May Day has passed and D-Day is looming
Five weeks! Not so chronic if you were hurling for Sixmilebridge, Feakle or Éire Óg Ennis etc but a disaster for the lads in the smaller clubs. We were brought back together for a tournament in Westmeath, to play for the ‘Harry’s of Kinnegad’ Trophy. We beat Westmeath on the Saturday and the final was fixed for the following day against Antrim. Nobody was supposed to go out that night. That was the plan anyway.
The local club put up the teams. Myself and the other three Clarecastle lads were staying in houses near each other. We had no interest the Late Late show and Gaybo so we took off for two or three jars to gently pass the night away. We wound up at a Beach Party disco in Mullingar.
We thought we were the only Clare fellas with the devilment to pull that stunt but I spotted a couple of the younger lads – well I was probably the youngest in the squad - in the queue ahead of us. One of them, Finbarr Carrig (a good character) from Shannon put his finger up to his lips. ‘Sshh,’ he said. There was no need to keep it quiet. When we got inside, there were about ten more Clare fellas going around chasing beach balls.
It was no wonder Clare got leathered in that year’s championship by Waterford. We had about six fellas on the panel who worked in De Beers in Shannon, the industrial diamond manufacturers. There was a massive hurling culture in De Beers and the GAA club in the factory went off on a three-week ‘World Tour’ in the middle of May. Lads came back to training afterwards and were hardly able to breathe, never mind train.
I was bulling I didn’t get a run that year against Waterford. John Hanley, my former school principal, was a selector and he wanted to protect me while the team were enduring an 18-point hiding.
I remember Fr Michael McNamara, God rest his soul, saying in the dressing-room afterwards, ‘The Phoenix will rise again.’ It was hard to see a pigeon rising on a Monday morning on O’Connell Street at that moment in my life. We got another hiding from Limerick the following year in 1990. Len Gaynor completely changed the mentality when he came after that year’s championship but we were so far behind that it took us years to catch up. I remember before the 1993 championship, The ‘Sparrow’ got dropped.
He got a letter from Len telling him his services were no longer required. Sparrow said to me that he couldn’t have cared less but he clearly didn’t mean it. He subsequently went on a scoring rampage in club league games.
I was only captain a year at this stage but I plucked up the courage and approached Gaynor. “Sparrow’s on fire,” I said. “He’s wrecking every back in the county.” Clarecastle had a club league game that Saturday night. Gaynor was there. ‘Sparrow’ cut loose again. Gaynor asked him back on the panel. Sparrow was humming and hawing about the prospect. He said he would go back on his own terms.
Sparrow didn’t start in the first round of the championship against Limerick but he was on after five minutes when Alan Neville dislocated his shoulder. He hit 1-5 from play. Limerick tried two or three different fellas on Sparrow but he saw them all off. The rest is history ( Phoenix and all that).
It seems crazy to think now that the clubs would have access to their county players for five weeks after the league. A county manager would get a stroke now if his team was asked to play a weekend tournament. It would be almost unimaginable for a player to score 1-5 from play after being out of the panel leading into the championship but that was a different time and the players, and how we operated, were of that era.
We did things differently back then but I still always loved this time of the year. I always regarded May Day as the key cut-off point, a severance between what had gone before and what was about to come, of what was expected during the spring, but what was demanded and required over the summer.
Once May 1st arrived, you wouldn’t be seen in the village, a bag of chips was a no go and even my mother was so tuned in she would turn off the telly and, like ten years earlier, say ‘Bed’.
You might not be playing until early June but I wanted to be at my fighting weight of 12.5 stone as soon as spring segued into summer. Once I’d hit that target, I’d focus more then on sharpening my hurling. I’d go to the handball alleys in St Flannan’s or do an extra bit in Clarecastle.
My social focus would change too. I’d had to talk to people when I was working in the bank but I’d limit the hurling talk. My concentration would mainly hone in on the fella I was expecting to be marking. Back then, unlike now, you’d nearly know as soon as the draw was made who’d be lining up in your corner. You’d nearly see him in the morning when you got up.
Gaynor was practising sports psychology long before any of us knew what the term meant. ‘Hop out of the bed in the morning completely positive,’ he would tell us. ‘When you’re shaving yourself, look in the mirror and say to yourself, ‘I’m jumping out of my skin, I’m ready to go.’
Our preparation went to another level when Ger Loughnane took over. We often trained 26 times in 31 days during May. There was no room for messing in that environment but my preparation going into the 1998 campaign was scandalous. We lost the All-Ireland club semi-final, heartbreakingly, to Birr after extra-time and I went to the Canaries with the Clarecastle lads that March. I didn’t really spare myself out there. When I came back and Loughnane took one look at the state of me, he put me on the Nutron Diet. I’d be going into the Sherwood Inn for the dinner after training and all I could have was a piece of chicken and some vegetables. The other lads would be eating steak and chips.
Our kit-man, Pa Casey, God be good to him, was on the Nutron diet as well. Pa paid no heed to it – he’d be getting stuck into a big feed of Scampi and chips. I was often tempted to join Pa and ditch the diet but I held tough. The weight fell off me that summer. I was fading away by the end of of the summer but I hurled one of my best years ever.
As the years evolve, your preparation evolves with that change. And so does your life. When I became manager of Clare and Dublin, I gradually saw how much being an inter-county player demanded of players’ lives, of the massive lifestyle choice players had to make to live, and compete, in that world.
Living the life of an elite county player is becoming more demanding with each season but the strain is always easier to deal with this time of the year. I always loved the eve of the championship. The grass is cut short again. The ball is hopping off the ground like golf balls slamming against concrete. Managers are sweating over players’ fitness because May Day has passed and D-Day is looming. You miss that involvement but you’re still immersed in the whole buzz, albeit under far different pressure, as a pundit trying to answer the riddle to the great big puzzle.
The challenge is always the juice and the juice has been flowing now for nearly 30 years, since I first joined the Clare panel. Different times, leaner times, but great times, and great memories. I still have the ‘Harry’s of Kinnegad’ winners plaque somewhere in the house. God only knows how we won the final - maybe the trip to the beach bonded us...
