The Club

by Christy O'Connor

  Two minutes into injury time, Chaplin had a free near the sideline from about 70 metres to close out the game. The ball appeared to have the distance but it was hanging in the breeze and was dropping close to the crossbar at an awkward height. Ken was roaring at me to let it go wide but I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t going to dip – and anyway, I knew if the ball went dead that the game was over. So I batted the ball out to the side to keep the game alive and give us one last chance to go down the field and get the equalizer to put us through.

  We had a couple of chances to clear it but their corner-forward muscled his way into the tackle and eventually won the ball. He squared it to their wing-forward and he put the ball over the bar to put them two ahead. I could hear Ken roaring at me as I quickly gathered the ball, but the second I pucked it out, the referee blew the final whistle. Then Ken cut loose. ‘You cost us the game. For fuck’s sake, that ball was going wide, what the hell were you at? You just cost us the game.’

  I shook hands with a couple of Broadford players but there was only one thing on my mind as I left the field: ‘I’m not accepting that shit.’

  Ken was just about to enter the showers when I got into the dressing room and I went straight in after him.

  ‘Get away from me,’ he said.

  ‘No, you hold on a minute here, you’re out of order,’ I responded.

  ‘Shut up to fuck, will you, you’re back-answering lads all day and I’m not listening to it any more.’

  ‘What are you raving about? Is giving lads advice and telling them to follow their men now back-answering? No, you shut the fuck up and listen to me.’

  He tried to push past me but I put my hand on his chest and stopped him. All the while, players were awkwardly passing us by as they entered or left the shower area and I was aware that this was a show that the team didn’t need at this point. Still, I wasn’t letting Ken away with it because he’d have just brushed it aside if I left it until the next training session to address it.

  ‘I was trying to do the right thing for the team. I couldn’t be sure if that ball was going wide and I have a split second to decide. I can’t let anyone else make up my mind, only myself. And anyway, I was trying to do the right thing for the team by keeping the ball in play.’

  ‘But they scored a point from it.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter a fuck if they scored five goals from it, it’s the same thing to be beaten by twenty points as it is by one point. As soon as that ball went dead, the game was over.’

  Ken just walked into the showers, but I was glad I’d had my say. A couple of minutes later, after I had towelled down I was entering the dressing room when I saw Danny Chaplin, the Broadford manager, standing in the middle of the room. He’s a genuine hurling man, but then I caught wind of his words. ‘This is a massive win for us. Not just because it keeps our season alive but because it’s against the standard-bearers of Clare hurling.’

  Holy Christ, I just turned around and went straight back into the showers. No offence to Danny Chaplin, but we’re no longer the standard-bearers of Clare hurling and that’s the last thing we need to be listening to. There was a time when we’d have beaten the pick of east Clare, when Broadford might have been lucky to have three players on the team. But not any more. At the moment, we wouldn’t beat 15 Katy Barrys.

  The mood was desperate inside in the dressing room. Raw, edgy, internal tension – the worst kind. You could nearly peel it off the walls. Anger with management, anger with the performance. Basically, a bunch of guys just seriously pissed off. And in a mean mood. If somebody had said the wrong thing out loud, God only knows what could have happened.

  Personally, I was disgusted with the performance. It’s bad enough to be beaten, but the manner of the defeat was soul-destroying. They’d blown us off the pitch in the second half with their pace and the speed of their hurling, but the bottom line was that a crowd of young lads had just rolled over us. And that’s a sickening feeling for a team regarded as one of the most physically powerful in the county.

  Jamesie and I didn’t speak a word as we made our way back to the car. Just as we were sitting in, I smiled to him. ‘Welcome back. I’d say you’re glad you signed back up for this shit.’ Then I changed tone. ‘I know what you’re going to say about that incident in the showers. I know you’re not impressed, but he was out of order and I wasn’t letting him away with it.’

