The Club

by Christy O'Connor

  Carmody made a similar point before Fahey stepped back in again. ‘This is crucial. It’s not for Seánie or Christy or Ken that we’re playing for our survival. It’s for the younger players and the young lads coming down the line. St Joseph’s are a Division One side, always have been, and relegation is not going to be a blot on my copybook. They would love to put us down but we’re ready for them. Get out and give it everything. Knock sparks out of them.’

  Just then Ken interjected. The tension was still palpable inside the room and he was concerned that it had affected some guys’ focus and approach. ‘Lads, I can sense it already. Unless we get our heads sorted, we’re in big trouble. Do ye realize the importance of this game? Do ye realize who we are playing and what they’ll do to us? Get fucking tuned in now or we’re in serious trouble.’ Then Ken started jogging on the spot, before calling for everyone to join. ‘Let’s give it ten’. Everyone pounded the ground, roaring in unison. ‘ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE, SIX, SEVEN, EIGHT, NINE, TEN.’ After a few seconds, Conor Hassett called for us to go again. I never join in that ritual because, as a goalkeeper, I just need to concentrate on keeping my head clear.

  As I ran down to take my place in goal, I passed the referee, Rory Hickey, in the middle of the pitch. He had refereed the Munster football final between Cork and Limerick the previous Sunday in Cork, and he’d awarded a questionable penalty to Cork in the first half. Cork had won by one point.

  ‘Some scribes are out to get me already,’ he said to me.

  ‘Don’t be worrying about the scribes,’ I said back to him. ‘You better keep your head down around the town over the next few days in case Donie Buckley spots you.’ (Buckley, a Kerryman who lives in Ennis, is the Limerick football trainer.)

  We won the toss and decided to play against the stiff breeze, but we started poorly and let them have the initiative early. They had two points on the board inside the first 90 seconds. A few minutes later their corner-forward, Seánie Moloney, came in along the endline and was bearing down on goal. I thought he was going to try to drill the ball through me, so I advanced to narrow the angle. He kept going and, as his momentum took him past me, I stuck out my leg and tried to bring him down. I only stalled him and he squared the ball back across the goal to the advancing Clarecastle posse of forwards. I was back in goal by the time Derek Quinn won possession. He got off his shot and it took a deflection off one of our defenders and flew past me. Before I took the puckout, Hickey came in and yellow-carded me for the challenge.

  We were behind 1-2 to 0-1 after the first quarter when Ken got into a tussle with a Clarecastle forward, and it soon developed into a belting match. The two of them were wearing hurleys off one another, and in the mayhem the Clarecastle man swung wild and hit him across the head. By the time Ken was on the ground, some of our boys were in, baying for blood. More of us arrived in to break it up and it was sorted out soon enough. It was another indication of how things had cooled between the two clubs. If something like that incident had happened ten years ago, there would have been a jihad on the pitch.

  The two boys hadn’t a hope of staying on the field. The two umpires had been roaring at them to break it up before it got really heated, and after Hickey consulted with them Ken and the Clarecastle forward were sent off. At that stage, some of our boys rounded on the umpires. Darragh and Marty hammered them for sending off Ken, while Fahey arrived down also to have his say. ‘Only one man should have gone. And that was the guy who hit on the head.’

  I couldn’t agree with that. One of the umpires looked straight at me afterwards. ‘What do you think?’ he asked me.

  ‘Two red cards, absolutely no question about it.’

  It wasn’t that I was being disloyal to Ken, but you can’t have faction fighting on a hurling pitch.

  I knew that Ken was going to be a far bigger loss to us than their forward would be to them and I had to think about reorganizing our defence. Clarecastle cottoned on to the extra space in our full-back line straight away. Their centre-forward, Tyrone Kierse, was playing out near midfield, so they left a huge channel free down the centre of our defence and they ran their next two attacks straight through it. On the second occasion, Eamonn Callinan got in on the end of a break and was coming straight through the centre when corner-back Marty O’Regan dragged him down inside the 14-metre line.

