The Club

by Christy O'Connor

  He was honest and thorough in his every response. In the middle of the discussion, he was just about to answer a query from Darragh O’Driscoll when a knock came to the door and one of the lads opened it behind O’Connell. It was Mikey Rosingrave, our third-choice keeper, a fantastic young lad who is only 17 but who is probably the most passionate and committed young player in the club. He had texted me earlier that day about training and I’d texted him back to ‘make sure you’re there because we have something special planned’. He probably thought it was to work our way through a new batch of goalkeeping drills. He’d clearly mixed up the time that training was supposed to start or else he couldn’t get a lift any earlier. Now here he was, standing in front of one of the world’s best rugby players with his mouth wide open. The blood drained from his face and he almost fell on to the nearest part of a bench he could find. A few of us smirked at poor Mikey’s state of shock, but O’Connell just kept going.

  Two of his replies to our questions instantly struck a chord with us. Patsy had told him the team we were playing on Saturday had convincingly beaten us in last year’s semi-final. He wanted to know what advice he could give us on facing the same team again now.

  Conny had already filled O’Connell in on the nature of last year’s defeat. O’Connell said that Newmarket had to see a different animal from the very outset on Saturday. We had to let them know that they knew they were facing a completely different atmosphere. To let them appreciate how much last year hurt us. O’Connell said that the reality of hurling is that you’re out there with a weapon in your hand. He wasn’t advocating dirty play or belting someone off the ball but he said that if we could intimidate someone, well then, we should be doing it.

  About ten minutes later, Jamesie asked O’Connell about belief. He said that we believed we were going to win on Saturday but he still got the impression that, deep down, there are doubts there about our ability to beat Newmarket. How do you get rid of all those doubts?

  O’Connell said that of course there would be doubts there. The key was chasing them out of your head by drawing on the positives. Then he turned the question back on Jamesie. He asked him, when he was playing with Clare, if they always believed that they were a better hurling team than the opposition? He asked Jamesie if he thought that they were more talented. He said that that Clare team had some unbelievable leaders and warriors. Great men.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jamesie, ‘we just felt that we had the work done. We had worked harder than anybody else. We were fitter than anybody else and we would outfight anybody else.’

  O’Connell said that attitude echoed what he had said earlier about hard work and honesty. In his opinion, doubts are the same as your confidence – they can be controlled. If you have the work done, those doubts will serve you well because they will make sure you don’t walk out on to the pitch complacent. Most doubts are good things: they make you wary, make you conscious of pitfalls in a game, and make you cover off those pitfalls. He told us that if there weren’t doubts in sport, nobody would ever hear of these great stories of guys digging out unbelievable results from nowhere. Doubts are what make sport. If everything was a certainty, there would be no fun. And that’s where the joy comes from winning. Getting rid of the hurt and pain after years of trying.

  Just before the session was about to be wrapped up, John Carmody thanked O’Connell for his immense input. And then he asked if there was one final piece of advice that he’d like to impart. He just implored us not to walk off the pitch with any regrets. To leave everything we had out there.

  And with that, he thanked us for our time.

  After a huge round of applause, a lot of guys went up to shake O’Connell’s hand. We’d entered the dressing room less than an hour earlier in daylight, and by the time we left it the floodlights had been switched on. It was almost the perfect metaphor for how we felt – energized and hopping off the ground. During the stretch in the top corner, the positive impact O’Connell had made was clearly visible.

  He hung around for a while afterwards to watch us train. As we took a quick water-break after about half an hour, I looked over and O’Connell was chatting on the edge of the pitch to Jamesie, Tommy Duggan (the club chairman) and a few more people. He was obviously interested in our club, who we were and what we stood for. At times it’s easy to perceive elite sports people as a million miles detached from ordinary club players like us, but O’Connell was nothing but humble and genuine. Real world-class.

  As we were stretching afterwards in the middle of the pitch, Darragh O’Driscoll spoke. He reiterated three points that O’Connell had spoken about: the edge; the personal ambition to be as good as you could be; the motivation. Then he looked over at Davy Hoey.

  ‘Dave, I’m thinking of you when I say this – our motivation is for Ger. We all remember how horrible February was.’

  Any comment that was made or aired had a direct thread to what O’Connell had already spoken about.

  ‘We start building the atmosphere from now,’ said Ken Kennedy. ‘There’s no point starting to tune in for this game on Friday. I’m thinking about it all week and I’m getting shag-all work done.’

  ‘We come with a different mentality on Saturday,’ said Cathal O’Sullivan. ‘Remember what they were saying about us after last year’s game – “men against boys”. Well, we’ll fucking show them on Saturday. So stand up and be a man.’

  By the time Patsy got around to having the last word in the huddle, the man was charged like he had a kinetic undercurrent running through his veins. He was pumped, his eyes flashing, mouth working fast, wired to the centre of his squad.

  ‘We start the process of intimidation the second we get off that bus on Saturday. I saw some of ye here tonight saluting “Scony” Kilmartin down behind the goal. Well, that kind of shit is out from now on – if we see any of them around town or at work, we don’t even look at them. On Saturday, you shake your man’s hand, and then the first chance you get – on the ball – you fucking bury him.’

