Take a look through my eyes

A HEADLESS chicken. A loose cannon. A waste of space. Hare-brained. Gormless. How easy it is to find the cruel word, to shout it out from the crowd at your favourite target as he perhaps stumbles over a ball, or is beaten yet again by his opposite number.

Over the 10 years he’s been with the Limerick senior panel — or the many years more with his club, Garryspillane — Donie Ryan has heard them all, on and off the park.

Donie’s one of those players, on your team or on the opposition, you just can’t help noticing.

The reason? Simple — he’s everywhere.

He’ll run and run from first whistle to last in every game he plays, will look to be in the thick of every action, will fight you, your father and every twig, root and branch of your family tree, just to win that ball. And so he gets abuse. Unthinking abuse, hurtful and personal, hurled with pleasure.

Fair? Take a brief look at the journey Donie Ryan has taken this year through his own eyes. Let’s hear what Donie Ryan thinks of Donie Ryan.

First, there’s the family: “There’s my father, Dan, and he’s some man hi (hi is an expression he uses); he retired this year and I took over the farm. My mother, Esther — only for her, I wouldn’t be in Croke Park on Sunday.

“Dinner is ready for me every evening when I come home. She takes the gear out of the bag and washes and irons it. If she thought I wasn’t looking right she wouldn’t let me outside the door — then I go on the field and make a show of her! Hopefully one of these days I’ll make it up to her. I have two sisters — Martina, the eldest in the family is married to a Corkman and living in Kilbehenny, and Jackie is the youngest in the family, and definitely the most popular! She’s going out with a Corkman as well, from Kilworth.”

Then the brothers, TJ and David.

“This is a fact: there are fellas up the road here who don’t rate me as a hurler, and they’d tell me straight to my face — you’re not good enough to be on the Limerick team. I’ll say it myself, there are three brothers of us, I’m the third best, and that’s a fact.

“Davy Ryan was the best man never to play county hurling for Limerick. A couple of league matches alright, but he was always blackguarded. Davy Ryan would ate me as a hurler. In the county final (Garryspillane won their first senior title two years ago), frees — 140 yards out and he’s capable of putting them over. He’d ate me as a hurler; the only thing against him, I’d be a small bit bolder and you need that for inter-county.

“Davy was a complete hurler who’d play ball all day long. He needed a mean streak and he didn’t have it.

“TJ? I’d say the opposite to what I’ve said about Davy — TJ was one of the best hurlers never to win an All-Ireland. He had it all, and could play in any position. And did, for Limerick.

“He could hurl with you if you wanted to hurl, he could rough it if you wanted to play it like that. He could defend, he could score. He’s 33 this year, still young enough to be there, and what an impact sub he’d be now! Imagine him warming up on the line to come in on Sunday, covering every position! He’s out of it now, and I think he’s happy. Definitely he’s behind us 100%, but no-one ever deserved an All-Ireland medal more than him.

“Now there’s a 50/50 chance I could win one — I’m playing for the two of us, for the three of us. He came down the morning after we beat Waterford, said to me, ‘I have two All-Ireland loser’s medals (from ‘94 and ‘96) — we don’t want a third one in this house.’ And I don’t.”

It’s a hurling house, the Ryan home in Knocklong, a house where every floorboard, joist and rafter has echoed to the tales of hurling jousts with club and county.

But what of Donie himself? Let’s start with the basics.

“I’ll tell you the round of my day. I get up around six, maybe quarter to seven on the morning after training. I bring in the cows, have them milked for quarter to eight, come in and have a bowl of corn-flakes, my mug of tay, and off to work.

“I work for a local man here, Dominic Ryan. I could be doing anything — slabbing houses, scaffolding, kerb-laying, but usually I’m on the track-machine. I’m home at half five, the cows might be in the yard already and if they’re not, I’ll bring them in and start the milking. If it’s a training night Jackie will bring my dinner out to me and I’ll eat it as I’m milking.

“About half six Davy will arrive — ‘go on’, he’ll say, ‘get to training’, and he’ll finish off the cows. And if it’s a Sunday, a match, he’d never make me rush home, he’ll take over for me. Like, I went off to the Waterford and Clare matches, was gone on Saturday, not back until Monday morning — the cows still had to be milked on Saturday evening, Sunday morning and evening, and that was Davy. I wouldn’t be able to do this without him.”

