THE EWAN MacKENNA INTERVIEW: Old faithful’s new day
There’s a saying that as athletes get older, their accomplishments seem greater. For Daithí Regan though, in many ways his just seem further away.
A few years back, for no particular reason, he was pottering through his medal collection when it dawned on him that he was one short of the set. Not all that significant, given his victories, the absentee was a chunk of metal from the 1988 Leinster U21 final, yet still he panicked and searched high and low for hours on end. When he finally discovered it under the fridge, he flung the lot into an old plastic bag, brought them up to his mother’s place and told her to keep them safe. Out of mind, they’ve been out of sight ever since, except for one occasion when they were exposed to a weary and tired pair of eyes.
Shortly before Regan’s father passed away of cancer in 2007, in the early hours of the morning his mother heard a gentle noise coming from the kitchen and quickly realised her husband was no longer beside her in bed. She got up to take a look and there was he was, sat at the table, running the medals through his fingers. He was terminally ill, knew it wouldn’t be long before his time was up and this was his chance to take in what Daithí had achieved throughout his hurling career.
Upon hearing that story, Regan knew that image is what his accomplishments would personally mean to him forever more, as the games themselves drifted off into the haze of the past.
“He took huge pride in what happened but never said it to me personally, and I wanted him to,” Daithí said.
“It was a big thing for me, for him to embrace what I was doing and for me to share it with him. He just wasn’t that sort of person, instead he’d share it with others. Lads you’d meet in the club since he died would say, ‘I often had a few pints with him and, fuck, he was proud of you’. But he never said that to me and I was the type of individual that needed to be told, particularly at certain times. He was a west of Ireland man, left school at 13, building was all he knew, not how to talk about feelings.
“In fact only twice did I ever see emotion in him because of my hurling. After we won a schools All-Ireland against North Mon after losing to them the previous year, I met him on the pitch and there were tears in his eyes. And after the All-Ireland against Limerick, I didn’t see him until the Monday and as I got down off the stage and was heading for a pub, he came over and gave me a hug and that was it, off he went.
“But he did once say in later life he loved me and I just told him he didn’t need to say it, I always knew. Jesus, when he died, I grieved hard for about two years. I couldn’t come to terms with it.”
Regan pauses to think about what he’s just said and you pause to think about what you are confronted with. He’s the open book everyone told you he’d be, it’s just not what you were expecting to read. You’d been warned there’d be outrageous anecdotes and slicing opinions on everything and anything and if you want to steal soundbites, he’ll give you that too.
Cork aren’t physically strong enough, he maintains, have too many of the same type of player and don’t create enough goal chances. Anthony Daly has reinvented and re-energised this Dublin group, he claims, but they won’t win Leinster and the real triumph of this era will be what their next generation bring to the party. Davy Fitz may or may not win an All-Ireland during his time in charge but in the very near future Clare will, he assures you, as they are doing so much right.
But to highlight such snippets is to cheapen Regan because there’s an attitude that’s cerebral and deep and a viewpoint that isn’t sure where hurling ends and life begins to the extent they’ve become one. So, breaking the silence, you ask him about his media work.
“I always felt a bit of a fake. I could be on the phone and Nicky English is on the other line, a genius hurler, a man I admire. Presenters tend to say, ‘We are now joined by two former legends’ and I cringe at that. But then some people say, ‘Regan, he was no good as a hurler, why isn’t Brian Whelehan doing the analysis instead?’ That annoys me so I guess you’ve to hide your insecurity.
“But even playing, the biggest problem I had was belief in my own ability. Even now, when I’m on form I feel untouchable, in every part of life. But self-doubt, when that comes into it, I’m just terrible at whatever I’m doing.”
The more he talks, the more you realise there’s a shaky and human streak running from now to then, from his punditry all the way back to what should have been his zenith. You recall a story he told you once, about the build-up to the 1994 All-Ireland against Limerick. Having been switched to midfield and with Mike Houlihan awaiting him there, for weeks before he’d do sit-ups in his bedroom while angrily staring down a picture of the Limerick man that he’d pinned to the wall. It’s the sort of tale that would ideally compliment a heroic performance on the biggest stage, but instead he shrunk and wilted in front of the crowds. His team’s greatest moment was far from his.
