The Club

by Christy O'Connor

  Patsy was prepared to let it all pass, but Davy has since used up all his credits and his manager isn’t prepared to trade in loyalty and friendship any more. Against Clarecastle two days ago, Patsy whipped Davy off, ten minutes into the second half.

  After training finished this evening, Davy ambled into the dressing room, unshaven for a few days and with the weight of the world seemingly pressed on his shoulders. Before I began to tog off, I squeezed my frame on to the bit of bench Davy had claimed for himself.

  ‘How are things, Davy?’

  ‘Fucking pissed off after being taken off the last night. I wasn’t great, but the midfielders weren’t working hard enough and the space in front of me killed me. I was the scapegoat. Pure bullshit.’

  I wanted to shift the focus away from hurling. ‘Don’t mind Tuesday night, we were all fucking useless. How’s the form with you in general?’

  He shook his head and his face creased with a grimace. ‘To be honest, I just don’t have the energy for it at the moment.’

  I asked him if he had anything planned for after training. He said he hadn’t.

  ‘Do you know what, I’ll get a few bananas, a loaf of brown bread, a few bottles of Club Energise and a packet of biscuits and I’ll call over for a chat. You on for it?’

  ‘Yeah, good stuff.’

  By the time I got to his apartment, Davy had the kettle boiled and was pulling on a cigarette. As he sank into the couch and began to talk, his detachment from hurling and its molten passions became clearly visible.

  ‘I just don’t have the energy for it, and getting beaten by Clarecastle just sapped more out of me. At the moment, I just want to give up. I don’t really want to hurl. It’s so tough at the moment.’

  He is bothered by his increasing separation from Patsy – but not bothered enough to do something about the lethargy that is driving Patsy crazy.

  ‘To be honest, if Patsy wasn’t the manager, I wouldn’t even be hurling,’ he says. ‘But our meetings for coffee have taken a side-step since I started missing training. I’d say to myself, “I won’t ring Patsy because he’ll only eat the head off me.” It’s my fault more than Patsy’s.

  ‘I have hated myself at times over the last few weeks because I’ve felt like a fraud. I just haven’t been putting the effort in. I’ve let Patsy down and I know it. You can see it in him that he is taking it so personal. Everything is so personal to him. Patsy just wants it so much more than I do and there’s nothing I can really do about that. And maybe I’m just doing it for the wrong reasons. Maybe I should be doing it for the team as opposed to trying to do it for Ger.’

  Ger’s name is a constant theme in our dressing room and he is the silent inspiration for our season. But it goes far deeper than that for Davy. He played on the same team as his brother – Davy at number 5, Ger behind him at number 2, always backing him up. The hurling field isn’t a refuge from the grief because Davy sees his brother everywhere he turns.

  ‘When I play with the club, I always think about him and the times we had. When we played together, it was just such a successful time for the club. I bonded with a lot of players but, in the brotherly sense, it was just something special. Nothing else can bond you like that. Especially at home after matches with Mam and Dad, to see what it meant to them. And then I see my parents now. It’s hard.

  ‘Hurling is just the last thing on my mind now. Pain. There’s just pain constantly there. And then at the back of your mind, you’re thinking, “He’s passed, we got to move on with our lives, and that’s what he would want.” But it doesn’t work that way. The whole funeral, the whole outpouring of emotion, it was very hard. I remember the hospital, the night he died. Seeing [Ciaran] O’Neill, Seánie, Cabs [Donal Cahill], Jamesie. I couldn’t go near Seánie because I was so emotional and I’m very close to Seánie.

  ‘There were so many people at the funeral and most of them were hurling people. You nearly felt for the club but it was so heartening to see so many ex-players there. And then with all the hurlers there, I feel a bit of pressure to kinda perform now. I’m trying hard and I want to do it so much. But it’s just not there at the moment.

  ‘I’d be having chats with Siobhán and she’d be asking me how training is going. She is so interested in it as well and I think I’m kinda doing it for her sake as well. And I know that she doesn’t care what I do. But there’s a part of me saying to myself that I have to try and do the right thing.

