to start asking ourselves some serious questions.’

  Davy Hoey was sitting in the corner with his shirt off, drying the sweat off his body. As he put the towel to his face to wipe his brow, he suddenly felt the urge to speak. ‘Maybe I’m a bit emotional, but what the fuck was that all about? We were all terrible, myself included. When are we going to start getting it together? This is hard east-Clare hurling territory and we just didn’t want to know about it tonight. Well, we better get used to it because that’s what we’re going to be facing in the championship.’

  Darragh O’Driscoll, one of the team’s most experienced players, then got up off the bench and moved towards the centre of the dressing room. ‘That performance was scandalous. Five points? No score in the second half? Mother of God, we’re playing championship this day four weeks and we go out and produce that kind of shit.

  ‘It just won’t happen for us. We’ve got to start making it happen. Fast. Young lads here might be thinking that ye have loads of time – ye haven’t. I’ve been injured for the last two years and you never know what’s around the corner. Before you come training now on Tuesday night, drink water, stretch, do whatever you have to do to get yourself right. But come on Tuesday night prepared for hard work.’

  The showers were hammering water off the tiles but nobody was standing under them. The sunlight was dipping in through the narrow window panes but the mood was still dark and sombre.

  Before he left the dressing room, Patsy tried to alter the picture. ‘Maybe we need something to spark us into life,’ he said. ‘And the good news is that Seánie McMahon is coming back to training with us on Tuesday night.’

  With the way we’re going, though, we’d need our Lord to return to snap us out of this vat of desperate form. I texted Seánie on the way home. ‘Hail the Messiah. We’ll have the red carpet out for you on Tuesday night.’

  He rang me back the following day.

  ‘I’ll have to get a new pair of togs anyway
,’ he said.

  ‘Well at least you’ll bring the average age of the team back up again and I won’t feel like an auld lad,’ I said to him.

  ‘Well I still won’t be the oldest there and you know who that is,’ he responded.

  ‘Not by much,’ I retorted. (I’m just two months older than him.)

  We talked about Saturday’s performance. The only positive I could take from it was through making a comparison with a league game against Sixmilebridge the previous year when they whacked us around the place, and then we came along five weeks later in the championship and knocked them out cold.

  ‘Yeah, but it’s that inconsistency which has been killing us,’ said Seánie. He was dead right.

  At least Seánie’s return will be a boon. If he never even hit a ball, his presence alone in the dressing room would be an immediate advantage because the man is an institution. He’s still some way off decent fitness but he’s been running to keep himself in some shape and, more importantly, he’s fuelled by a raw emotion that will push him to the limit. He was always likely to come back, but the passing of Ger Hoey more or less copper-fastened the decision in his mind.

  Seánie was as close to Ger as anyone. The second the final whistle went in the 2001 county final, Seánie made straight for Ger because he knew it was the last time they’d play together in Clare as Ger was moving to work in the USA later that year. That embrace encapsulated the respect that great players reserve for each other when they know an ending is in sight.

  On Tuesday night, there was no red carpet laid out for Seánie because he walked back into a wall of fire. Patsy had left the dressing room on Saturday evening in a rage and there were still plumes of smoke billowing from his ears three days later. After he instructed us to complete an eight-minute warm-up, he called everyone back into the dressing room.

  Patsy had a sheet of paper in his hand, which was clearly labelled with a number of bullet points, and he expanded on each point calculatedly and coldly. He said he wasn’t prepared to let Saturday’s game go without addressing the issue and that he wouldn’t be doing his job properly if he did. He described our use of the ball as ‘willy-nilly’ and referred to our worrying inconsistency from game to game. We’d been flat for our opening game against Clooney-Quin, really up for our second game against Newmarket (which we also narrowly lost) and then flat again against Tulla. We had a crucial league game against Crusheen in 11 days’ time and Patsy had no doubt that we’d be geared for a big performance. But then we’d Ballyea in our first championship games two weeks later. Were we going to be off the boil again for that game?

  Patsy had known bad defeats before and he wouldn’t have spared himself in the tribunals of inquiry that followed. But there was some public shelter in not being the manager, or not being from that particular club; after the Tulla game there was none. This was the inevitable moment when Patsy was crossing the threshold from close friend to ruthless manager. His affiliation and loyalty to some players had been holding him back, but that umbilical cord was now emphatically being severed. ‘From now on, there’s no more Mr Nice Guy from me. Guys are getting away with too much and I’m not fucking standing for it any more. If guys aren’t putting in the effort and names have to be named, they’ll be named. I don’t care any more.’

  Just before he finished his speech, he said our performance had been a ‘disgrace’ to the St Joseph’s jersey – and all the more so in light of how much this season is supposed to mean to us. ‘I know you’re here, Davy, and I’m reluctant to bring it up,’ said Patsy, looking over at Ger’s brother. ‘But I’m going to. Ger Hoey may have been beaten on the pitch but he was never once beaten for heart, passion and commitment, and what went on on Saturday was an insult to everything he stood for. The parish needs a lift. Everyone needs a lift. So let’s get our fucking act together.’

