The Club

by Christy O'Connor

  The discussion began to focus on the weakness of our forward play, but the same voices were dominating the discussion. Seánie had reiterated the importance of young players having their say and he mentioned an article which had appeared in the Sunday Times that morning. It was an extract from Alan English’s new book on Ireland’s rugby Grand Slam, which detailed how Rob Kearney had spoken up at a meeting about how the Munster players seemed to show more passion with their province than they did with Ireland. ‘A young fella of 22 put it up to the likes of O’Connell and O’Gara and these boys and it was a major turning point,’ said Seánie. ‘We need that input here. We need to hear what ye’re thinking.’

  I suspected that wasn’t going to happen, so I increased the pressure. ‘OK, everyone here has to talk. We’ll put a two-minute limit on it, but just say what’s on your mind.’

  I knew the two-minute limit was too ambitious, and that we’d probably be here for another two hours, but there was no other way around it. I knew guys that were there who hadn’t spoken, and who weren’t going to speak, but who had festering issues.

  It was obvious from the outset that there wouldn’t be any holding back. Marty O’Regan lectured Conor Hassett on getting sent off and it opened up another debate. ‘A Broadford guy hit you the other night and you took the bait, Hass. You need to be cuter. That was pure headless stuff. You’re our one inter-county player. You need to be leading us.’

  Then Darragh weighed in on that subject. He reckoned that we’d turned a load of referees in Clare against us with our on-field bitching. There are definitely a couple of referees out there that have it in for us. We experienced that first hand last year in one championship match when two umpires told me before half-time to warn our backs and our management about the amount of bitching to the referee. When umpires are thinking along those lines, you know you’re in trouble, and in the second half the referee made some decisions against us that were a disgrace.

  When Jamesie spoke, that was the first point he touched on. He addressed Niall White for the manner in which he conceded the free, and the extra yards, which resulted in Broadford’s goal on Friday. ‘Whitey, that’s just not good enough. That kind of petulance has crept into this club and it is visible in some of our underage teams. It needs to be cut out.’ Then he turned on Carmody and told him that his assessment was too meek and that we needed to grasp reality.

  Ivor Whyte was next to get a sideswipe from Jamesie. ‘You wasted too much ball. Something always good happens with your man [Seánie] inside and you were just hitting it over his head. Five points from play in a challenge against Ballybrown doesn’t give you a licence to shoot for points with every ball.’

  He was clearly in a mood to keep going.

  ‘Is Mully here?’ He wasn’t. Jamesie looked over to the corner to Davy Hoey. ‘What you and Mully did at half-time was a disgrace.’

  Mullen and Hoey had gone down to the tunnel at half-time for a cigarette. Jamesie paused for about five seconds. ‘Jesus, we need you. This team needs you.’

  He was clearly on a roll so he just kept going. ‘Lookit, I didn’t think I should have been brought on the other evening. I have a 50 per cent tear on my cruciate ligament and the surgeon told me that it’s not a matter of if I might tear it but when I might do so. I’m not going to win anything for ye. When I was asked back, I thought about Ger dying and this being such an important year for the club, but I don’t get that sense. Like how badly do guys really want this? We can go on about forward play and that – and I will do what I can – but the bottom line was that we were outfought by Broadford. And that is unforgivable. They wanted it more than us. If we do nothing else this year, we have to make sure that that doesn’t happen again. There is something noble and honourable about going out if you’re beaten by a better team, but there is something sickening about just bowing out. And that’s the real sickening thing about the past for some of us: that there were years there when we just didn’t do things right and we weren’t mentally right and that was the reason we didn’t win things. Not because we weren’t good enough. I was involved with a Flannan’s team with Shane [O’Connor] last year and we got beaten in a Harty Cup quarter-final but I never enjoyed being involved with a team as much because they were so honest and we got the most out of them. That is what it’s all about.’

  There was a real hush when he spoke. Not just because of his standing within the club but because of why he’d come back. Jamesie didn’t need to come back after four years away. He had done it all. What was in it for him? He was only risking his knee and his reputation. Some of the younger guys should have been grateful that they were getting the chance to play and train with him instead of bitching about not getting game-time.

  Seán Flynn, who along with Conor Redmond is the best young leader we have in the club, had no problem elaborating on the need for the younger players to assume more responsibility in the squad. Enda Lyons had spoken earlier about some of the dual players being young guys who ‘needed breaks’ from training. That was Flynn’s starting point.

  ‘The five lads who were taken off the other night were not taken off because they’re young lads or because the older lads or management don’t rate them. We just need to harden the fuck up.’ Then he looked over to Enda in the corner. ‘We need to harden the fuck up.’

  By the time it came to my turn to speak, I looked over at Ken. He had his head down, but I just wanted to explain to the group the reason for our blow-up in the dressing rooms.

  ‘You know how much time I have for you. And if you have any problem with what I’m going to say, you can have your response after I’ve finished talking. Everybody here knows that you’d probably kill me if you hit me a belt, but I wouldn’t have been happy with myself if I had let it pass. The bottom line here is that we all back one another up. The last thing I always say to you before every game is that you back me up 100 per cent and that I’ll back you up 100 per cent.’

