Ger Loughnane Interview: Hurling, heroes, and hopes for the future

Tonight, the same authority Ger Loughnane railed against back in his day will salute him and induct him into the Munster GAA Hall of Fame. He has a lot else on as well and plenty to say about them: 20 years on from ’95, Davy and Clare, being a granddad, life after staring at death, and the thrill of the hunt...

A winter’s evening in Ennis and outside, the elements are raging fiercer than he ever did in his pomp against the powers-that-be that this weekend will salute and honour that — his — rebellion.

Ger Loughnane emerges from out of the latest hurricane that is pounding Clare and into the warmth and comfort that is the Old Ground Hotel just down the road from his old stomping ground of Cusack Park.

And for a moment, seeing him with a padded jacket and baseball cap on a lot like the kind he’d have worn on the line for a dirty league game to shield him from the driving rain and the cold, it’s as if you’ve been transported back in time, to when his personality and spectre dominated hurling the way an old Kilkenny friend from college has for so long now.

He’s looking remarkably fresh and vital for a man that’s now 62 and stared death in the face just four years ago.

With a chuckle he questions the compliment but he accepts that while his life isn’t as hectic as it was in those maniacal years when there always seemed another fight to pick and another title to win, it’s just as full.

Last weekend, he was up in Dublin for the annual GAA awards run by The Star newspaper that he has loyally written for over 15 years now.

This weekend in Dromoland Castle, there’s the Munster Council annual awards at which he’ll be inducted into their Hall of Fame.

This day that you meet up with him, he’s just back from seeing a man in Charleville about a dog. He has 10 of them now whom he keeps a couple of miles away, and every day he’ll drive out to feed and clean them.

In the summertime, he’ll take them up the mountain to stretch their legs. At this time of year, he’ll hunt by foot with them two or three times a week, from about 10 in the morning until dark.

And as he’ll explain in a bit, that pastime isn’t about killing or death. For him it’s about life, it’s real living, something that makes him feel alive in a way only hurling did in a previous millennium.

Earlier in the day he was also in a village and school in Galway, observing and mentoring some student-teachers from Mary Immaculate College. He never returned to teaching after his battle with leukaemia in 2011 but the discipline and vocation is something that still stirs his mind.

“What’s been a real eye-opener for me since I started this tutoring is the standard and commitment of our young teachers,” he enthuses. “It’s exceptional. There was always an awful fear that the basics of education would slip as they did in England and where they had to go back to an extreme on the 3Rs, but in Ireland the quality of the teaching of literacy from junior infants up is so high now. The various strategies and technologies that are employed to make it more attractive for children, it’s far better than it ever was before.”

People can scoff about how cushy the job is with its holidays and its hours but that’s an ignorant and outdated belief, he argues. “When the children go home, the day is a long way from over for teachers.”

He talks about how detailed and meticulous they now are in their planning. They’ve to specify their objectives, review their performance in the classroom that day and how it ties in with the short-term and long-term plan for the class and the school. Sport, he notes, has gone the same way, and certain parts of it could review and prepare like that even more.

“When I started this (tutoring), I was looking at this reflective practice as some kind of airy-fairy notion. But I wasn’t long realising just how important it is.

“So you take this year when Brian Lohan called for a review on how hurling is being operated in Clare...” And just like that, he’s off, talking about that other great passion that remains.

Hurling. Especially Clare hurling...

THE GODFATHER.

Pat O'Neill #Dublin & Ger Loughnane #Clare collect Tyler Top Ten awards for 1977 #gaa #nostalgia pic.twitter.com/9wHCXvXUgG

— GAA Nostalgia (@gaanostalgia) December 9, 2015

Something he feels that got lost when he backed Lohan’s suggestion was that any proposed review would have encompassed all levels of the sport in the county. It wasn’t just about the senior team. It wasn’t about Davy. It wasn’t about passing judgment on him or anyone, but rather providing some support and guidance.

“After the last two years, it would be very easy to blame it all on the [senior] manager. That is the most facile thing of all. The real question is: is there a flaw in the players we are developing? Is there a flaw in the coaching? The immediate reaction from the board after Lohan suggested a review was ‘Oh no, we don’t need that.’ They think a review is an attack on somebody. It’s not an attack on somebody! They think it’s a blame game. It’s not a blame game! It’s information to find out exactly what is going wrong — and what is going right.”

