Fahy out to put Portumna’s ‘champagne hurling’ on ice

OLLIE FAHY, remember him? The former Galway senior forward is now 33 and off the inter-county scene for a few years but is still going strong with his club.

Tomorrow in Pearse Stadium he takes up his new position of full-forward as Gort attempt to do what they haven’t done since 1983 and what they’ve only managed to do five times in their long history — win the Galway SHC title.

To do so, Gort face an almighty challenge — they will have to topple reigning Galway, Connacht and All-Ireland champions, Portumna. Daunting? You could say that.

“They’re a phenomenal team,” says Fahy with admiration. “They’ve been coming for a while with a good underage structure and eventually they made the breakthrough and were young enough to sustain it. Their game is impressive with movement off the ball — champagne hurling, that’s what it is.

“And they have Joe Canning. I remember the first time I came across him. He was about 16 or maybe younger, I’d say it was his first senior championship game, against Gort. He scored a few goals that day and I remember I shook his hand afterwards and I knew then — he was going to be good, very good.

“He’s by far the best player to come out of Galway since Joe Cooney, and might even be better, in time. Every game, no matter what, he’s scoring.

“The semi-final against us three years ago, when he was only 16, he scored from everywhere, he put over a couple of line balls from over 60 yards. Back when I was playing inter-county you wouldn’t see that, you wouldn’t dream of it — you’d put the ball over the line that far out and you’d think you were safe. H

“He’s a phenomenal hurler — you can have all the plans you like on how to mark him but the only plan is to keep the ball away from him.”

What about the kind of option you see only too often at club level, taking him out physically? Not on, says Fahy. “Gort is a hurling team, not a dirty team. We’re a real championship side. We mightn’t do so well in challenges but come the big day, the championship day, and we’re hard to beat. Unfortunately we always seem to come up just short against the really good teams, but we’re not dirty. Tough and hard, but not dirty.”

But there was a fella one time, starred with both Gort and Galway, a guy by the name of Sylvie Linnane who won a few All-Ireland titles with Galway in the 80s; in the parlance of the day, Sylvie ‘wouldn’t delay you’.

Are there not a couple of Linnanes on this current side, sons of Sylvie?

“Sylvie,” says Ollie, with a smile, “now there was a man — you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him! But Sylvie was actually a very skilful player, and Sylvie Óg is like that, he’ll play for the county. There’s a bit more physicality in Tadhg, our captain this year, and you’ll see shades of Sylvie in both, but they’re not dirty, not a bit.

“We have a lot of very good young hurlers on this team, and that’s what made the difference this year. Lads like Sylvie Óg, Brian Regan, Craig Lally, Richie Cummins, Mike Cummins — all young guys around 19 years of age who have come on in leaps and bounds in recent years, pushed out the older lads, taken their places and created real competition.

“There’s another lad, Mark McMahon, he won’t be with us this Sunday. He was in a freak accident last week — he was at a mart and a bullock charged from about 30 yards, hit a gate which then hit Mark in the face. It smashed his nose and broke five or six bones in his face. He spent two days in intensive care and he’s still in hospital in Dublin.

“Mark is only 19, a serious hurler. He would probably have been the man for Joe Canning, and Joe would know him well from Galway minors.”

They have just those five titles (1914, ‘16, ‘34, ‘81 and ‘83) but going back even beyond Sylvie, beyond the great Josie Gallagher in the 40’s, there has always been a great hurling tradition in the Gort area.

“The guys who won the county final 25 years ago, the fellas we all looked up to, most of those now have sons on this team — Linnane, Regan, Harte, Lally, and so on, the same names are there now, while my father, Paddy was a selector on that team.

“In fact they should have won an All-Ireland club title. I tell this to the boys and they have trouble believing it, but I remember in early 1984 we beat Midleton in the All-Ireland semi-final of a Saturday, then played Ballyhale Shamrocks the following day in the All-Ireland final, and drew with them.

“Both of those teams were packed with inter-county stars from Cork and Kilkenny! We lost the replay, but that All-Ireland could have been won. This Sunday now is going to be a great occasion for Gort, that team of 25 years ago will be honoured at half-time and their sons will be out there playing!”

That they’ve made it this far is due in no small way to the influence of Ollie Fahy, both on and off the field. Manager Patsy Fahy — an All-Ireland winner with his native St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield in Clare, and no relation — tells of the scene at half-time in the semi-final win over last year’s finalists, Loughrea.

“Ollie took the thing by the scruff of the neck really, he kind of calmed things down, so that instead of going out all fired up fellas were composed. He knew what we had to do, explained the task at hand, took the dressing-room by the scruff of the neck, and it worked. He has seen things in dressing-rooms over the years, he would have known that this was the time to step in, and the lads responded. In fairness to Ollie, and to the other lads who spoke — the captain Tadhg Linnane, Andy Coen — they did deliver, they stood up on the day. We expect the same Sunday.”

Pearse Stadium, 2.30pm, David and Goliath, but whisper it — David has that secret weapon.