  ‘I can’t handle training. I’m not fit and I can’t handle the running. I remember Ger doing runs and I picture how he would run and how much he’d burst himself. He’d come home after training and say, “I beat Jamesie in a sprint tonight.” He’d be delighted with himself. And I’d be trying to mirror that in some way. But I’m just fucked, I can’t do it. It’s a strange place to be, I can’t describe it. Every place I turn, he’s there.

  ‘At the moment, training is just doing my head in. I finish work normally around 3.30 p.m. and I’d be lying on the couch here, just waiting for training. And my head would be just spinning with stuff. Then I’d go out the odd day to Templemaley [cemetery] and I’d be thinking that I have to keep going for his sake. I have to keep going, I have to keep going. It’s hard to describe it. You know the bond you have with your brother, then he retires, you keep playing and then the emotion of the All-Ireland in 1999, ten years on. There are so many things just going through your mind. There are so many things you miss.’

  Eight years separated Ger and Davy in age but there always seemed to be a canyon of difference between their personalities and outlooks. Ger was a rock of sense, a settled family man, a high achiever in his job as a bank manager; Davy was more laid back, more inclined to let the road take him wherever it would. Yet Joe Considine put it neatly one time; he said there was a lot of Ger in Davy, and a lot of Davy in Ger. You just had to really know them to see it.

  ‘People always said we were so different, but we weren’t that different,’ says Davy. ‘We used to go drinking together and the last time we went on a session together was Christmas Eve before he died. We came back to his house and we started playing U2 songs. I loved my music and he did too. We were roaring and singing. I fell asleep on the couch and Ger fell asleep on the recliner. I woke up in the middle of the night and I didn’t know where I was and Ger was gone. I went back to sleep and then I woke up again at 8.30 in the morning and there he was with his AIB togs, hurling socks and jersey and runners. I looked at him and said, “Where are you going?” And he said, “I’m dying but I’m going for a run.” That was just typical of him. I would never have been able to do that. I suppose that’s where the real difference was between us.

  ‘Ger was my big brother. He was a great brother to me and he couldn’t do enough for me. I went through a fair few jobs and I remember saying to him one time, “When am I ever going to get a bit of luck?” And he said to me, “Toughen up, you make your own luck.” I always remember that comment because he was so right. The harder you work, the more luck you get. He instilled a lot of things in me about hard work and now I work like a dog. He just did everything in the right way. If I hadn’t got him, I don’t know where I’d be. I could have gone off the rails. But he never ever once gave out to me. He never judged you. He was my brother and I could say anything to him. Just typical brother stuff. I just miss all that. But the thing I miss the most is playing golf with him. He was mad into his golf. It just wasn’t meant to be.’

  Davy’s mind is constantly uneasy. The defeat on Tuesday night has just put his brain spinning into overdrive. Clarecastle are our biggest rivals and nobody disliked losing to them more than Ger Hoey. Deep down, Davy knows how disappointed Ger would have been after Tuesday night. And it’s eating him up.

  ‘We were hammered the other evening,’ said Davy. ‘The thing that annoyed me most was that we didn’t even come to the fight. Myself included. Ger trained as hard as I’ve ever seen anyone train, and if he’d seen what went on Tuesday he would have been disgusted.

&nb
sp; ‘I was heartbroken after the game. I think back and I ask myself, “What would he have done?” And then I just ask myself, “Why the fuck am I bothering with this stuff?” Sure it makes no sense at all. I want it and then I don’t want it. There are times when my head is saying, “Maybe I can do it.” But at the moment, my body is saying, “Definitely not.” I’m just emptied.’

  He pauses and shakes his head, before looking at his gear-bag thrown beside the couch. ‘But I’m just hoping that this negativity will only last for a few more days,’ he says. ‘And that I’ll have the hunger for it then again.’

  *

  Training has clearly been stepped up. On the morning that Deccie Malone got married, Friday, 17 July, we trained at 6.30 a.m. Some players couldn’t make it because of work, but there were 18 present and most guys were accounted for. We had trained hard on Tuesday and Thursday, and training again just nine hours after we’d finished the previous evening was probably counter-productive. But management wanted to gauge commitment and desire, and nobody was holding back.