Had Loughnane been part of any such review, he’d have proffered that the various people involved over all Clare teams, from U14 up, answer a questionnaire about different aspects of their training and preparation, where they thought they were making real strides and what challenges they faced. Then bring them in and have a chat — “not an inspection, a chat”.

Loughnane has his own theories about where Clare could improve. For decades they didn’t identify or nurture the smaller, faster, skilful player. Recently they’ve gone to the other extreme.

“The balance is not right. At 14, 15, 16, 17 we’re neglecting rough diamonds who could be developed into very effective hurlers the way Ollie Baker and Michael O’Halloran were. Fergal Hegarty, Conor Clancy; if they were U14 or U16 or minor now, would they make the Clare panel? I don’t think so.

“We do not have enough strong, physical players, especially those who have potential to be good in the air. And as a result we are being found out. People crowd their defence, force us to puck the ball long, and when we do, we’re not able to win it.

“Take the Munster U21 final this year, inside in Ennis. I was over in the far stand and in the second half, you could see that the whole Limerick half-back line held their line right across the line. It was like a barrier across there. They let the Clare forwards run away however they wanted to. And as a result the Clare goalie had to either puck the ball to the corner back or puck it long down on top of them.

“With a few minutes to go, we were trailing by two points and badly needed to get the ball to the forwards. The goalie still pucked the ball to the corner back! Because he couldn’t trust [his teammates enough] to go long. We had to run the ball all the way through.

“So when the running game for Clare is blocked, have we another way of playing? Now we can have eight or nine plans for a running game, but when you’re forced to go long, as Kilkenny will force you to do, can we cope with that? At the end of that U21 game when we needed players to be able to win the ball, we brought on three tiny fast, skilful players who got nowhere.

“So looking at that — forget our seniors now –—I saw red lights flashing for Clare for the future. And it’s based on that more than anything. Because they have great fellas over that team. And I’d love to hear their opinions on it and I would love to have had them in and chat it out as to how Clare go forward.”

But does he think that’s how the senior manager would have interpreted such a review?

“See, that’s part of the problem. You take the modern generation — they’re all brought up in their jobs and their schooling to have that reflection, that self-assessment if you like, that those student-teachers do. Then there’s a generation that would be now in their 40s that aren’t as used to that. And they can look at any assessment as almost an attack on them, which has nothing to do with it.”

What is his relationship with Davy Fitzgerald like now?

“I don’t know. I admire him greatly. As a person, player, manager. What happened in 2013 will always be underplayed by some people because Clare didn’t beat Kilkenny or Tipperary, but there were four teams at the All-Ireland semi-final stage with the chance of a lifetime and Davy was the man who grasped it. Every person in Clare should always be grateful to him for that, because winning that All-Ireland and bridging the gap between the team that he played on, that is what progress in a county is.

“Now, I do think this year especially he should have sought out people who would have given him better advice on how to approach matters for 2015. And that doesn’t mean me but maybe people who played with him and would give a contrary view to his own.” Of course Fitzgerald now has someone who isn’t afraid to voice an opinion. Loughnane has got to know Dónal Óg Cusack well from their time on The Sunday Game and is excited by what the year ahead could hold for Clare.

“It would be absolutely terrible if this generation go on to be regarded as just a flash in the pan. It’s a derogatory term which is nearly as bad as being called a choker and will always get thrown at you later on. So with Dónal Óg coming in now with Davy, and with the panel they have and with what they have to prove, they have a real chance to come now and to establish Clare in a hugely strong place in the hierarchy of hurling.”

THE FREEDOM FIGHTER.

Tonight, in a castle fit for lords, a GAA freemasonry of sorts will feast and raise a glass to Ger Loughnane. That Munster Council — the same body he had a notorious running battle with during the eternal summer of ’98 — is now honouring him might be perceived to be only a degree less ironic and outlandish than (inaccurate) reports last week that he was to be nominated to represent Clare on the same provincial council.

But actually tonight’s ceremony makes all the sense in the world. That is what their battle and his entire war campaign was for. That he and his kind be respected, that they be viewed as equals.

His gratitude for tonight’s gesture and the organisation that will be bestowing it largely stems from the flagship competition they run. The Munster championship is something he wants retained — if revamped through a round-robin format — because he was reared on it. He was inspired by it.