  I informed Jamesie of the context and just left it at that. I drove him out to Gurteen, because he had to collect his car, and we just sat talking for half an hour. The more we chatted, the heavier the mood got. He had come down to me from the stand just before he came on as a substitute to instruct me to go shorter with the puckouts. I was just telling him now that part of the reason I was going long was because guys weren’t tuned in and that their first touch was so poor that the ball was more than likely to go back over my head if I went short.

  ‘Yeah, you’re probably right. You’re not dealing with the likes of [Ger] Hoey and [Ciaran] O’Neill now, who you know are always going to be tuned in.’

  Jamesie was only back training three weeks but he had seen enough to convince him of how far off the pace we really were.

  ‘How many guys are really hurting tonight? How badly do guys really want it?’ There was no need for an answer.

  Then he talked about the training. ‘I’m only back a few weeks and I’m well able for it. There’s not half enough intensity. We were doing a drill the other night and lads were nearly standing around getting cold. There’s not enough pace to the sessions.’

  ‘You need to say it to Fahey now,’ I said to him. ‘It has more authority if it comes from you. You need to say it to him about taking more of a coaching role if you’re not going to be considered as a starter.’

  ‘Well, a lot of what we need now can’t be coached,’ he responded. ‘Lads either want it or they don’t, and I don’t know if they really want it.’

  About ten minutes later, Patsy pulled in to Gurteen. He dropped Steve Whyte off near the AstroTurf and then he spun back down in our direction. ‘Now’s your chance,’ I said to Jamesie. ‘Say it to him.’

  Patsy rolled down the window and just lifted his eyes to heaven. He’s four years younger than Jamesie and three years younger than me. He’s a close friend of ours and we didn’t want to seem like we were talking down to him. But he’s the coach now and he has to take a large share of responsibility for the performance.

  I cleaned the chamber while Jamesie loaded the bullet. I mentioned the gamble of the selection and Patsy defended it. A minute later, Jamesie pulled the trigger. ‘There’s not enough intensity to the training, Patsy. We need to be doing more. We need to be working harder.’

  In fairness to Patsy, he took it on board. Numbers had been a problem, but that shouldn’t be an issue from now on. Just before he left, he asked Jamesie to do a bit more coaching. He said he would.

  As I was driving home, I was thinking of Jamesie’s inglorious return. The main reason he had come back was to try and help the club win a championship and to honour Ger Hoey’s memory. And now this. When he did come on in the game, there was barely a murmur. Our supporters were so concerned with our form that they barely even noticed him. Or else they felt that we hadn’t given them the entitlement to cheer and welcome back one of our greatest ever players. To be honest, I almost felt embarrassed for him. His leg still isn’t right and, from talking to him in the car, I know his heart isn’t in it. And I’m sure he’s just disgusted that the standards that the likes of he and Ger Hoey set for this club have slipped so drastically.

  By the time I got home, I was still in dire form. The manner of the defeat was one thing, but we’re not playing well enough to win a championship.

  For a couple of years, playing senior championship matches had almost become torturous. We hadn’t enough quality forwards to put up big scores, so every match was a dogfight to the wire. You always relish a battle, but it was becoming tedious, almost like a dour football strug
gle in winter. Then last year we were liberated. We were fitter than we are now and were playing much sharper hurling. We were posting big scores, and four of our seven championship matches were effectively over with 15 minutes remaining. Now it’s back to the same old stuff again. Dour, low-scoring dogfights. Of course there’s a real element of honour in winning those games, but they make you weary as well. And now we’re more than likely going to have two more battles in a play-off to make the quarter-finals.

  The lads were going into town that night but I couldn’t be bothered to join them. I was like a lunatic for the rest of the evening and Olivia eventually let me have it. ‘If it’s going to have this much of an effect on you, just pack it in,’ she said. ‘It can’t be worth it.’

  The incident with Ken was still bothering me, but deep in my heart I was beginning to admit that the wheels were coming off the track and that the dream was over. We weren’t playing well enough. We didn’t deserve anything with our commitment. You always try and stay positive, but it’s still difficult to avoid the unavoidable: that we’re just not good enough any more; that we just don’t have enough in the tank; that we just don’t want it enough any more. And that’s a real bitch of a feeling.

