Anthony Daly: Martin Flanagan was the soundest fella you could ever meet. He was great to me

Anthony Daly pays tribute to former Clare GAA groundsman Martin Flanagan, who passed away this week

Tue, 23 Mar, 2021 - 17:50

Before Dublin played Clare in the 2012 All-Ireland qualifiers in Ennis, I knew I was facing into an emotive tornado. And I walked straight into the teeth of it.

We based ourselves in the Temple Gate Hotel, right in the middle of Ennis, which rests on the site of a 19th-century Convent of Mercy. When my father played in the 1949 county final, the teams togged off in the Convent before being marched up side by side to Cusack Park.

That was something I wanted to invoke, but I emptied everything out of my locker that day, because I was facing down my own people. When we spoke in the Temple Gate beforehand, I told the players that my long-dead father had graced the same place before a big game, he had made the same journey that we were going to make now. We were going to march up through the town, through my own people.

I led the posse. I was charged up on a cocktail of emotion and tension. When I entered Cusack Park, the first person I saw was Martin Flanagan, the then groundsman in Cusack Park. I just nodded at him. He nodded back. Martin told me afterwards that the hairs stood on the back of his neck when he saw me leading the Dublin lads in the gate.

When I spoke about taking on my own people, it was someone like Martin that was in my heart – a guy who loved Clare hurling with every fibre of his being, someone who had done everything he could to help me when I was a Clare player and manager. That was the emotional bind I was in that evening. Martin knew my job was to try and break Clare hearts but that simple nod still encapsulated the massive respect and empathy between us.

Martin was almost the gauge for my emotional scale that day but I always found him a brilliant barometer of how things were in the Clare camp when I was a player. He’d be the first person I’d meet when I’d arrive into training in Cusack Park.

‘Well, what kind of form is your man (Ger Loughnane) in?’

‘Not great,’ Martin might reply. ‘Keep your head down tonight.’

If we were training in Crusheen, I’d ask the same question about Mike Mac: ‘Leave the hurley in the boot Dalo,’ Martin would often say. ‘I’d say yere going to get walloped with a load of laps.’

He could read the temperature of the mood in every way possible, so much so that I always found Martin’s advice solid and right on the money. I remember taking his lead once when addressing the players before a training session during the crazy 1998 season, when all hell was breaking loose around us.

‘Ground them Dalo,’ he said to me before training. ‘This stuff has to be playing with some of the lads’ heads.’

Martin was a real gentleman, the soundest fella you could ever meet. He was great to me when I came onto the panel as a young player and I also saw that with the younger players later in my career, and throughout my time as Clare manager.

He was a great judge of hurling too. In other ways, he was as good as a sports psychologist. Martin might sidle over to you after a training game in the Park, when your tongue would be hanging out. ‘You’re going well,’ Martin might say.

He just bled goodness and honesty. Long before inter-county set-ups had logistics officers and teams of kit-men, Martin was doing all that in his own honest-to-goodness way. I remember before the 2005 All-Ireland semi-final against Cork, Martin collected all the players gear himself before storing it in Cusack Park. Then Martin and John O’Sullivan loaded it up in the team-bus that morning before driving to the game on their own.

He was one of these guys who never wanted to be around the set-up just for the sake of it, but his honesty took him there. More importantly from a players and management point of view, you felt better when Martin was around. He was one in a million. A gem. Martin Flanagan will be sorely missed by all Clare supporters who knew him, or knew off him.