“Growing up, the summit of our ambitions was to just play in it. Listening to my father and all the neighbours talking when they’d met at the hay or the bog, none of them ever talked about the All-Ireland.

“The games that were talked about were the 1932 Munster championship win and above all the 1955 Munster final defeat. There’d been such faith in that team after beating both Cork and Tipp and the expectation was that with only a young Limerick team to play in the final, it was their destiny to win it. When they didn’t, it had such a traumatic and devastating effect on the entire psyche of Clare hurling people, one which is hard for anyone outside the county to understand.”

Loughnane was only two in ’55 but even he couldn’t escape the fallout. He could see and feel it everywhere.

“One of our own from Feakle, Diarmuid Sheedy, played in that final. He was a lovely man who gave great service to Clare and to his club, but he was always looked upon as nearly a failure because of ’55.” Yet Clare players were still his heroes. When he started studying and playing in St Flannan’s, the senior county team used train there as well and Loughnane would admiringly watch and study them. Noel Pyne. Pat Vaughan. Naoise Jordan, a terrifically skilful player from Whitegate. In ’67 they reached a Munster final. In ’68 they forced Kilkenny to three games in a league semi-final.

“They were a nearly team as well, and they had a huge influence on me growing up. I only saw them play Munster championship. So you aspired to play like them in the Munster championship.” Loughnane would, for 15 years. But that Munster title would elude him too, and so would playing in Croke Park, outside of a couple of league games against Dublin and Railway Cup games for Munster. In this millennium, Clare have yet to win a Munster championship — “only for the backdoor,” Loughnane points out, “the last 17 years would be considered the worst era in Clare hurling ever” — but they’ve played 13 championship games in Croker. Loughnane had no such consolation.

“The biggest disappointment of that was that I never got to test myself there in a big game, say an All-Ireland semi-final. Whether you won or not, you’d love to have had that opportunity. It’s the loss of that experience rather than anything else that was the worst thing.” Losing out on Munster glory and Croker was hard to stomach but the patronising and hammerings were worse. Inside it fuelled an unforgettable fire.

“Very early on I realised there was a hierarchy in Munster. And the hierarchy was Tipp and Cork. Now, that was reflected in an awful lot of ways. The way Cork travelled to games in these fancy taxis and then we’d come along in these old bangers of cars. When a decision went to Munster Council, you knew Cork and Tipp were dominant because they were dominant on the field as well.

“They’d this thing of coming in after you were beaten by 20 points, ‘Lads, it didn’t run for ye today but ye’ve a lovely little team. Stick together and ye’ll back next year.’ And what they were almost whispering under their breaths was ‘Yeah, ye’ll be back next year so we can beat the living daylights out of ye again.’ So you were inside in that dressing room all the way up along from 17, 18, and you were saying under your own breath, ‘One day I’m going to shove that down your throat! “And it gives me great satisfaction that hierarchy in Munster is now gone. We broke it and then the Waterford team of the 2000s were the ones who really smashed it. It’s gas that we had such a fiery clash in ’98 because they carried on what we started. They didn’t win their All- Ireland but they were the ones who made sure there’d be no returning to the old order in Munster.

“You look at Munster now. You don’t have the officialdom from Tipperary or Cork dominating anymore. You don’t have their teams dominating anymore.”

AFTER THE WAR IS WON.

Five-year-old Harry Loughnane doesn’t know or care that his grandfather was an All-Ireland winning manager. Following in the direct and iconoclastic Loughnane tradition, Harry doesn’t even call the man Granddad.

“He calls me Ger!” Loughnane laughs that hearty laugh.

“And that’s one of the great things about dealing with kids and going around to schools around the country. It’s 17 years since Clare last won a Munster championship. So any young lad under 25 wouldn’t have a clue who you are, except maybe for the television. It’s a reminder that everything moves on, especially time. And it’s great that it does, because you don’t want that hanging over you all your life.” Seeing him as content and as vibrant as he now is, it’s hard to believe that only four years ago, we were so close to losing him, he was so close to losing everything. Loughnane

himself even finds it hard to countenance or recall.

“Whenever you do think about it, the first thing that comes to mind is ‘Was it a nightmare? Did it actually happen?” he chuckles lightly. “You try and put it into a little corner of your mind from which it won’t surface again. Because it [leukaemia] is severe, no question about it. But there are more severe things. There is so much sickness everywhere, cancer is so rampant, and the great bonus about leukaemia is that if you do come through the treatment, there is no medication. You look at all the people who are on medication for their whole lives. So, okay, your future might be a bit uncertain, but whose future is certain?” And so, while he’s alive, he’ll live. With passion.