  Around 4 p.m. the following day, Conny rang me. A meeting had been arranged between players and management for tomorrow evening. ‘It’s going to be a fucking bloodletting,’ he said. ‘Some of the boys are going to cut loose.’

  Then an hour later, he rang me back. ‘Did you hear the result in the ’Bridge–Ballyea game?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘A draw.’

  We’re through.

  The meeting was still going ahead, though. It was just as well, because red flags had been popping up all over the place. Emmett Whelan had reportedly left the panel because he’d been substituted 20 minutes after he’d been brought on. Yet he was only just back from eight months in Australia and had got game time ahead of guys who’d been training all year. The word on the ground was that Cathal O’Sullivan was also jumping ship. He wasn’t long back from six weeks travelling in South-east Asia, but he felt he was still being punished for breaking the drinking curfew last weekend. Moreover, management told him he was only being considered for a midfield place when he’d been a career defender.

  The previous evening, Damien Kennedy and Davy Hoey had nearly come to blows. Damo made some remark about management, Hoey countered by criticizing his performance, and somebody had to step in between them. Poison was seeping into the camp from every angle. The father of one of the players on the bench had confronted Patsy immediately after the game, just as he was coming into the tunnel. He told him that the performance reflected how he ran his team. Patsy just kept walking.

  Conny rang me back again on Sunday to tell me that some of the boys were bitching like a flock of gossiping women. One of them had told him that he should open fire on management over how he was treated in the lead-up to the game. He said that he’d call to collect me for the meeting at 8 p.m.

  ‘I’m not going to be a fool for anyone,’ he said on the way out to Gurteen in his jeep. ‘The boys want me to do their dirty work for them but I’ll cut that off at the Khyber Pass. I’ll be one of the first to speak and I’m going to be pro-management here tonight.’

  Almost everyone on the panel was present. Whelan and Colm Mullen were absent, and John Carmody opened the meeting on that point. He outlined how Whelan had dropped three balls and had mistimed two passes and he said he was sorry that Whelan wasn’t around to discuss those reasons why he’d been taken off.

  Then he broadened the point. ‘Some of the stuff that I’ve heard since Friday night has disgusted me. I’ve heard numerous times that the best team we had out was above in the stand. All this kind of shit. The reason we’re here is to get it out in the open. If anyone has a grievance, we’re all big enough to deal with it and address it.’

  He wasn’t holding back. Although the player whose father had lectured Patsy was no more than a few feet away from him, Carmody said that he’d bitten his lip at the time. But that if he did it again, he’d ‘do time for him’.

  Carmody said that he could justify the team selection and he went through every player individually and outlined the reason he’d started. As for the guys on the bench, he said that some of them hadn’t been considered because of injury, while more hadn’t taken their chance to nail down a place over the last few weeks. With regard to Greg Lyons more or less hopping off a plane after three months in the USA and being brought on, Carmody was unequivocal. ‘Greg is one of our best players. We were thinking of a quarter-final and that’s the reason we needed to get him on the field.’ In his opinion, Paul Dullaghan was the only player in the room who had a reason to feel hard done by. And he’d been concussed in a football game the previous week.

  In his eyes, this was coming down the tracks a mile off. He was right when he said that the only time we had full numbers on the pitch was the Thursday evening session before the Ogonnelloe and Broadford games. Not getting enough bodies on the pitch had largely contributed to our recent performances.

  ‘I have a wife, three kids and a business,’ said Carmody. ‘My kids are involved in hurling, football, athletics and loads of other stuff. I’m involved with a camogie team and another underage team, but I can still make time for this team because I have given ye a commitment. Guys are making excuses not to come to training when they should be making excuses to come to training. And some of ye have fuck-all on when you consider what other lads have on. Ye have absolutely no excuse in the world not to be here.