  Seánie McMahon wasn’t training because he’d to be at work in Shannon for 7 a.m., but he called in on his way. ‘Good turnout,’ he said to me, on the edge of the pitch before the session began. ‘Perfect conditions for training.’

  The sun was up and the ground was rock hard, but the grass was saturated from the early-morning dew and the pitch was like a skating rink – ideal conditions for first-touch hurling training. I know from past early-morning experiences training with Clare. When Clare popularized 6 a.m. sessions under Ger Loughnane in the 1990s, the outside perception was that Clare were running a boot camp and the training was commensurate to that of the US Marines. Yet sliotars would bounce off the turf like golf balls slamming against concrete. Loughnane would break open numerous packs of brand-new sliotars and your first touch had to be so good to survive those sessions – and the lash of Loughnane’s tongue – that you’d come away feeling like you’d glue stuck on the bas of your hurley.

  Most club teams can’t afford a conveyor belt of brand-new sliotars, unfortunately. The average cost of a sliotar is around €7, and you could need around 60 for a proper rapid-fire session with one team. Given how easy it is to lose sliotars and how quickly some of them become unusable, that’s a serious financial strain on a club over any season.

  We haven’t had a batch of new sliotars now in a while and many of the balls in the bag are complete duds which turn into either small rocks or soft potatoes as soon as they get wet. They’re not suitable for first-touch hurling, but after our first drill much of the session involved stamina hurling and long striking.

  It felt like we were finally beginning to generate some momentum again; but when we trained again on Sunday morning at 12 noon, it was soon evident that we’d gone backwards from the exertions of the weekend. Only ten bodies turned up because a host of the panel had gone to Galway last night for a stag. Still, Patsy couldn’t afford to alter the schedule and the session involved more stamina hurling and a blast of shuttle runs at the end.

  ‘It just shows, lads,’ he said, as everyone was gasping for air by the end of the session. ‘You can’t be going out on the tear the whole time and expect to be fit.’

  As far as management were concerned, the line in the sand had now been drawn. We had four weeks to our next championship match and there were no more allowances being given. This was the last stag. The last blow-out. The summer was slowly turning into autumn and the business end of the championship was closing in fast. That Sunday evening, a text was sent out to everybody: ‘Training this week on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and a challenge game against Wolfe Tones on Monday. No more excuses. It’s time to get down to serious business.’

  Before training on Saturday though, our whole schedule ground to a halt. Another tragedy had struck Doora-Barefield. That morning – 25 July – our parish priest, Fr Michael McNamara, passed away.

  Fr Mac was a huge part of St Joseph’s. He had been a selector with the senior team for the previous two years and he’d also been a selector with us when we reached the 2004 county final. Most of the players in the panel who were married had been married by Fr Mac. He had just officiated at the wedding of Deccie Malone. He was due to marry Darragh O’Driscoll and his fiancée Bernie in less than two weeks’ time. And Conny and Sinéad in September. But less than six months after he’d given a beautiful and moving homily at Ger Hoey’s funeral mass, we now had to bury him as well.

  The suddenness of it all added to the sense of shock. Three days earlier, Fr Mac was driving out the Tulla road to speak to a young couple soon to be married when he was struck down by a searing pain. He pulled in to the side of the road and an ambulance was called and took him to hospital. The following day, Fr Mac rang Fr Jerry Carey in Ennis to tell him that he needed masses covered in the parish for the next few weeks because he was having an operation to clear an aneurysm. But the following day, Bishop Willie Walsh rang Fr Jerry in tears. Fr Mac didn’t survive the operation.

  As a mark of respect, our challenge match scheduled for Monday evening was pulled and training was cancelled until Thursday. Although Fr Mac’s funeral mass took place in Ennis Cathedral – no church in Doora-Barefield would have taken the crowd – the parish and the club played a huge role in the liturgy of the mass and the subsequent burial. The club formed a guard of honour outside the cathedral as the cortège eventually pulled away to make its way to Barefield church.

