The Club

by Christy O'Connor

  Darragh O’Driscoll got married on Thursday, 6 August. At 3.12 p.m. that day, just after the ceremony had finished, everyone got a text message: ‘Senior training at 12 noon on Sunday. All, and we mean all, togged at 11.55 a.m. There is a meeting 4 players only called by Darragh and Damien immediately afterwards.’

  Darragh has been an excellent captain, and this message just highlighted the commitment he has shown to this team. He wasn’t going on his honeymoon until Monday, but he still saw the welfare of the squad as a priority before he left.

  After a good session on Sunday, John Carmody had the final word from the management on the field before the players’ meeting began. He was setting the tone ahead of our third championship match against Ogonnelloe next weekend. ‘We want to send out a message to the rest of the county,’ said Carmody. ‘We’re not just going to beat this crowd, we’re going to drive them into the ground.’

  After everyone had togged off and showered, Darragh kicked off the players’ meeting at 1.41 p.m.

  ‘We have 24 weeks done and we’ve got 11 weeks to go,’ he said. ‘The county final is fixed for this day 11 weeks. And I’ve already planned on being in bed early the night before to get ready for it. All we can ask for is that we give it our all. I was thinking last night of the people we have lost, and we have lost two great people. Father Mac was a very proud Doora-Barefield man and a very proud St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield man. He gave a lot to us. And I don’t need to say how important Ger Hoey was to us all.

  ‘I was just thinking that, no matter what happens, whether we get to a final, semi-final, quarter-final, I hope that we can look back after it’s all over and say that we gave it our all. Because that would be a fitting tribute to Father Mac and Ger. It would be what they would want. And what they deserve.’

  After Damien Kennedy briefly talked about the importance of treating Ogonnelloe with sufficient respect for next week, Darragh asked if anyone else wanted to speak. If nobody did, he said we’d wrap it up. There was a lull for a few seconds, and then I interjected. ‘Lads, I want to hear what the younger lads have to say because it’s the same old voices talking the whole time. I just want to know what ye are thinking.’

  Then there was another pause. ‘No pressure, lads,’ said Davy Hoey.

  Nobody offered their opinion, so Seánie, a veteran of 19 years, broke the silence. ‘Lads, I know I’m not one of the younger lads but there are just a few things I want to say. First things first, I really think we have a great chance of winning the county title. I think it’s set up for us. Last year, the reason we didn’t beat Newmarket was because we were basically fucked. I was never as tired coming up to a game because we had over-trained. This year, we haven’t been killed, guys have had their break and we’re fresh. I feel fresh anyway. We can start building it up now and take it from there.

  ‘But some things need to change from now on. What we have done up to now will not win a championship. It will just not be good enough. We need to push ourselves harder in the drills, drive ourselves on that bit more. Really go for it. You can take your break afterwards, but just burst yourselves and then you can rest.’

  Seánie then addressed another concern. A couple of weeks ago, he collared Ken Kennedy, Darragh O’Driscoll, Mikey Cullinan and me after training and outlined how all the senior players seemed to be gravitating towards each other during the ball drills. He didn’t feel that the senior players were integrating sufficiently with the younger players. It was something that we’d really taken on board in the meantime, but that unconscious segregation was evident from a glance around the room.

  ‘I just think that it’s something we need to be aware of,’ said Seánie. ‘Just look around here now. Senior guys are sitting beside seniors and younger players are with younger players. I’m not saying that there is a divide or any big division. But we’re all in it together and we need to push one another. It will just bring us all closer together. But every man here must believe that we can win the championship. If every man here does believe that we can do it, then we will.’

  Seánie’s words, as always, were soothing. They made it easier for young players to have their say, and Mike McNamara, one of our best forwards, was the first to offer his opinion.