  Ken nodded back to me and I kept going.

  ‘That unity has to be there with all of us. When Munster won the Heineken Cup in 2006, they conceded a try to Biarritz in the first two minutes because John Kelly missed a basic tackle that led to a try. When they were all under the post, he said that he had got it wrong and that it wouldn’t happen again. They all rallied behind him and drove him on, and that was the way it had to be.

  ‘There’s just one other thing I need to get out in the open here. Do lads have a problem with some of my talking during games? I need to know. There was one incident in the ’Bridge match when a ball came off the upright and I was roaring at Marty that his man was right on him and he went to pick it. Marty and Hoey fucked me out of it and Ken told me that I was frightening lads on the ball. I never fuck lads out of it if they make a mistake but maybe I am a bit over the top, and if lads feel that I am, let me know.

  ‘I’m just trying to get the organization right at the back and ye all know I can see what ye can’t. There was one incident the last day when I was roaring at Mark [Hallinan] to come back into the hole and Hoey was telling me to leave him on the wing, but Mark caught a great ball and I’m just trying to make sure that space is covered. It’s basic zonal defensive stuff. That’s the reason I’m always calling somebody back into the line beside me for long-range frees or sidelines. Because if one of the full-back line gets dragged out, the guy on the line can cover the space so I don’t have to leave my line. That’s just basic teamwork. And if that guy clears the ball, I’ll encourage him to the last. I’ll drive him on. And if he misses it, I’ll still drive him on because that’s the unity that’s required.

  ‘Look, ye all know how much this means to me and I’m not going to go back into it again. I want this so badly that at times it nearly frightens me. I get more nervous now than I ever did because I know the end is coming for me. But that is what it’s all about. That is the juice, playing with your best friends. Seánie and James and Darragh and Ken. The buzz is still winning with your best friends. I don’t know what th
e hell I’ll do when I pack it up; I’ll probably go stone fucking crazy. What we have to do now is just give it our all. Let’s just give everything for eight weeks of our lives now because we’ll never forgive ourselves if we don’t put it in and that’s the reason we don’t win a county title. If we’re not good enough, fair enough. But let’s not have any regrets. I said it to ye at our last meeting that what’s driving me on is the vision of the final whistle in the county final when we’re county champions and all the emotion inside me will come out then like a geyser. Just get me there. Let’s all get there together.’

  When Noel Brodie had spoken, halfway through the meeting, he touched on one specific topic. He mentioned the famous speech given by the Al Pacino character, Tony LaMotta, in the film Any Given Sunday. Brodie didn’t refer to the popular line about fighting for the inches that make the difference between winning and losing, between living and dying. He focused instead on the line where LaMotta says, ‘… either we heal as a team or we are going to crumble’, that ‘we are in hell right now and we can stay here and get the shit kicked out of us or we can fight our way back into the light’. Brodie’s words are probably just what we need to hear right now. ‘We have hit the bottom of the barrel now and we can’t go any lower,’ he said. ‘And we need to heal as a team now before we can go forward.’

  The process is to begin with training tomorrow, and Brian O’Reilly will be back on Wednesday night to work on our fitness. The next month is going to be hard work, but we need to get back fighting for those inches, and tearing ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that inch. And there’s a lot of healing to be done along the way.

  13. Top Dogs

  Life has a way of coming back to bite you in the ass. The win rate on our puckout statistics has been dire in our last couple of games and some of the senior players have been locked into a disagreement with management about changing policy. Our strategy of going long the majority of the time just hasn’t been working and, in an attempt to convince management of an alternative, Jamesie walked us through a forward-play and puckout-strategy session on the underage pitch last week. Given that it takes roughly three to four seconds for a ball to drop when it’s struck long, giving defenders and midfielders sufficient time to get coverage, our preferred puckout strategy now is to go short or else create a two-on-one scenario on the break through clearly defined signals.

  We played Kinvara in a challenge game last night, and as soon as Jamesie came on as a substitute in the second half I drilled him with a short puckout inside our own half. In the process of catching it, he chipped a bone and dislocated his thumb. In any case, he’s gone for the rest of the season.

  I know there’s an element of relief for him, because he wasn’t enjoying it. His knee is still giving him trouble and he hasn’t the same fireproof confidence in himself any more because he just doesn’t have the fitness and hurling work done. In his mind, playing competitive hurling is no longer something that motivates him, and he doesn’t deserve the indignity of being possibly cleaned out by some ravenous young gun, voraciously intent on taking Jamesie O’Connor’s scalp. He was risking more serious long-term damage to his knee by coming back, but he was willing to take that chance to help us try and win a county title to honour Ger Hoey’s memory. Jamesie doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone as a hurler, but at least he tried. And everyone respects him more for it.

  ‘When I think of it now,’ he said a few days later, ‘I wonder, was it me coming back because I really wanted to, or was it me coming back because people wanted me to come back? And to be honest, it was probably the latter. There’s no way I wanted it as much as I used to. I’ve three kids, my knee still isn’t right. And it’s a young man’s game now.

