Tom Mac gives Crusheen the cutting edge

EVERY GAA parish has one — a character, a living embodiment of the club and its history.

For Crusheen, Tom McNamara is that figure.

He is something of a legend throughout his native Clare and tomorrow will represent a momentous day for him and all associated with this pocket of the Banner County with a first appearance in a Munster club senior decider.

All his days (he’s 83 and still going strong) Tom has been an integral part of Crusheen GAA, and it’s been an integral part of him.

On introduction the first impression is of a strong man, but a man of ready wit and great humour. But most of all he is a story-teller with an immense repertoire, one yarn after another and one more outrageous than its predecessor.

To men of Tom’s era, political correctness is an alien concept.

Where to begin then? We could start with his introduction to hurling in Crusheen, when he was just a juvenile watching the intermediate team strut their stuff against local rivals Tubber — or try to.

“With Tubber, fellas knew the minute the draw was made there was going to be fighting. When I was hurling juvenile there was a bad row here one night at an intermediate game. That time you had to be a traveller to get drink on a Sunday at certain times, and the Tubber crowd made sure to come early, and it was they who started the trouble. It was so bad that our priest took the hurleys off us, the youngsters, he was so disgusted at what went on. It was lucky some fellas weren’t killed, though some of them were badly hurt.”

That was hurling in the 30s and 40s, not just in Clare but throughout the country. Winning was important, but winning what — the game or the row? It wasn’t remotely like today where you have referee, two linesmen, four umpires, all keeping a close eye on any shenanigans that might arise. Then it was just the ref, and even he wasn’t too pushed about offering protection to either the weak or the meek. You looked after yourself, you looked after your teammates, and Tom Mac was better equipped than most to do that.

“I was over six foot, 16 ½ stone weight and I could run all day long, so you can imagine if I ran into you, that would have an effect!”

“We were playing Ruan — they had a great team that time — and Jimmy Smyth (probably Clare’s greatest ever player) ran into me. I put him out over the sideline — ‘You’d want to have another sack of flour Jimmy if you want to shift me!’, I said to him!”

There followed story after story of fellas sent flying left, right and centre, not just by Tom himself but by others – by his brothers, his friends, even by a few well respected opponents. Battles fought, games abandoned, reputations built and consolidated, Crusheen men and a Crusheen team not to be messed with. And yet, says Tom, through all those years he was only ever sent off once. ”

It was against Newmarket, who were actually a very clean team. Down in Tulla, I was full-forward and Mick Considine (their full-back) wasn’t too anxious for me to play on him — ‘You’d do better to go out centre-forward on Gus (Lohan, father of Brian and Frank)’ he says. I went out, and the first three balls that came I pulled just before they landed, broke them in behind us. I went in after one of them and Lohan — and he was the grandest fella in the world — made one sweep up my back with the hurley and knocked me down.

“I gave him a slap of the hurley across the backside, was put off. In fairness to him he begged the referee not to do it — ‘It was my fault’, he said. He was as strong as a horse, but very fair.”

It begs the question, however, — how many times should he have been sent off. “Ah, you’re not the first man to ask me that!” he laughs, “But as the solicitor Seán Sexton would say to one of his clients in the box — ‘You don’t have to answer that question!’”

There was of course a very serious side to Tom Mac, and to his contribution to Crusheen. On the playing side he was a player/manager of the team that won Junior B (1958), Junior A (1959) and intermediate (1960) championships in consecutive years; on the administration side, there were years when he kept the club going almost single-handedly.

Now, in these years of glory, he gets to bask a little, content in the knowledge that it’s all been worth it, that Crusheen is finally among the elite and he’s still around to bear witness.

We too should give thanks, for the unique individuals like Tom Mac who gave life to the GAA in their own communities, who made it what it is today, an organisation itself unique, nothing quite like it anywhere in the world.