  ‘I am just speaking for the younger players,’ he said. ‘If you look around, a lot of players are going to go in the next few years. Seánie, Christy, Ken – they’re the guys we have always looked to for leadership. We know that they’re going to do it, but some of us have always looked to them and not taken on enough responsibility ourselves. Well, when they are gone, what are we going to do then? There’s no point looking around then and suddenly realizing that they’re not there and we’re not used to taking the responsibility they always took. The younger players here just need to start showing more leadership and I think we will drive it on. I’m not talking about shouting or roaring in the dressing room. We will do it on the pitch with our hurling.’

  I was sitting beside Mike and I patted him on the arm because I felt it was an important contribution. Conny was sitting the other side of Mike and he briefly stared at me with that furrowed look, which instantly told me he was formulating in his mind what he wanted to say.

  ‘Lads, the point has been made to the younger lads numerous times not to be thinking that you have loads of time to make it happen,’ Conny said. ‘You fucking haven’t. And I know from experience. When I first made the team in 2004, we got to the county final and I expected it to be like that every year. Then I got my jaw smashed the following season and missed the whole championship. And I haven’t been able to nail down a permanent place since. That’s five years gone in a flash. Bang. Fucking gone.’

  Darragh O’Driscoll immediately continued on that theme. ‘The younger guys here are really talented players,’ he said. A host of them were all sitting together in the corner by the door and Darragh named them as he spoke. ‘Whitey [Niall White], Anthony [Halpin], Enda [Lyons], Shane O’Connor, Shane O’Grady, Seán Flynn – ye are more talented than we were when we were yere age. But ye have to drive us on now. We will take inspiration from ye. Don’t be afraid to fuck us out of it if we’re not putting enough effort in, because that’s what we need. Ye need to challenge us and we will challenge ye. And we will all be the better for it.’

  All through the meeting, I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to talk. But just as Darragh was about to wrap it up, I felt I had to. There was stuff that I needed to unload and I was concerned that I might not get the chance to say it again.

  ‘Lads,’ I said, with a smile, ‘I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to talk because I know ye’re probably sick to the teeth of listening to me. But I’m going to say it anyway.

  ‘This is my 20th year in goals for the Doora-Barefield senior team. Some of ye – Enda, you weren’t even born when I first started with this team. Half of ye probably think that I should be long gone by this stage, but the end is near for me now. And I just want to tell ye all what winning this county title would mean to me.

  ‘I have three county medals, two Munster club titles and an All-Ireland. But lads, I want this county title as badly as any of those medals. None of those really matter to me now because I need this one. I remember talking to Seánie the night we beat the ’Bridge and we spoke about how special this one would be. We were almost too young to really appreciate those medals, but this one would be so sweet for us all, not just us. Especially this year, after the people we have lost.

  ‘We have to treat this now like a business, because we’re in the business of winning it. But we also have to be driven by emotion. We can’t be sidetracked by it but we have to be propelled by it. Just think of the people we have lost and, Jesus, we have to just burst ourselves to try and honour them. It’s the least we can do for them.

  ‘I have my own emotion to deal with and that is my motivation. The one thing that is driving me is that I can already picture the final whistle at the county final when we have won it. I have so much emotion inside of
me and I know that it will burst out of me at that moment. It will be a release for me. Because it’s probably the only way I can get it out of me. To win with ye. To win with my best friends and teammates.

  ‘Jesus, lads, I can’t tell ye how badly I want this. I have never wanted to win anything as badly in my life. We’ll all drive each other, but please, just help me get there. Just get me over that line.’

  Conny and Mike Mac each whispered something to me when I was finished but I was mad with myself and I didn’t take in what they had said. I thought I’d brought too much personal baggage into it. I was thinking of Róisín while I was talking and there was a quiver in my voice near the end. Some of the younger lads would have known me only as a half-psycho keeper who goes off the rails every now and again. Now they were seeing me as a near emotional wreck.

  On my way home, I was shaking my head in the car. Beating myself up. Then Conny rang. ‘Well spoken, sham.’