“I’m disappointed in myself still because [Michael] Duignan would have even said, in the league, forget me, but I’m a player for a bigger day. But that morning, it wasn’t nerves, it was emotion. My brother phoned me from Dublin at eight o’clock and I started crying my eyes out. He recognised there was a problem immediately and said I’d better get my head together but I remember saying that I’m not able for this.
“My Dad, he played nine holes that morning and dropped me down to the square then and I never ever wanted someone to say I’m proud of you as much as at that moment, but he didn’t know how to. I wanted him to put his arms around me. He didn’t, and after that, I just remember being taken off and not being able to wait go get to the sideline.
“To this day I’m not a fella who handles emotions. Even back in school, in 1986 before that All-Ireland final [for Birr Community School], the night before the game I burst out crying but that time I channelled it the following day. It was an All-Ireland, had to be won. I guess in a similar way, even though we lost, for me 1995 was an All-Ireland that had to be played well. I got off the bus that day and I met my brother and I remember saying, ‘I’m not getting taken off today’.
“From a private point of view, I was delighted with what followed. I didn’t let something get to me a second time and I can say always, ‘Look 1994 was one off day, it went wrong but I didn’t let it happen to me again’.”
There were other days of course when emotions got to him in a very different way. He was sent off nine times in his career but reckons the majority were because he was the biggest man wandering into a crime scene and was never exactly subtle with the evidence. But when it came to a club match on 16 May, 1987, he has to hold his hands up for a dirty stroke he wasn’t proud of. Even his father told him he felt let down by that one. “Coventry beat Spurs 3-2 the same day though. Fuck, I was like a dog. Red mist. Doesn’t say much for my preparation but I take it bad when they lose.”
He smiles at the memory but for the most part, hurling always meant too much to be a laughing matter. That’s why Johnny Pilkington and his interviews bugged Regan hugely. You pull out a cutting from a piece the former did with The Irish Times back in 1998 and you’ve highlighted one phrase where he describes Regan as “a mad hoor”. With that, the skin on his face suddenly tightens at both the suggestion and the source. Indeed Regan first notes Pilkington was the best in the country out around the middle for the guts of 15 years but only got one All Star because journalists choosing the team couldn’t take him seriously.
“He portrayed us a certain way and it stuck. And it worked against Johnny because every time he did an interview there was something about drink. I said it to him at the time. ‘For fuck sake, you are hurting yourself and the team’. There was no one more serious in Offaly about their hurling than him and we were a serious team. What we did afterwards was immaterial. Yes, we celebrated but people thinking back think of us as this wild bunch. We were beyond dedicated. We gave hurling our all.”
You stop him there and fast-forward to 1998, delving a little deeper into the subject. For the most part, he took his hurling seriously — he can point to the results as proof — but four years after the team reached the top, time had gnawed away at his discipline and dedication and there was an issue that denied his father having one more medal to run through his fingers at the kitchen table. Official history says Regan wasn’t there for the All-Ireland win against Kilkenny because of injury. He knows that’s not the case.
“I had problems with PaJo [Whelehan, who was in charge of Birr] over the years. I’d always respect him as a coach but we weren’t seeing eye to eye that year, in 1998. I was playing the best hurling since 1995, was in the best shape I’d ever been in. He reckoned I wasn’t fit enough and that’s bullshit. So with a chip on my shoulder I decided I’d give him no alternative but to play me. I came on against Clarecastle in a replayed All-Ireland semi, turned the game, got the winning point. Then, before the final, I let it be known to certain individuals that if I wasn’t picked, it would be personal.
“We won that final and there was a lot going on. Joe Errity’s father had died during the semi-final and Joe was godfather to my son. I’d invested quite a bit of time in getting myself back to a certain level. And then I over-celebrated. I had to go at it longer and harder than everyone else. In my mind I deserved it because I turned it when I came back, I showed people. Others enjoyed it, and went back training with Offaly. But I used excuses, and I knew I used excuses. I wanted to continue celebrating. Or at least I wanted to keep drinking. I don’t know which.”
