Shouldering greatness
For years now the quiet man has been back in the quiet fields, working away and coaching quietly and diligently, but still his name echoes with reverence and relevance through the country down to this generation.
Last month Seanie McMahon received a phone call from a fellow member of the elite freetakers’ union and babyface-killer club. Cillian O’Connor was the owner of the most famous shoulder in Ireland and was aware from reading Ger Loughnane’s biography that once upon a time McMahon had been as well. To O’Connor, McMahon was “a legend” and much of that legend was born from how he managed to strap up to play in the Munster final of 1995.
It’s not surprising given their similar grounded, steely disposition that the pair of them hit it off, chatting about preparing for the big games, with our without the shoulder strapped up. McMahon told him about the day before the 1995 All-Ireland final, he decided to get out of the house and kill some time by driving through some of the heartland of Clare hurling. Clarecastle and Newmarket-on-Fergus were both aflush with bunting and flags and the sight prompted a surge of pride and energy to rise through McMahon which he would transmit onto Croke Park the following day.
“It wasn’t like I stopped off for a litre of milk or walked down the middle of the town but it was great just to experience that colour. The point I was making to Cillian was you don’t need to be shutting yourself off in a room hiding away from everyone, you can enjoy it, as long as you remember what the most important thing is – the game itself, those four lines and everything that happens inside it.”
They also talked about how McMahon went on to play having broken his collarbone in the previous game. And as it turns out he may well not have been back only for someone who will be again on the line for Cork today, one Dr Con Murphy.
We all know about how McMahon broke his collarbone when Clare had already used up all their subs in the 1995 Munster semi-final against Cork; how he refused to go off, epitomising a new grit in Clare hurling; went up to corner-forward; and made enough of a nuisance to occupy Timmy Kelleher that he won the sideline ball which Fergie Tuohy would cut into the square and Ollie Baker would bat to the net in injury-time to give Clare a one-point win.
What isn’t so well known is how Murphy helped the team and man who had just beaten his own.
The first time McMahon came across him was in the medical room after that game when he confirmed Clare’s Doc Quinn’s diagnosis that McMahon had indeed broken his collarbone. A month later they’d meet again in Murphy’s office in Cork.
“When I got injured I remember Doc Quinn saying it would be roughly five weeks for it to heal so when I heard that I made up my mind I was going to be back. As I told Cillian, once I heard that I never doubted that I’d be back. But when I went back training the Tuesday before the Munster final I hit an awful lot of ball and it was very sore. I was really down about that and thought there was no way I could be fit enough. Loughnane could sense that so he sent me to Cork to Con on the Thursday for the fitness test.”
What did Con have him do? McMahon laughs softly. “Very little! He looked at the shoulder, had me do a few press-ups and he brushed off me a couple of times and that was basically it. It wasn’t the most strenuous of tests! I’d say Loughnane probably told him that’s all I needed, a bit of reassurance, that it was all in my head.”
McMahon would shine for Clare that day against Limerick, helping them to their first Munster title in 63 years. Two months later he’d help them win their first All-Ireland in 81 years. If a proper hit had come in on that shoulder against Limerick he could have struggled but he didn’t and the adrenaline got him through.
But ten days out from the All-Ireland semi-final against Galway, John Chaplin was coming through the middle in training and McMahon met him with a shoulder. “Loughnane said to me afterwards, ‘Now you know your shoulder’s right.’ And I did. I needed that belt.”
Just to finish up on the collarbone story. It’s now part of folklore, how the Clare medical team taped up his other shoulder so the Limerick boys were barking up the wrong tree and belting off the wrong one. Ask McMahon though and he can’t recall or verify if they did. “It was mentioned alright but I’m not sure if we wrapped either or both of them or what.”
Then he pauses. If in doubt, leave it out and just leave the legend as it is. Why mess with folklore when the same day prompted history?