  ‘Too cheap, Marty,’ I said to him. ‘The boys were coming across and if they didn’t get him, I had him.’

  Kierse went for a goal from the penalty, but he drove it too high and it flew over the bar. We were five points down and only hanging in just before the break when disaster struck. We were casual out the field when the ball should have been cleared, and it ended up being driven high into our danger zone. It was dropping short to the right of the goal and I was roaring at Marty to get up and spoil the ball and let it drop wide. But Derek Quinn got in under him and both of them tried to catch the ball. The ball broke off Quinn’s hand and I had to react sharply to it. I didn’t want to pick the ball and leave it exposed so close to goal so I tried to shove it out the side. But Quinn got his hurley to it and scrambled it back across the goal. A couple of our defenders were manically trying to retrieve the ball but Callinan pulled on it first and drove it to the net.

  It was a bad goal to concede and I should have done better. We’d really fallen into a huge hole now and it was going to take some effort in the second half to drag ourselves out of it.

  We were down 2-8 to 0-6 and the management were in deep conference outside the dressing room as I passed them on the way in. There was complete silence inside before Seánie eventually broke it.

  ‘We were 12 down at half-time last year and we came back to draw the match,’ he said. ‘We just keep plugging away now and we’ll get it back.’

  Even though I rarely speak at half-time, I felt I had to. ‘Seánie’s right, we’ve got to stay positive. We’ve all got to hold our hands up for that display, myself included for that last goal, which was bullshit. But we’ve just got to go back to basics now. Get the blocks and hooks and tackles in to get enough possession of the ball. Keep chasing our performance goals to get our outcome goal. If we do, the scores will come and we’ll get back into it and we’ll take them. We were absolutely pathetic in the first half against them last year and we came out and blew them away in the second half, and we can do it again now. But let’s just keep our heads and work our way through this.’

  Conor Hassett added to that by reinforcing the need for us to work harder, but management obviously had a different take on matters. After they arrived in, Carmody let fly.

  ‘Are we just going to drop the heads now and feel sorry for ourselves and get fucked out of this league? That goal before half-time just fucked us up. It has been coming because guys won’t get down and do the basics. It should have been cleared twice out the field before it came in.’

  By the time Fahey spoke, he was roaring at us. ‘We’re too fucking nice. For eight years now we’ve been too fucking nice. I’m sick of Clarecastle and bowing down to them when we should be fucking hammering into them. Instead we’re standing back and letting them do what they want. Too fucking nice and I’m fucking sick of it. We’re talking the talk but we’re not walking the walk and doing it on the pitch.’

  This is a problem I’ve consistently had with management. Our stats work has been too ad hoc and inconsistent and we didn’t have any stats feedback for what had just gone on. Maybe they had stats done but they prioritized addressing our attitude instead. I thought there was too much talking and not enough information.

  A couple of players spoke up and then Carmody spoke again. ‘Let’s get out there and get straight back into it. If we’re going to go down, let’s at least go down with a bit of pride. We’ve been too tame in a game of this importance and that’s just not fucking good enough.’

  Carmody was right on that point. St Joseph’s stands for far more than what we’d just produced in the last 30 minutes. Our display was almost an insult to our
supporters and what they believe we represent. At that moment, one thought came into my head. What would Ger Hoey do now in this situation? If he was playing in a game like this, he’d give everything inside him to help dig out a result. For a brief second, I thought about saying it out loud, but I decided against it. I didn’t think it was appropriate, with his brother just five feet away from me – and anyway, I didn’t think it was what we needed to hear from an emotional perspective. We needed to suspend emotion and be more calculated and clinical about our display now.

  From the throw-in, we went right at them. We got the first two points of the half and then Seánie planted the ball in the net. We had the deficit pared back to a point on the 40th minute after Seánie set up Damo Kennedy for our second goal. We had the momentum behind us, but we lost it midway through the second half by conceding some stupid frees, which allowed them to re-establish their lead.