  After we’d showered and changed, management had a meeting with six senior players in the dressing room. We were conscious of the need to keep it brief because we were meeting again on Friday night. We went through our game plan and our puckout strategy. We decided to choreograph the first five puckouts – so everyone knew what was happening – and then it was my call after we’d seen how they set up on us.

  The last five minutes of the discussion focused on what O’Connell had said about Newmarket having to see a different animal from what they faced last year. At one stage, Patsy had asked his advice on how we might need to break up Newmarket’s momentum if they got a run on us. In any case, it was something that we had often spoken about. That if a row did start, we needed to make sure that there were more of us in there than them. Just to let them know that if they wanted to start anything, we had more physical presence in there than them. But we obviously had to be cute about how we executed it, to avoid getting a card or sparking off something ridiculous or rattling ourselves.

  ‘What Conor [Hassett] did the last day was lunacy,’ said Seánie. ‘I’ve great time for him, but he’s no good to us now on Saturday because he’s suspended. There’s no point in us going down to 14 over something stupid. We’re finished if we do. So if you get hit, you either discreetly hit back or else you put the ball over the bar. Be hard and mean, but no retaliation.’

  Seánie has been in every battle known to man, but I still felt that – along with our discipline and focus – we needed to bring something more to the table. As much as they believe we have a soft underbelly, we believe the same about them. ‘The bottom line is that O’Neill thinks we’re a bit soft,’ I said to the small group which had assembled in dressing room three. ‘That’s going back as far as 2006, when he managed us. I’m sure that’s what he has them thinking, and they’ll just believe that they’re way better than us. Sure Marty [O’Regan] was cleaned out by Colin Ryan last year because Marty was concussed. And Colin Ryan has another think co
ming to him if he reckons he’s going to clean Marty out again.

  ‘I really think they’ll crack if we put the heat on them. From every angle. As O’Connell said, be that different animal. Give off that different vibe. Have them thinking, “Where did these guys come out of?” [Ger] Loughnane often made reference to that: “Be roaring and shouting encouragement at each other throughout the game. And roar even louder if we get a score or someone clears a great ball. And have them thinking, ‘Jeez, it’s true what they say about these guys – they really are half mad.’” We have to be totally clear-headed in what we’re doing, but that’s what these boys have to see on Saturday; that we’re focused – but half demented at the same time.’

  On the way home from training, I got a phone call from my younger brother John.

  ‘Well, are ye ready for them?’

  ‘We are,’ I replied. ‘We’re going to hit them with everything we have.’

  About half an hour later, Conny rang me.

  ‘Well, how was he?’

  ‘Brilliant,’ I replied. ‘Excellent. Just what we needed. Jeez, I’ve a good feeling about Saturday. I really think we can do it.’

  In classic Conny tongue, he immediately borrowed a line from the Ridley Scott film, Gladiator.

  ‘As Caesar said to Maximus, “Whisper it.” ’

  15. White Fluffy Clouds

  Before our final team meeting on Friday night – less than 24 hours before the quarter-final – everything seemed right. The meeting had been scheduled for Fahy Hall in Roslevan at 8.30 p.m. but we had to wait outside until 8.40 because a prayer service was still running inside. Still, that time gave us the opportunity to chat among ourselves and to gauge the mood. And the mood felt perfect.

  I had a good talk with Davy Hoey. He hasn’t played a full league or championship game since June, but he’s regained his fitness and his appetite over the last few weeks and has neatly slotted into the centre-back spot. We had met up in Gurteen on Tuesday evening to practise short puckouts and he really seemed to have come back to himself. Much of that credit has to go to Seánie McMahon, who has been constantly ringing Davy over the last few weeks. Nothing heavy; just saying the right things.

  The only real danger for Davy coming into a game like this, in which we’ve invested so much, is that he could become submerged by all that emotion. Separating emotion from hard-headed business can’t be easy. But he feels that he’s got his head around that transaction.

  ‘I’m flying it,’ he said. ‘I’m going to play the best game I’ve ever played. I can feel it. I’ve never felt emotion on this level before a game. I’ve been out in Templemaley talking to Ger over the last few days. And I’m going out there again tomorrow. I’ve cried, but it’s actually been a good release for me as well. I’m gunning myself beforehand to say something really passionate about Ger, but I’m not sure if I will. We’ll see, because I want to keep my emotions in check. I don’t want this overriding feeling to take over either – that we have to win for Ger. We win because we’re Doora-Barefield. That’s what he would want.’

  Just before the meeting began, I handed Patsy and John Carmody copies of a document I had typed out earlier in the week. It was titled ‘Reaffirming our positives’. It read as follows:

  1. St Joseph’s have played eight senior championship quarter-finals in the last 12 years and have won all eight – a 100 per cent record. No other club in the county has a better strike rate in county quarter-finals than us.

  2. St Joseph’s have only conceded one goal from play in four championship games to date – no other club in the county has managed this.

  3. Against Ballyea, Sixmilebridge and Ogonnelloe, our backs were to the wall each time and we came out on top. Along with Newmarket, we were the only club to win our first three championship matches.