  ‘Ah, Jeez, I think I went over the top,’ I responded. ‘There was probably no need for half of that stuff.’

  ‘No, it was from the heart,’ he said. ‘And I think guys really responded to it.’

  I hope they do. Still, I don’t know why I became so emotional. It just got a hold of me. Maybe I’ve put extra pressure on myself by saying what I’ve just said. But I don’t care. I just need to get over that line.

  11. Return of the Man

  Back in May, when, like every club in the country, we held a Lá gClub to mark the GAA’s 125th anniversary, the feature event was an exhibition game between the current team and the All-Ireland winning side from ten years ago. The 1999 team wore our blue jerseys – the Munster colours which we’d first donned for the 1999 All-Ireland semi-final because of a clash of colours with Athenry – and we made our way on to the pitch through a huge guard of honour that had gathered outside our dressing room.

  Six of the current team were playing with the 1999 side, and most of the remaining players who had retired had kept themselves in good shape, so it didn’t take long for the old chemistry of a great team to bubble back to the surface. It was only an exhibition game played at a pedestrian pace but there was still a clear contrast in technical efficiency between the two teams. The current team just didn’t have what the 1999 team had: the telepathy, the innate understanding, the fieldcraft and clever use of possession.

  Of course there was some exhibitionism, routinely encouraged by the commentator, Michael ‘Blackie’ O’Connor, who could be heard over the loudspeakers. But the expansive and intelligent style of play from the 1999 side was an embodiment of the class which had made that team one of the best club hurling sides in history.

  In the middle of the field, my brother Jamesie was orchestrating the show: spraying ball all over the field, embroidering the play together with little stitch passes, and notching a couple of real quality scores. For some of the younger kids watching, it was probably their first time seeing Clare’s joint most-decorated All-Star.

  When the match was over and the players were mingling with the crowd on the edge of the pitch, two club stalwarts, Pat Frawley and Michéal McMahon, approached me.

  ‘Can you not try and talk Jamesie into coming back?’ Frawley asked me. ‘You’re his brother, surely he’ll listen to you?’

  ‘I know it was only an exhibition game,’ said McMahon, ‘but he was still head and shoulders above anyone else on the pitch. God, he’d make a massive difference to the senior team.’

  I didn’t speak to anyone else, but I broached the subject with our physio, Eugene Moynihan, on Tuesday night. I asked him if he thought Jamesie could make a comeback.

  ‘I think he could,’ said Eugene. ‘He regularly plays soccer on the AstroTurf, doesn’t he?’

  ‘He does, yeah, a couple of times a week,’ I replied. ‘He runs the show there too, runs rings around guys.’

  ‘Well, if he can do that on the AstroTurf, which is an unforgiving surface on knees, I think he could definitely come back.’

  Three weeks later, en route to Thurles for the Cork–Tipperary Munster hurling quarter-final, I broached it with Jamesie. It was just two days after we had beaten Sixmilebridge in the championship and I told him what Eugene had said.

  ‘Come on to hell,’ I said to him, ‘give it a shot. We’re going to do everything we can to win it this year for Ger. Give it one lash. See how it goes. If it doesn’t work out, walk away from it.’

  He didn’t dismiss me out of hand. He was very close to Ger Hoey and he could see the value in what we were trying to achieve.

  ‘Ah, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I just don’t think my knee would be up to it.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ I responded. ‘But if you don’t feel it is after one or two sessions, just walk away from it. No one will say anything to you.’

  I didn’t mention it to anyone else, but the team captain Darragh O’Driscoll and manager John Carmody had discussed the issue themselves and they called to Jamesie’s house that Wednesday night to talk to him about a potential return. Carmody said that they were only looking for him to come back for a ten-week period. We weren’t playing championship again until mid-August, so they wouldn’t expect him to return to training until that time. He didn’t drink or smoke, he always kept himself in good shape, and they didn’t see the benefit in flogging him on hard ground in June or July. If his leg held up to the strain, a couple of weeks would get him hurling-sharp again and set him up as an impact substitute.