  ‘Look around ye! Look at the players that are here! Jeez, this championship is here for ye. There are only about three or four decent teams left. Newmarket are the team to beat, but they still have to prove that if they hit the wall again, they can get over it. Clonlara have a very good side but they don’t have much beyond their first 15. But to win a championship, you need to be fucking savage, and ye’re gone soft. There’s no meanness there. We didn’t break a hurley against Broadford. Eoin, did we even break a hurley?’

  ‘No, I didn’t throw in one stick,’ said Conny, who’d been handling the replacement hurleys on the far sideline.

  ‘We’re going nowhere until we get bodies on the field again. This is yere club, lads. Let’s just come together and let’s fucking do it.’

  Before Patsy spoke you could read from his body language how much he was hurting. ‘I’ve been with other clubs, lads, but it does hurt a lot more when it’s your own club. I’ve taken some stuff on board since Friday. The intensity and fitness has to come up in training, but it’s been difficult to draw up sessions with the footballers playing as well. Our forward play has been a real problem but Jamesie is going to do some work on that, and we just have to keep our heads now and start working hard again.’

  As team captain, Darragh O’Driscoll had clearly come prepared. He had a sheet of paper on his lap and his notes were written under four headings: Attitude, Workrate, Attendance, Bitching. He addressed each point intelligently and constructively and he reaffirmed Jamesie’s concern about training not being intense enough. There needed to be more games of backs-and-forwards or conditioned games in training.

  When it came to discussing management’s performance, there was one dominant theme which Darragh had gathered from the group. Discipline.

  ‘The feedback I’m getting is that some players were getting disciplined and others weren’t and that discipline needs to be more equitable.’

  Darragh encouraged everyone to speak, and after a brief silence of about 30 seconds, Conny stepped up.

  ‘Last Friday was the first time since 2000 that I didn’t get a senior jersey and I was really pissed off when I was told. But then I looked at it and said that management were probably right because I hadn’t been doing enough. There are plenty of guys here not doing enough, but all I’m listening to is bitching. Sure that isn’t worth a fuck to anyone. Where is that going to get you? Where would it get me? If you have a problem, st
ore it in your locker and then bring it to training with you tomorrow night and the night after and the night after. The guy that has your jersey, rip his fucking head off in training to get it back. Let him have it. Rough him up. Walk down on top of him if you have to. And if you get your chance in a challenge game, make sure you don’t waste it.’

  Seánie was sitting right beside Conny and he felt Carmody had been too soft in some of his assessments. ‘From one to seven we were excellent the other night but from there up, it just wasn’t good enough. I’m up that end of the field and what I have done is just not good enough. What we’re doing will not be enough to win us a championship.’

  Ken’s grievances had a longer history than Friday’s game. ‘No disrespect to Ballybrown but it was a disgrace that an intermediate team should be beating us by ten points in a challenge game the week before a championship match. They’re a decent side but that was ridiculous. I said at half-time that we need to start burying goals and you [Carmody] said that we were doing fine, and there was no way that we were. We need to turn into Kilkenny. Start burying teams. We’re too nice. Anyone who comes in around me, I’ll fucking nail them, but that’s my job and that’s the bitterness we have inside in the full-back line. But don’t be telling us as backs that we’re great either because we haven’t met a set of forwards that can open us up. When we meet a Newmarket or a Clonlara, then we’ll see how good we are. But we won’t even get that far unless we really harden up and just get mean in training. We’re not at the pace required. We should have beaten the shit out of Broadford but I don’t think we’re learning much from the challenge games we’re playing. We can only learn from playing challenge games against the top teams like Portumna.’

  There was a time when we didn’t have to look for a challenge game against the top club sides in Munster and Galway because they were the ones looking for a game off us. But we don’t have the currency to trade in that market any more. Portumna wouldn’t waste their time playing us now because they’d wipe us out. We played them up in Portumna three years ago, six weeks after they won their first All-Ireland, and they were just toying with us two weeks before we played our opening championship match. Patsy said that he’d been on to their manager Johnny Kelly trying to arrange a challenge game, but having a big name as a club isn’t enough to get their attention any more.