  We chased them down for the remainder of the game but we just couldn’t get level. With scores so precious, I tried to bring down a ball going over the bar with about five minutes left. It was looping at an awkward and dangerous height and I didn’t get clean control of it first time after stopping it with the stick. As I gathered possession, I got buried by one of their forwards and then the referee blew the whistle. I just put the ball down and got ready to take the free out when I heard the Clarecastle crowd roaring and shouting at me. I looked out at the referee and he just pointed behind me to the umpire who was waving the white flag.

  ‘Jeez, that was hardly gone over,’ I said to him.

  ‘It was.’

  As I was getting ready to take the puckout, one of the Clarecastle selectors, Barney Lynch, was passing at the back of the goal.

  ‘Christy, when the ball goes over the bar, it’s a point, you know. That’s what the white flag is for.’

  ‘Are you serious, Barney? I didn’t know that’s what the white flag was for.’

  I tried to pick out Conor Hassett on the wing, but two Clarecastle defenders broke the ball and it came straight back up the pitch again. Within a minute, they’d pushed the lead out to three.

  We were desperate for a goal. In injury time, Seánie got in around their defensive cover at an angle. He should have kept going but he tried to pick out Fergal O’Sullivan in front of goal, and the ball was slightly overcooked and it flew beyond him. As soon as Clarecastle cleared it, the game was over. We were beaten by 2-16 to 2-13. It was way too big a score to concede. That’s relegation form. Clarecastle had just packed us off to Division Two.

  There was a cheer from their supporters at the final whistle, but I honestly couldn’t say if it was a boisterous response to our plight. The feeling as we left the field was just hollow, primarily because we’d played so poorly in the first half when the game was effectively decided. This was a big game. And we haven’t beaten Clarecastle in a big game now since the 2004 championship semi-final.

  I was one of the first into the dressing room and I just patted Mark Hallinan, who was sitting inside the door, on the head. One of the few positives we could take out of the game was that our youngest player had performed. Everyone just togged off and headed for the showers, but as soon as management entered the dressing room, John Carmody called everyone straight back out.

  ‘Lookit, it’s done now and ye are good enough to come straight back up next year,’ he said. ‘I could rant and rave here for the next 30 minutes but I’m not going to. It wasn’t tonight that we were relegated. It’s been coming. And unless guys are going to get their arses to Gurteen, the same thing is going to happen in the championship. We’re not getting the bodies to training and you could see it there tonight. It’s all right now, but unless it changes we’ll be in the same boat after a quarter-final – here with our heads down. Everybody here has been looking for weekends off to go on stags, weddings, trips away. Well, it has to stop now. Unless it does, we’ll meet a Clonlara or a Newmarket on fire in the quarter-finals and we’ll be fucking wiped out. That’s what’s on the cards unless guys start coming to training. And if you’re not turning up, I’ll tell you myself to fuck off and not come back.’

  The frustration was visibly driving Carmody mad and it’s hard not to blame him. His commitment to this team is absolutely outstanding and he can’t understand how players from this club can’t replicate it. He’s not from Doora-Barefield, he isn’t getting expenses to do the job, and all he’s getting is a head full of grief. Sure, that would drive anyone half crazy.

  As I was getting into the car afterwards, Marty O’Regan was waiting to get into the car beside me.

  ‘Should I have done better for that second goal?’ I asked him.

  ‘You should,’ he said back.

  ‘I know, I’m like a dog over it. I just didn’t want to pick it and leave it exposed. Fuck it anyway.’

  ‘It didn’t matter anyway because we’re not fit enough,’ he said. ‘We just haven’t enough work done.’

  I rang Seánie the following morning. I expressed my dissatisfaction with management’s decision to go on the trip to the Aran Islands, but he didn’t think that had been the main issue last night. He raised other valid points: too much talk about Clarecastle beforehand and not enough focus on ourselves; too much talk about breaking hurleys off the opposition and not enough cool-headedness when it mattered.