  It was a very productive session, but the turnout – there were 14 present – wasn’t really acceptable after what had happened on Saturday. As we were completing our stretching at the very end, John Carmody stepped in. ‘It’s up to everyone here, not just us, to get the players out who are supposed to be here,’ he said. ‘We’re just sick of chasing guys.’

  Who was he talking about? For a start, some of the senior footballers were missing. Caimin O’Connor said that some of them were training with the senior football squad in Lees Road, a venue across town. Patsy was clearly annoyed, as the deal seemed to have been that they would train with us tonight and then with the footballers on Thursday night.

  By the time I got to Gurteen at 6.30 p.m. on Thursday to meet Joey to prepare for the coaching seminar that night, he’d already set up his PowerPoint presentation in dressing room number four. He was going to speak with the coaches for roughly half an hour before moving outside for some practical coaching. He had asked me to book the AstroTurf because it was far easier to go through the basic technicalities on that surface than on a soggy pitch, especially if it was raining. He was spot on, because the rain was spilling from the sky all evening.

  By the time Joey began at 7 p.m., 16 coaches had gathered, all of whom worked with U-6s to U-10s. That number included Jamesie O’Connor and Seánie McMahon, along with four women, one of whom – Therese Wall – is one of the outstanding young coaches in the club. Some of the other coaches were rookies, parents with no background in hurling who were eager to learn and get stuck in.

  Most coaches, at that level anyway, were starting from scratch, and Seánie was the perfect example. He had coached U-21s in the club but he hadn’t a clue of the specifics needed for young kids. In that regard, Joey was absolutely perfect: he had been instrumental in helping to draw up the Go-Games coaching package, which is the basic underage coaching model implemented by Croke Park. More importantly, though, he could also speak to the group as a parent. Along with one other person, he still co-ordinates the underage coaching programme in De La Salle, where his kids also play. So he went through basic stuff that is of fundamental importance to starting kids off right: how to hold a hurley; how to stand; how to turn the nose of the hurley.

  By the time we went out to the AstroTurf, the rain was coming down even harder, but it didn’t have any impact on the collective enthusiasm. At one stage we were learning drills and I was in a line with Seánie, who was shielding the rain from his little notebook with his left hand while he scribbled down notes and drew diagrams with his right hand.

  Seánie remained on, but I only stayed for 35 minutes because we were training at 7.45 p.m. On the way to the dressing room, I met James Hanrahan and Justin O’Driscoll from the senior football management. After training on Tuesday night, Patsy had asked me to ring Keith Whelan – one of our talented U-21 dual players – to find out if he would come to senior hurling training. I had enjoyed a good relationship with Keith when I’d coached him at minor and U-21, and the senior management thought my intervention would be beneficial.

  So I rang Keith on Wednesday night and said that I’d clear it with the football management for him to come to hurling training on Thursday night. The football manager, John Halpin, had no problem with that, so I just informed Hanrahan and O’Driscoll that Keith Whelan would be training with the hurlers this evening. Then the two lads told me that he wouldn’t be training with the hurlers and neither would the rest of the senior hurlers.

  When I got into the dressing room, I sat down beside Cathal O’Sullivan and Greg Lyons – two of our best dual players – and asked them who they were training with. They didn’t know. They asked me what the story was and I said I hadn’t a clue. All I knew was that the footballers had a league match on Saturday, but I assumed that since some of them had trained with the footballers on Tuesday night they’d be expected to train with the hurlers tonight. Looking around at the numbers in the dressing room, there would have been only nine hurlers at our session if the dual players went with the footballers. After Tuesday night, Patsy clearly wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

  By the time I made it on to the pitch, Gre
g Lyons told me that there had already been an altercation between Patsy and Hanrahan and O’Driscoll. Both managements were fighting their own corner but Patsy just insisted that the dual players train with us. I counted five dual players in our group, but there were two more on the bottom field with the footballers. It was obvious now that there was tension between both managements, and that would inevitably lead to more conflict down the line.

  With three defeats from our first three league games, we desperately needed a result against Crusheen in round four. We needed to arrest a slide, especially just two weeks before our opening championship match. We set the week up like a championship run-in: a hard training session on Monday and then a light session on Thursday. Everyone had been well forewarned about the importance of hydration and fuel-intake because the game had been fixed for 12 noon on Saturday, to facilitate anyone who wanted to watch the Heineken Cup semi-final between Munster and Leinster in Croke Park.

  In the dressing room beforehand, you just knew the mood was at the right pitch. The only concern was that we were a bit too hyped up, which can affect performance. We had aimed to play on the edge, but we went very close to overstepping it after only two minutes. Our corner-back Marty O’Regan got involved in an altercation with their corner-forward and Marty turned around and dropped him. The Crusheen player was on the ground for about four minutes while he received attention. I hadn’t seen the incident and neither had the umpires but I had heard the belt and Marty was lucky to have got away with it. After I caught his eye, I just tapped my index finger against my temple. We needed to be more clear-headed.

  Still, our performance was really positive in the opening half. We dominated possession, but they were far more economical with the ball against the breeze. We shot ten wides to their two and were only two points up at the break. Ken Kennedy laid into Kevin Dilleen, Greg Lyons and Conor Hassett for going for their own scores instead of playing more ball into the full-forward line. ‘This game would be over now if ye looked up and used yere heads.’