Let’s recap. This guy, the man people love to abuse on the hurling field, works two jobs a day, two physical jobs, before he even goes to training. What’s all this we hear about pampered players? How does he manage such a demanding schedule? Truth is, he almost didn’t.

“We started training the 15th of November last year and I’ll tell you the truth, I had more interest in cutting my throat than I had in going into Limerick.

“I had always said to myself, when the 1st of January came, I’d knuckle down. They trained anyway up to Christmas, trained again the morning after St Stephen’s morning; I was 30 last St Stephen’s Day, and I told them I wasn’t interested, but from the first of January on I’d give it 100%, see what happens. I didn’t go training over Christmas — it wasn’t even training as such, it was a test, but I didn’t make the test.

“That didn’t go down well, obviously, and I’ll be straight out about it, up ‘til about one month ago the boys (management team) did not like me — they did not like me. I couldn’t get into the good books, not in the picture and that was it — a lot of that my own fault, don’t get me wrong. I trained away alright after the start of the year, and in fairness I’d be a good man to train — I’m some man to act the b****x as well, but I do turn it in. But every fella is different.

“Anyway, we played a few rounds of the league, I wasn’t on, not enough training done, which was fair enough. It came to the Dublin league match and there I was, started on 13. There had been a big emphasis put on doing well in the league, I went out — I was absolutely useless, to the world’s end, taken off at half-time and played no other part in the league. It came on then to the relegation game against Offaly and they put me on at half time, and I played well at midfield.

“That was it then for a while, trained away for the championship, but I was seriously on the fringes. The work was very intense as well, the farming especially with calving season, and I struggled to keep pace with it all. My training suffered, my hurling suffered.

“In the championship, they played me against Tipperary the first day, I caught the ball three times and it was more talked about than the Damien Reale sending-off. Fellas were saying to me, why didn’t you throw it out, why didn’t you this, why didn’t you that — I said to them, it isn’t as if you have five minutes to make up your mind! I thought I was doing the right thing, it was completely the wrong thing as it turned out.

“I came on again in the replay, in Thurles — I was not good, useless, to be honest. I played no part at all in the third match and I’d safely say that day inside the Gaelic Grounds, I was number 30 on the panel, the last man on the bench. Came to the Munster final and I was dead, no hope of playing any part in it.

“There are two men on this team I have to thank for being where I am now — Mike O’Brien and Damien Reale. We meet here in my yard every evening at half six, and the three of us travel out together — if you see one of us, you’re nearly guaranteed to see the other two shortly afterwards, or there’s something wrong.

“I went in to training several nights going to pull the pin — I said to myself, this is it, ‘I can’t keep it going.’ They coaxed me, they talked to me, they did everything. They collected me here at the door, they’d even come in and get my gear for me, and always they were saying to me — the wheel will turn. I could never see it, but now look at it!”

Now look at it; in the All-Ireland quarter-final Donie, came on against Clare in the 27th minute of the first-half, scored 1-2 from play; to the surprise of many, he was then started against Waterford in the All-Ireland semi-final — to even greater surprise, he was again on the scoresheet in a big way, two goals from play, each at a critical time, at the start of each half.

The change, when it came, was inspired by a phone call.

“Eight o’clock on the Monday morning after the Munster final, Dave Moriarty (team trainer) rang me, talking about the match, everything else. ‘Dave’, I said, ‘what do I have to do to get into this team?’ I felt there was an opening, the forwards weren’t as good in the Munster final as they could have been.

“He told me the plan; three weeks, he said, we have four training matches: 15 on 15, two or three training-sessions in between — the first thing I had to do was pick up on my work-rate. Take the bull by the horns, put it in, in every training session, everything.

“I swear to God, and any of the lads will back me up — you think Shaughs is going well now? You should have seen me in those four matches! Those two weeks, I was absolutely eating road. I was driving in with the two boys (Mike O’Brien and Damien Reale) and they were telling me, you have to start against Clare, in the quarter-final.

“The team was announced, I wasn’t on. I was never as sick in my life, but they came up to me and told me, I was first man in. It was no good to me at the time but look what’s happened since?”

Look what’s happened since, but also look at what’s happened before, look at what Donie Ryan has done to be in Croke Park on Sunday. Surely, by now, he has your respect? Surely?