  Jamesie didn’t make any promises but he said he’d give it serious consideration. It was always going to be a huge decision because he has been effectively retired now for five seasons – the last serious game he played was the 2004 county final. In a challenge game against Kilmaley before the following season’s championship, he tore the cruciate ligament in his right knee. Because of a mis-diagnosis, he didn’t become fully aware of the extent of the injury until the following March. The required reconstruction would have meant missing another season and he decided not to have the operation. So he just pulled the plug and retired.

  It was a massive blow to the club because without the injury he would have played on for a few more seasons. His presence for the 2005 county semi-final against Wolfe Tones might have been enough to get us to the final, and the loss of his leadership and experience in a developing forward line was one of the main reasons we narrowly failed to emerge from our group in the 2006 and 2007 championships.

  The possibility of Jamesie’s return has been hovering in the background over the last couple of months, but none of the senior players put him under any pressure to make that decision. They were content to let the idea ferment with him because he was one of the club’s greatest players and everybody accepted that he didn’t owe anything to St Joseph’s.

  His leadership on and off the field was among his greatest strengths. A week after we won our first county title in 40 years in 1998, he told us that we were going to win the All-Ireland club title. Nobody believed him, but by the following March we were champions. If nothing else, his presence, experience and leadership would be a huge help to us at the business end of the championship.

  On Tuesday, 18 August, Patsy and John Carmody called us into a huddle after training. We were training again on Thursday, but at the unusual time of 8.30 p.m. We couldn’t go any earlier because there was a minor football game on, while our junior hurlers were playing Éire Óg in the championship in Gurteen at 7 p.m. ‘But the main reason we’re training on Thursday night,’ said Carmody, ‘is because there’s a man coming back to train with us. Jamesie O’Connor. What is that man going to bring to this squad? I don’t need to say any more, lads.’

  Two nights later, I pulled into Gurteen at the same time as Jamesie. I smiled over at him as he got out of the car with his gear and hurley.

  ‘Jeez, I thought I’d never see that sight again,’ I said to him.

  ‘Well, take a good look,’ he replied, ‘because you might never see it again after tonight.’

  At that stage
the junior game was still ongoing, and as Jamesie made his way into the dressing room with his gear you could clearly see heads turn and the whispering begin. When he walked into the dressing room, a big cheer went up. The Man was back.

  Out on the pitch before training began, I approached Patsy, who was clearly buzzing with the latest addition to his squad. ‘I don’t know if he’s going to stay around for long,’ I said to him. ‘But either way, you need to keep him involved. Whether that’s coaching forwards or talking to the team, just make sure he stays on board.’

  ‘Definitely,’ responded Patsy. ‘If he doesn’t play, he’ll be our eye in the stand for games.’

  After the session ended, I went over and asked Jamesie how he felt. ‘My touch is as good as it ever was,’ he said. ‘It’s just like riding a bike, you never lose it. But the knee still feels pretty weak. I don’t know, sure we’ll see how it goes anyway.’

  After I togged off and made my way into the showers, I was met with a wall of steam and a chorus of singing voices in the shower room. ‘The nicest shower I’ve ever had in this place,’ said Cathal O’Sullivan. ‘They’re roasting.’

  ‘The pump is on all evening because of the two other matches,’ I said to him.

  Cathal immediately dismissed that observation out of hand: ‘That’s rubbish. They’re only boiling hot because of your man [Jamesie]. If the showers were cold, he’d never have come back.’

  After we’d towelled down and got dressed, Jamesie and I made our way into the small meeting room just off dressing room number four. It was a big night for the senior team, with the return of one of our greatest players, but it was an equally big night for the club in terms of our future development: the club executive had called a meeting to discuss the hiring of a new coach.