  4. This is just like the Kerry–Dublin All-Ireland football quarter-final.

  5. Kerry went into that game written off – just like we are now. Newmarket are going into the county quarter-final as raging favourites – just like Dublin.

  6. We’re like Kerry – we have all the experience and know-how. Newmarket are like Dublin – coming into this match in a blaze of hype, with huge expectation, supposedly flying it, but without being really tested.

  7. We adopt Kerry’s attitude now by reaffirming our positives:

  We have huge experience

  We know how to win big games

  We have one of the best players to ever play the game.

  We are physically powerful, probably the most physical team in Clare.

  We are Doora-Barefield, the top dogs left in this championship.

  And we are going to beat Newmarket.

  When Patsy began to talk, he focused heavily on the first point. ‘Jeez, lads, I wasn’t aware that our record in quarter-finals was so good. A 100 per cent record over the last 12 years – that’s a serious strike rate at this stage of the competition. And it proves one thing: we know how to win these big games.’

  Patsy had about four pages of his own notes, which he went through forensically. He gave a detailed breakdown of Newmarket’s players and how he thought they’d set up. Then he went through each one of us and what he expected of us. He focused on Seánie more than any other player.

  ‘I’m expecting a massive game out of Seánie tomorrow and he is going to win the game for us,’ said Patsy. ‘Our game plan is primarily focused around Seánie. Unless the measured pass or the score is on out the field, we get the ball into him every time. He has the beating of his man, but we can’t afford to have Seánie going out to the corner and battling for his own possession out there. Get it into him and then get in close to him for the pass or layoff. There are goals to be got, so let’s start sniffing around that goal with every opportunity.’

  Our job tomorrow was to perform, and Patsy was just reaffirming our job in the meantime: hydrate; visualize; stay loose; keep to the routine.

  The rest of the management had their say, but the meeting probably lasted too long – close to 50 minutes – because guys were anxious and it was getting close to 10 p.m. Just before we finished up, Patsy had the last word: ‘I’ve goosebumps on the back of my neck already. I’ve never been as up for a game in all my life. I’m expecting a huge performance from us. I know it’s in us. I really believe it’s in us. The mood and the atmosphere is spot-on. This is our 80th time meeting and we’ve already played 20 matches. The work has been done. The experience is in the team and the squad. We are ready. Believe we are ready. And let’s get ready now to hit these boys with everything we have tomorrow.’

  After our stretch and puckaround in Gurteen before the game on Saturday, we had new travel arrangements for heading to Cusack Park. Gurteen is just two miles from the county grounds and we’d normally travel in cars and park near the Glór theatre, across from the pitch. However, management decided that we’d travel by bus for the first time since the county final in 2004.

  One reason we always travel in convoy is to save money and, while it may have been a change of routine – which is not always advisable – management wanted to ensure total focus and that guys wouldn’t have to worry about finding car spaces before an expected big attendance.

  On the short journey in the Quin road, the bus was silent and the atmosphere thick with adrenalin and nerves. For many of us, youthful naivety is no longer an asset. You can dwell too much on fears, but we’ve all tried to take the positives from what we’ve heard over the last week. You isolate some of that advice and then refer back to it as a safety mechanism. As Paul O’Connell said, most doubts are assets; they make you wary and conscious of pitfalls in a game, and make you cover off those pitfalls.

  You sift through the clutter in your head, ignoring the sights around you which invade your thought process. You picture the game you want to play, but you paint the picture with very basic brush strokes.

  Clear head.

  Always positive.

  Doubt your doubts.

  First ball.

&
nbsp; Next ball.

  And the next ball.

  That’s all you think about. Again. And again. And again.

  After taking a right at the roundabout beside the train station, the bus travelled 200 metres along Clon road before taking a left and then a sharp right along the Causeway road. A decent-sized crowd seemed to be making their way towards the ground as the bus turned right again and eased its way up outside Cusack Park.

  ‘Heads down now, boys,’ roared Patsy from the top of the bus. ‘Don’t look or talk to anyone.’

  The first thing I always do when I enter the ground is look at the three flags above the scoreboard to see how hard the wind is blowing. As usual, it was gusting straight down the pitch. If we won the toss, we had already decided to play against the breeze in the first half. We’d planned on lacing that opening half with hard hitting and explosive hurling, and we felt we’d need the elements with us in the second half to try and sustain it.

  As soon as we entered the dressing room, the mood felt right. Tense but focused. Just right. This may not be a county final, an All-Ireland final or a Heineken Cup final live on Sky Sports. But at this exact moment, this is the most important game in our lives. Our whole season, our quest to bring some happiness back to our parish after a year of tragedy, is all on the line over the next hour. You can’t think like that, but you know by the mood and the atmosphere of the room that this is big. That this is a defining moment for this group of players.

  After we got togged off, Jamesie and Seánie addressed the forwards in the showers. After they had finished, Ken and I led the backs and the two midfielders in there to go over some basic but fundamental points.

  ‘Be disciplined but hit hard,’ I said. ‘And no stupid frees. If you’re going to give away a free, make sure it’s a good one. Put him on his hole and make sure he knows you’re not messing around with him.’