  Many people expected Fr Mac to be buried in his home parish of Kilmaley. Yet when some landscaping was done around the church last summer, Fr Mac told the landscaper and the church sacristan that he wanted to be buried on Barefield church grounds – with the proviso that his grave should face Kilmaley. He surely didn’t expect to be taken so soon, but the sentiment highlighted how much Doora-Barefield meant to Fr Mac. And how that warmth for the parish and its people had rested in his heart.

  Over those few sad days, the community spirit within the club and the parish was particularly evident. ‘The overriding comment we got after Father Mac’s funeral was the tremendous community spirit shown during all the services,’ said Jackie Morris, a member of Roslevan pastoral council and the finance committee. ‘And much of that spirit was down to Father Mac. Because he felt that the community were the Church.’

  When he arrived in Doora-Barefield in 2001, Fr Mac immediately saw the need to involve the community in the parish activities. He set up pastoral councils in Doora, Barefield and Roslevan. There were 40 members in the Roslevan pastoral council, and one of its main functions from the outset was to develop community facilities, which Fr Mac felt were essential to creating a sense of community to the ever-increasing population of Roslevan.

  In a parish that is developing at a rapid rate, there are approximately 8,500 people in the Doora-Barefield parish. About 5,000 of those residents are in the Roslevan area, which knits into Ennis and which had effectively been re-zoned as a second town centre in recent years.

  When we grew up in Roslevan, it was a largely rural area on the periphery of Ennis; but since 1994, 13 of the 22 major housing estates that have spawned in the parish are in the Roslevan area. Yet the only major focal point in that region is the Roslevan Shopping Centre – which is in front of our old clubhouse and field, which we sold in 2005.

  There is no school or church in the area, and mass is said in a small community hall. After the club moved out to Gurteen, there was no green area or community outlet of the kind that St Joseph’s had always provided. Winning an All-Ireland club title a decade ago really united a massive parish – the largest rural parish in the diocese of Killaloe – but it also gave a real sense of identity to the Roslevan area, which many new homeowners assumed was in Ennis.

  Now that our success has waned and the population has continued to increase, the vast majority of residents don’t view Doora-Barefield through the prism of a GAA identity any more. And in the meantime, the increased number of houses within the boundaries of the parish of Doora-Barefield h
asn’t been matched by the provision of general social amenities necessary to encourage community building and healthy social interaction.

  The key focus of efforts to create a new community spirit was the proposed development of a new church and community hall in Roslevan. In the original submission to the local authorities, one of the recommendations was a site for a 16-teacher primary school, childcare and playing pitch in the Roslevan area. That had to be abandoned owing to the recession, but Fr Mac and his pastoral councils were still prepared to keep pushing the boat out, primarily because many of the problems associated with an urban area were beginning to be felt in this formerly rural parish. Growing numbers of young people have limited social and recreational outlets.

  So in that submission to the local authorities, the pastoral councils had recommended the inclusion of a number of progressive but fundamental social developments including a multi-purpose community centre, with broadband connectivity, to be provided in Doora, and a youth development centre within the parish.

  Fr Mac was a man driven by community spirit and not by Church authority. At a time when the Church is becoming increasingly disconnected from society – particularly young people – Fr Mac appreciated that importance of community spirit and recognized the impact it could have on young people.

  He was a man who just got things done. When he ran a parish auction in 2006, the initial purpose was to clear parish debt; but Fr Mac saw it as a means to creating greater parish spirit. It clearly did: the initial fund-raising target was €30,000 but the level of enthusiasm swept that figure to €100,000. That in turn led to the annual parish social, which has been running ever since.

  ‘Father Mac was a great leader,’ said Jackie Morris. ‘Very strong-willed and focused. He is a massive loss to us. But I suppose we have to ensure now that we keep going forward with what he started. It is what he would have wanted.’

  The club feel exactly the same way because Fr Mac was part of our journey over the last number of years. He was a fanatical hurling man and he always wanted us to do well. To be the best we could be. To be true to ourselves. And as we continue our journey, we owe the man that much now.