For McMahon it was only fitting that Anthony Daly was the one who lifted the cup. He was a man after Kipling’s own heart, who could converse with kings and the common man just as easily as the other.
McMahon remembers the first day he set foot into the team dressing room in Crusheen with his hurley. “I pulled my jumper over my head and nearly wanted to leave it leave there. I didn’t know anyone and half-felt I shouldn’t even have been there. But then Daly quipped, ‘Jesus, young McMahon, you won’t be needing that hurley for a long time here!’”
From that moment on, he was laughing with them, one of them.
Loughnane was obviously the other leader in a group of leaders. McMahon’s certain he wouldn’t have been in Crusheen that night or playing in and winning that 1995 Munster final only for that man. In the previous two Munster finals Clare had surrendered and subsequently been destroyed by Tipp and Limerick.
“The theme Loughnane had going into the ’95 Munster final was ‘No surrender’. You can’t say ‘Lads, we’re going to win today.’ You might get an unlucky break [like a referee blowing up a game early], something you can’t control. But the one thing you can control is that you are going to fight to the bitter end. Come what may, there was going to be no giving up. And the other thing we had going into that game was that we had trained like dogs. When you can say to yourself there’s no more you could have done, that I’ve done more work than the man I’m marking, a huge self-confidence comes from that.”
Loughnane was the other huge source of belief. We all know now that McMahon went on to become probably the best centre-back to ever play the game. What we all tend to forget is the roasting he got in the 1994 Munster final when he was taken for seven points from play.
McMahon himself has to be given credit for how he continued to believe in himself after that scorching. He had done reasonably okay in the first half playing at centre-back, keeping Gary Kirby to two points. Then at half-time he was moved on to Mike Galligan on the wing. He didn’t have the legs for it. Nor the aggression.
After that he realised for sure he was a centre-back, not a wing-back, and he needed to become a quicker and meaner one to survive at the top level. Above all he needed a coach who would give him another chance, who wouldn’t give up on him.
“I’ll always appreciate the great faith Ger showed in me, right from the start. Even when he was over the U21s in ’92 and he was famously sacked after we were beaten by Waterford in the Munster final, he called me up that year when I was only 19. I was doing my Leaving Cert and told him I couldn’t come in but he said ‘That’s fine; if we make the Munster final I’ll call you back.’ This now when I was just a year out of minor – and I’d only played the one year at minor; it wasn’t like I was a star.
“Then I was called into the senior panel at the end of ’93 when he was a selector to Len [Gaynor]. I’d say there were a lot of people wondering who’s this fella McMahon and I would have felt again that [trust in him] came more from Ger than Len. And after the ’94 Munster final, if ever there was a candidate to be told never to come back, it was me. But again Ger showed great faith in me and I ended up playing another 12 years for Clare after that.”
If Loughnane had his way, it would have been a year shorter; in 2006 he would publicly state that McMahon as well as Brian Lohan had stayed on too long, a charge each would give their own dignified answer to with their respective displays when Clare pushed Kilkenny to the limit in that year’s All Ireland semi-final.
“I don’t regret when I gave it up,” says McMahon. “I didn’t give it up too early and I didn’t stay on too long. It was just the right time to go.”
He’s just as much at peace these days with Loughnane as with that decision to finish up when he did. McMahon was always fine with Loughnane but quite a few of his team-mates had a strained relationship with their old mentor because of how brutal some of Loughnane’s commentary could be in the half dozen years following his own decision to finish up with Clare. Maybe the health scare mellowed him. The years have mellowed them all.
“At most one or two lads might still have an issue with him. By and large the relationship we all have with Ger is very, very good, as good as it ever was.”
There’s an appreciation what he did for them, just as there’s an appreciation for what they did with and for each other.
They still meet up about once a year for a round of golf. There’s no cliques, only friends forever. McMahon has known someone like Brian Lohan since they hurled Fitzgibbon for UL together over 20 years ago now.