It got so bad that by the time he finally made it back to the county set-up, Babs Keating pulled him aside one day and told him to forget about hurling, that this was much more important, and if he had a drink problem he could put him in contact with the right people.
“That time, I didn’t know how to stop. I didn’t have the maturity, strength of mind to get back playing well. I was drinking and Offaly won an All-Ireland and I watched it from the stand. And the management gave me every chance. Michael Bond respected me and wanted me there for my size and physicality. Babs was very fair with me too, I’d never say a bad word about him. But it cost me an All-Ireland.
“I’ve always known that and the day after we won, I parked it immediately because it was the type of thing that could have gotten in on me. ‘What have I fucking lost here?’ I never let it affect me again because I couldn’t point the finger at anyone. But looking back, I’d have allowed a social life to affect my hurling at times whereas Pilkington didn’t seem to put a pick on no matter what he drank. Four pints and he was bollocksed sure.
“But I always felt pressure and my release valve was a bar. Even with my Dad dying, if I had a down time, I didn’t want to talk to my wife, didn’t want to visit the cemetery with anyone. I was crying uncontrollably when I was on my own so I’d go to a bar. Did I use that as another excuse though to go on the lash? I don’t know.”
Regan draws breath, trawls his mind and manages to pull a positive from beneath the surface — the whole journey has made him a better coach.
As for the destination it has taken him to, well he’d love the Offaly job but was disgusted by the process when he went for an interview in 2011 and knew straight away he wasn’t going to get it when just two of the seven-man panel bothered to ask him a question. It’s a job he still wants in the future but admits that he doesn’t think the county board would let him because he’s too outspoken as a pundit and can’t be governed.
All in all, that’s why he’s back on the club scene again, having just started into the season in charge of senior side Shinrone. There’s something completing in that because just last weekend, on the line for the first league game against Birr, he found himself staring down Johnny Pilkington in the opposite corner.
“Beat them by a point,” Regan beams. “We got a contentious goal because they said the ball was two foot over the sideline. It wasn’t. It was two-and-a-half foot. So I had the bragging rights, went for a few drinks with Johnny after and, to be fair, he talked sense until nine. A record probably.
“But look, I think how I lived my life is a benefit now as a manager,” he stresses. “I understand now that guys do have a life. I’ve said it to players, ‘I don’t care what you’ve done, I’ve done it and fucking worse than you have. I can astonish you with some of the things I’ve done, you wouldn’t even comprehend them, so don’t think you are unique’. I can tell them I’ve regrets about things I’ve done, usually drink-related. The dark places it brought me. But I can tell them too that nothing ever touched the feeling of winning when the final whistle went. That first 30 seconds. Nothing.
“Just to experience it once. Everything you’ve done for the previous eight months in one moment. Stay as long as you can in the dressing room as a team. Don’t rush to get pints. When you walk out, you’ve lost something, everyone else has a piece of you and what you are feeling. But for that 30 seconds, before anyone hits you on the field.
“Look at some of the iconic photographs. George O’Connor. Everything McGeeney ever did in one picture. Joe Kernan looking at the referee knowing he’s going to blow that whistle and then as it goes.
“You don’t look like that walking down the aisle. You don’t get that anywhere else. You’ll never be like that at any other stage of your life. Only sport can give you that and how you handle it defines you. People say Kilkenny are bad for hurling. Bollocks. My admiration for those lads, to come back again with the same intensity. Every year, it’s the same when the final whistle goes. Look at Cody’s face. It’s the same every time. You can’t distinguish between his first and last year. I keep saying to the lads, dream about it. Dream about what that 30 seconds are like.”
With that, you ask Regan about his 30 seconds but his own peculiar career means he’s unsure. For him, he says, his accomplishments don’t seem greater with time. But perhaps he’s missing the real accomplishment which is himself.
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