  ‘That’s a fair point,’ I said to him. ‘You’d just wonder, is that part of the reason we’re giving away so many hare-brained frees?’

  Then I brought up our lack of statistical analyses at half-time. To be honest, I think management have largely dispensed with that approach since the Cratloe match. We got blitzed in the 15 minutes before half-time that day, conceding 2-6 without reply, and the stats we had collated weren’t much good at half-time. We deduced from the previous few games that we were struggling in the second quarter. And maybe management now felt that the time to address this was before the game, by firing us up, and not at half-time, when it was too late.

  ‘I think there is a place for them [stats] but we don’t need to go overboard on them either,’ said Seánie. ‘The bottom line is that guys just need to start working their holes off now for the next few weeks.’

  We realized that a draw would have been enough to force a three-way play-off. Still, we’re gone down to Division Two now for the first time in 16 years and there’s no getting away from it.

  And if we’re on a slide, we need to arrest it. Fast.

  10. Pain

  Two nights after losing to Clarecastle, we went back training. It was a beautiful summer’s evening and the numbers were really good. So good that we were able to play an internal training match for the first time all season.

  Davy Hoey was centre-back on my team and he was trying to mark his man by remote control – you just knew by his body language that he wasn’t interested and that it was the last place he wanted to be. At one stage, Patsy came down behind the goal with a water bottle and the look of a man with an itch to scratch.

  ‘Look at Hoey,’ he said to me. ‘He’s just standing up. What the hell is wrong with him?’

  I tried to reason with Patsy. ‘You have to cut him some slack. Jeez, that man has been through some turmoil this season. You don’t know where his head is at.’

  Patsy was having none of it. ‘No, I don’t agree with you. I know he’s been through hell, but he should be going through a wall this year for Ger’s sake. He should be doing everything in his power this year for Ger.’

  ‘In fairness, Patsy, I don’t think it’s that simple. It doesn’t work like that.’

  Davy and Patsy are close friends and the only reason Davy came back this season was because of Patsy. Nobody else would have got him back hurling, especially after Ger passed away. At the beginning of the year, Patsy showed brilliant man-management skills with Davy. He’d regularly meet him for mid-morning coffee in the Brewery Bar or in McDonald’s. Nothing heavy, just light-hearted banter.

  Lately, though, Patsy has lost patience with him. The breaking
point probably came on the weekend we played Inagh-Kilnamona in a crucial Clare Cup league game last month. Davy, who’s a top golfer, was playing an inter-club game in the Jim Bruen competition for Ennis Golf Club – where he works as a green-keeper – and Patsy flipped when he announced his unavailability.

  Davy was one of our best players against Sixmilebridge in last month’s championship and he’s a key figure for this team, especially at centre-back position. He has always been one of our best players: Man of the Match in the 1999 All-Ireland club final, Munster club player of the year the following season. He has massive experience as well – he was Clare’s best player in the 2002 All-Ireland final against Kilkenny.

  It’s unreasonable to still expect that same level of consistency from him because he’s 33 now and, unlike most of us in the club, Davy hasn’t always prioritized hurling ahead of other activities. He’s run into trouble with management in the past through his annual trek to the Oxygen music festival in July, but he was always a free spirit, somebody more drawn to surfing in Lahinch than slogging his guts out on a hurling field during the summer. Especially on a beautiful evening like this. He likes his few pints and his cigarettes, which doesn’t exactly help to ease the pain on the training ground. Still, Davy absolutely loves hurling, but he’s had to compartmentalize it as he’s dealt with the grieving process over the past five months.

  At times, he knows he hasn’t been as committed as he should. The night before we played Ballyea in the championship, he went into Knox’s Bar with a friend and had five pints. At one stage, he spotted Patsy in the bar and was convinced that his manager was only there to hunt him out of the place. He immediately ordered his friend to get him a gin and tonic, hoping that Patsy might think it was a 7-Up. But he wasn’t fooling anybody.