McEntee faces up to final battle

WITH just 20 miles separating the two towns there was bound to be some common denominator between Portumna and Birr, the two protagonists in Monday’s All-Ireland senior hurling club final in Croke Park, and there is.

Two years ago Eugene McEntee captained the Galway champions as the club won its first national title; four years ago, 2004, Eugene’s uncle Mick Salmon was a selector on the Birr side that won its fourth All-Ireland crown. According to Eugene, the pair are well familiar with each other. “Mick is a farmer, retired now; he hurled half-back for Offaly, hurled with Birr as well but that was 30 or 40 years ago. I went over there a lot as a youngster giving him a hand cutting the hay and all that and he’d take me to all the matches. He’s dead-on, we’d always have the bit of banter.”

They have something else in common, these two; in recent years, both have had to battle adversity, both have won the fight. Eugene: “Mick is a lucky man to be alive today; a few years ago he got a fright, gangrene in the arm. I don’t know what it was, a bit of a dart in the hand that went back along his arm, but they were giving him test after test; first he was supposed to lose all the arm, then it was just from the elbow down, then just the hand, then the fingers, but he fought it all the way. Eventually he went from the worst scenario to the best and now he has the full use of the whole arm again.” And Eugene’s own story?

“I have six screws in a plate in my back, a hurling injury. I was still a minor, playing a match one summer’s evening, went up for a high ball, caught it, went out over a lad’s shoulder and came down on my neck. The two legs went numb, I had no feeling; got a few prods (injections) to get the feeling back but it was some pain — I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. For six months I couldn’t even bend over to wash my own face and hands. It seemed to ease off when I was about 18/19, I was on the Galway U-21 team, but it hit again — typical of my luck, that was the year they won the All-Ireland! Between U-14, U-16, minor and U-21 I lost seven All-Ireland finals with Galway, didn’t think I’d ever win one — then came 2006 and the club final, made up for it all.” But, what had happened to allow him play in that club final success? “In 2000 I finally had the operation done, in Blackrock, by Dr Frank Downing — I had to get it done. I was told I’d never play hurling again, that all contact sport was out. It was a decision I had to make myself. My recovery was supposed to take a year but I did it in six months — age was on my side and from training with the club, working with my father (they have a family butcher shop in Portumna, and their own abattoir), I was super fit. The first few months I couldn’t even go up the stairs, my parents set up a bedroom downstairs for me; tracksuits, couldn’t put on clothes. I’d go for a walk in the morning, go for a swim in the Shannon Oaks Hotel after, home and rest, back in the afternoon for another walk, another swim, the same again in the evening — three times a day, seven days a week, but I did it. After three months I went back for tests, I was on this machine and I was driving through everything — ‘We might just up it a bit,’ the physio said, a Kerry woman, lovely woman. They brought me back again at four months, five months, then six months, and I was hitting every target, felt super. I’ll never forget that last meeting; six months after the operation, after being told I’d never play contact sport again — a hard thing for any young lad to take — Dr Frank told me, ‘I have good news and bad news.’ ‘Okay, what’s the bad news?’ – ‘You can go back to work immediately.’ That delighted my father more than it did me! ‘And the good news?’ ‘You can go back hurling!’ It was unbelievable.”

A bit of a sporting fanatic, Eugene didn’t just go back hurling, he went back to his other love, rugby, and again, a Birr connection. “Damien Quigley and myself played rugby over there with them for about two or three years when I was about 14 or 15. I got to know all the Whelahans and those and if I’m passing through there now I’d stop and have an oul’ chat with them. Whelahan’s is a good pub, we’d designate a non-drinking driver and go in and have one or two. Ah they’re a good ould crowd, there was never any kind of animosity towards Portumna. I played in the pack with Birr, wing-forward or number eight; then I started playing full-back with the local club here, as do five or six of the other lads on the panel, although it’s been curtailed for the last few years because of the success in the hurling. I’d be a bit fearless maybe, I wouldn’t be half the size of a lot of the lads I was up against but I’d stand back from nothing (at just under six foot, just under muscle-packed 13 stone, he’s not small either!). No fear, I think that’s the way you should be in any sport, carry on regardless. You should take anything that comes at you and if you do get injured, and if you can’t deal with it on the pitch, come off, take your punishment. But it’s important to have the mind right. Even if you go into a game with an injury you have to get the mind better than it because if you go out trying to protect it, worrying about it, you’re gone backwards instead of forwards.” That’s how he talks, Eugene McEntee, that’s how he walks. In the semi-final, against Tipp and Munster champions Loughmore-Castleiney, he was up against big Micheál Webster, star of club and county — didn’t faze him a whit. “Everyone was asking me, ‘How are you going to manage him?’ but I had my own game plan and once that worked (and it did, Eugene won that battle comprehensively), how was he going to manage me after that? That would be my attitude all the time.”

For Monday, Eugene hasn’t had the luxury of planning, simply because he has no idea who he’s going to be marking. “Four different men they had at full-forward the last day! Padjoe (Whelahan, Birr manager) is deadly, he’s fierce tactical, he’ll change the team around, have lads in different positions for every game. You have to admire him, he’s the finest, wears his heart on his sleeve. He might be saying one thing to lads but at the back of his head he knows exactly what’s going to happen. You can’t take anything from what he has achieved in club hurling, there’s no man in Ireland to touch him. He’ll have Birr right, they hurl together as a unit, a very hard team to beat.” Up against it, but then when has it been any different, for Eugene McEntee?