The girl with a hero next door

Growing up in Shannon, Rachael English had heroes on her doorstep. Well, in the class next door at primary school.

She was in Miss Foley’s class but when it was time for PE, the male teacher in the next room took over.

“Ger Loughnane was the teacher next door and when our teacher took his class for singing, he took us for PE. So I’d have known him pretty well.

“He was hurling for Clare and it was the time he won an All Star and we thought he was the best thing ever, obviously, a big star like that teaching in the school.”

Was the training regime faced by the kids as severe as the one imposed on the Clare team which won two All-Ireland titles years later?

“No,” says English, “He never brought us running up hills as he did with the Clare seniors later! He was very good though, and very young, I’d say he was only starting out as a teacher.”

You know the name. You certainly know the voice from RTÉ radio programmes such as Five Seven Live and Morning Ireland. English moved with her family to Shannon in Clare as a small child, and following the Banner was a way to integrate into the new town.

“The odd thing about Shannon was that everyone there seemed to be from somewhere else. It mattered to people to seem as much a Clare person as people from other parts of the county. Some people in those other parts of Clare viewed Shannon as a strange place which, on top of everything else, was practically in Limerick.

“The fact that Ger was there and that he was on the Clare team made being a Clare person a tangible thing, as did going to Shannon Comprehensive for secondary school. The likes of Sean Stack and Colm Honan taught there, who would have played on the same Clare team as Ger.

“I remember the day the National League trophy came to the primary school, for instance. I was so small I thought Clare were the greatest team of all time and that was the proof of it.”

When she grew up and moved away the fondness for the Banner intensified. She made it to Croke Park in 1992 to follow the footballers: “Clare won the Munster [football] title and made it to an All-Ireland semi-final. There’s more football now in Shannon than there was, but even then football would be generally a West Clare game.

“It was an unbelievable occasion, to see them in Croke Park. We didn’t know that we’d see the hurlers there soon afterwards, and a good few times at that.

“Clare people outside the county tend to follow both teams, though. I have a neighbour in Dublin from Kilkee, which would be the heart of football country in Clare and he follows the hurlers as much as the football team.

“I’d say there’s an element of these things becoming more important when you leave your home county anyway — and of them becoming a bit more important the older you get, as well.”

English was in RTÉ by the time the hurlers broke through under her old teacher.

“My stand-out memory of 1995 is the Munster final. I was working in RTÉ and the whole place stopped for it, including people who had no interest in sport or the GAA.

“I distinctly remember Davy Fitzgerald taking the penalty, for instance — and that was part of it, nobody really knew the players, either, because they were all just kids at that point. Winning a Munster title was so special... was it bigger than the All-Ireland final? I don’t know if I’d go that far, though I know people would have said that after the Munster final it was a bonus.

“The win, the perfect weather, the drama — and for me the fact that you had the two Lohans from Shannon, and Michael O’Halloran went to school in Shannon, though he was from Sixmilebridge.”

It was the narrative that gripped the country 18 years ago: “It wasn’t just people who were into the GAA or into hurling, it was the fact that it was just a lovely story, that Ger Loughnane was so charismatic, how young the team were and how long it had been since they’d been there before.

“Whenever I think of that summer I always think of how beautiful the weather was too, which added to the whole thing. ”

Now English has published a novel, Going Back. The game she grew up with makes an appearance.

“The novel’s in two parts, and in the first part the main character goes to the States on her J1 for the summer. She’s from Thurles, and I didn’t think you could have a character from Thurles who’s not involved in some way with hurling: her boyfriend is hurling for the summer at home, and she meets him when her dad brings her to a hurling game.

“The second part is set 20 years later when the next generation goes to the States, and a character from Clare has a boyfriend from Shannon. He’s playing hurling in Boston.”

Well, if the character learned his hurling in Shannon he probably learned from one of the great managers.