“Do you know what was the best thing that happened to me after finishing with Clare? And it is the reason that I can nearly look at hurling in a detached way? The following year, my cousin Pat Loughnane out in east Clare asked me would I come out for a day’s hunting. He knew I used to hunt with the harriers when I was a young lad, up to when I was 16, 17, and used to be absolutely stone mad about it. But I’d keep putting him off. ‘No, no, I haven’t hunted in 30 years.’ But he said ‘Look, you’re going to have to come, just to see.’ It wasn’t on a minute when I was addicted to it again.

“People often ask me what’s the appeal. Or they might say ‘Were you hunting on Sunday?’ ‘I was.’ ‘Well, did you catch much?’ But it has nothing to do with catching! You don’t want to catch! And above all, you don’t want to kill. It’s the hunt, it’s the chase, it’s the contest between the hare or the fox and the hounds.

“The hare is so tricky. Everyone says the fox is a clever animal but the hare is a way trickier and much more difficult to hunt than a fox. And the great thing about the hare is that it will always travel in a circular fashion and always come back to where it started out. It’s the most misunderstood sport of all time. People imagine that it’s killing. Now I admit, there are many branches of hunting, and there are branches of it that are downright cruel. But the type of hunting that is done around here in Clare, the aim is not to kill. You do not want to kill the hare. Foxes are different, because they are considered vermin anyway and they have to be controlled. But the contest between the hounds and the hare I find it utterly fascinating and I’m as addicted to it as I ever was to hurling.”

Sometime next week, he’ll return to the fields with the dogs, but before then, on Monday, there’ll be a civic reception hosted by Clare County Council to attend with some old comrades. It was 20 years ago this year Clare made their breakthrough of breakthroughs.

Ten years ago when Denis Walsh wrote The Revolution Years, Ollie Baker remarked about his manager, his driver, his tormentor.

“We wouldn’t see much of him. He leads his own life now. I have the height of respect for the man and for what he did, but I don’t think he ever wanted any of us to be his friends afterwards. There’d be mutual respect I’d hope. I would hope he would have the same respect for me as I would have for him but I don’t think he would ever yearn my friendship. He was our manager, our teacher, our leader, so he didn’t need our friendship. It was never going to happen.”

So, a further 10 years on, how does that manager, teacher, leader view them? Loughnane smiles. Yeah, Ollie was right in what he said. He didn’t need or seek their friendship but how they have his respect.

The famous bunch of bachelors of ’95 are nearly all to a man fathers now, but it’s what else they became that the daddy of them all basks in.

“People seem to be obsessed with this notion of grudges or me not getting on with some of the fellas on that Clare team,” he smiles. “I have no problem with any of them. If one of them had a problem with me and something I said, I’d still have no problem with them!

“What I would say is that when I was a manager, it wasn’t a social club! There are players that played together and they don’t get on that well together. You take the current manager. He doesn’t go to many functions or get-togethers with them but that didn’t mean he didn’t give his very best to Clare when he played for the team — and all the fellas around him. He did.

“But the way I would look at all those fellas now is that my admiration for them now is even greater than it was at the time. You see more clearly what they achieved in a county that was so pessimistic.

“They transformed how people outside Clare perceived Clare and how people within Clare perceived themselves.

“I was listening to [Alex] Ferguson the other night and he said that what made the class of ’92 wasn’t just that they were top players but that they were great human beings. And I immediately thought that applied to the men of ’95. The way they’ve carried themselves and the contribution they’ve all made to hurling since, often in an understated way, in their own clubs, as either managers or officials. There’s great satisfaction in that. Or just to see them doing well in everything they pursue.”

One final thought he leaves you with before leaving ’95 and braving the storm outside. There was a radio documentary this year to mark the anniversary and in it Cyril Lyons remarked that the greatest thrill wasn’t Thurles or Croker and the pitch invasions.

“It was being in Cusack Park.” In sunshine. On maybe one of those famous 7am Saturday morning sessions. Hurling. Alone. Together. With it all in front of them though a clear picture in view.

They could see the kill but the thrill was in the hunt, the chase.

He still has more to hunt and chase.