It’s been a few years since they last had a coffee or even a chat on the phone but they would still consider themselves close friends. Invariably they bump into each other, just like they did outside Croker after last month’s semi-final win over Limerick.
Some of the others McMahon arranges to meet. Four years ago himself, Jamesie O’Connor, Brian Quinn and Jim McInerney were approached by Sean O’Halloran to further improve Clare’s underage development structure. As is his modest way, McMahon is keen to stress O’Halloran’s role and downplay his own but all the same it involves quite a few meetings and quite a lot of work, especially when you’ve three kids.
One of the pivotal meetings they had was when Pat Henderson and Brendan O’Sullivan from Kilkenny kindly agreed to come up to Thurles to talk to them. In Kilkenny they had gone the route of providing a better calibre of club player. Improve the calibre of club player and indirectly you’d get a better calibre of county player.
That meant spreading the net. Traditionally a county like Clare would have picked a panel for the Tony Forristal U14 tournament like they would a minor panel preparing for a Munster championship. You’d pick 25 to 30 players, train them and the best 15 would start. Invariably that 15 would often be the minor team four years later. Clare work in a different way now.
Every club is asked to send three to six kids that they feel has the real interest and potential to be a good hurler, meaning about 115 kids aged 14 or under will be called in for six sessions each through the months of February, March and April. After that about 25 of them will be picked for the Tony Forristal and another 25 for another tournament, with the other 60 or so still having benefited from the coaching and aspiring to be back for the U15 sessions the year after. At U15 there’s still over 100 of them being coached; at U16 about 60.
All of those squads have coaches working from a booklet of drills and skills drawn up by McMahon’s task group. The real heroes though, he stresses, are the clubs and their coaches. Up to 30 of them work with these development squads. And outside those 30 coaches are legions of other mentors who’ve produced the players that are thrilling the county and country right now.
“At the end of the day we’re only the facilitators here. The real improvement in Clare has come from the clubs. You look at the Tony Kellys and Conor McGraths and Darach Honans. The development squad might give the player that extra five or ten percent, but it’s the clubs that have helped him come with the other 90 percent in the first place.”
He’s a club coach himself. Since he finished up playing with the club in 2010, he’s been looking after the Doora-Barefield U16s, a coachable bunch who just want to hurl. His own kids are learning the game too; Darragh’s 10 now, Eoin almost eight, and Cathal just gone six, and occasionally their dad will give their mentors a hand out if they’re down someone.
In all, he remains his calm, contented, fresh-faced self. He has no regrets from his playing career, wishing he had done this or being tormented that they didn’t win that. It was glorious as it was, which is why he’s being inducted this week into his old alma mater, UL’s new Hall of Fame.
“I’ve often said it – anyone who plays sport will know there are games you win that you shouldn’t win and games you lose that you shouldn’t lose. Take 2001 when we played Tipp. I’ve always had great respect for Dickie Murphy as a ref, always did but I felt there were a couple of frees against Lohan that day that were no frees. They turned the game. We lost that game by a point and were finished for the year after one game.
“But did Dickie Murphy go out to do Clare? He absolutely did not. He reffed the 1995 All-Ireland final when we beat Offaly. We got the breaks that day. In ’98 I’d safely say we were the best team in the country that year but Offaly got the break that year. In ’97 we were better than Tipp but if John Leahy buries that goal, we lose, but he didn’t score, we got the break and won.”
That’s why he had no qualm with Brian Gavin three weeks ago and feels no one should either. Both teams and supporters should almost feel fortunate to be back.
“I thought our lads played very well the last day. It’s not that Cork played badly. I mean, Limerick played poorly [against Clare]; Cork didn’t. Now, I think Cork will be better on Saturday but I think it’ll have brought on our lads as well. Maybe we won’t score 25 points again but I’d be confident we won’t concede three goals either. I don’t have any feeling that the boat has been missed. Our lads have shown they love being up there, that they love the big occasion, and I think they’ll love it again.”
Just like he did.