  ‘I wasn’t ready for the Broadford game but, to be honest, I think my vision of what I could do and management’s vision didn’t seem to concur. I maybe saw myself playing corner-forward off Seánie. Get the ball into him and I’d work off him. Maybe manufacture a free close to goal, or make an intelligent run, and if I got the ball in my hand I’d have had a good chance of popping it over. But suddenly I’m on wing-forward against Ballybrown and I’m a target for puckouts. It was the same against Broadford. I came on at centre-forward against Kinvara. I just wasn’t able for that any more.

  ‘Even the meeting we had after the Broadford game, I was kinda asking myself what am I doing here because I’ve been at so many of those clear-the-air meetings over the years. I’m nearly sick of them at this stage and I was saying to myself that I’m not back long enough to start giving out to fellas. I wasn’t going to speak at all, but then you said that everyone had to speak. So after I started, I decided to get some stuff off my chest about a couple of players’ commitment and attitude. You hope that you get the right response afterwards and that fellas take it in the right way, but I’m not really sure if that’s the case. Ten or twelve years ago, there was a real hunger there and the players we had left no stone unturned to win for Doora-Barefield. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if that’s the case any more.

  ‘When you said it to me going down in the car to the Cork–Tipp game that ye were going to do everything ye could to win it for Ger, I suppose I just wanted to try and help ye out. I should have finished it there and then in the car – told you no way, that it wasn’t going to happen. But I suppose the competitor was still there in me, Ger was a great friend and I was curious as well as to whether I could still maybe do it. And I just couldn’t.’

  We’ve all accepted now that Jamesie is gone, but he’s still going to be a loss to us because we’ve been haemorrhaging players in the last few weeks. Conor Hassett received a one-match suspension from his straight red card in the Broadford game, so he’s definitely out for the quarter-final. Davy Hoey and Kevin Dilleen are both doubtful with injury, while the possibility of getting Joe Considine back disappeared after he broke his jaw in a football match. Greg Lyons is in college in Edinburgh, Niall White always seems to be working nights, while Shane O’Connor was laid low with an infection and has been concentrating his time with the minor footballers.

  There isn’t the overflow of training players provided by the juniors any more because they recently exited the championship. The dual players have to play Liscannor in a senior football relegation semi-final the week before the hurling quarter-final and, all of a sudden, our training numbers are way too low for this stage of the season.

  The Kinvara game also proved that we’re still off the pace. We began well but shipped 2-2 in five minutes before the break and completely lost our way in the second half, eventually losing 2-17 to 0-14. Management had the match recorded – some guy was perched on top of a white van with his camera and tripod – and it was agreed afterwards that different groups would meet up to watch the game. ‘Watch the second half first and get the bad stuff out of the way, because we did a lot of good things in the first half,’ said John Carmody afterwards.

  Although we’ve had the whole year to prepare, the quarter-final is closing in quickly now. We were supposed to play on 26 September, but the fantastic All-Ireland success of the Clare U-21 hurlers shoved that date back until 4 October. Of the six teams we could meet – Clonlara, Clooney-Quin, Cratloe, Inagh-Kilnamona, Kilmaley and Newmarket – the bookies would probably give us a realistic chance of beating three of those sides.

  Yet, with the exception of Newmarket – and they haven’t won a county title since 1981 – none of those sides would be seen in Clare as traditional powerhouses. Four of the six clubs we could meet were all intermediate clubs within the last decade, while the remaining quarter-finalists, Broadford, were last year’s intermediate champions. We’re probably the biggest name left in the competition now, but we’re viewed as a legitimate target by anyone.

  When I spoke to Patsy a couple of days after the Kinvara game, we both agreed that the one team we’d like to avoid was Cratloe. We had physically bullied them around Clareabbey last year, but our concern was that a team of young speedsters would just run
us off the pitch in Cusack Park. ‘You know, a part of me wants Clonlara in the quarter-final,’ said Patsy. ‘Just to help us focus guys’ minds.’ Clonlara are the reigning champions.

  He just shook his head and sighed in exasperation. At the moment, the man is nearly broken. Disillusioned almost beyond belief. ‘One year of this and I’m out,’ he said. ‘I just can’t take it any more. This job would wreck your head.’

  The job that he had craved is now cracking his morale and splintering his spirit. Managing Doora-Barefield means everything to Patsy but, as the year has progressed, he has struggled to separate the reality of management from kinship and friendship. He feels increasingly let down by the lack of loyalty and respect shown to him by some players who he regards as close friends. He’s been burned from chasing players and deflated from a basic lack of courtesy that any manager deserves. The expected protocol from any player who can’t attend training or a challenge match is to text or call a member of management. But some guys have consistently ignored that consideration.

  ‘There’s always someone missing, somebody always has an excuse,’ said Patsy. ‘Lads have said that they’ll do whatever it takes, but they won’t. They’re all fucking talk. I’m just sick of it. Guys just don’t want it. With the tragedy that’s gone on in the club this year, guys should be busting themselves. But they’re just not willing to do it. I’m telling you, when some of the senior players go, this club is in real trouble. Serious trouble.