A village, a club, a family

AIB MUNSTER CLUB JHC FINAL:

It was gruelling, back-breaking work, a test even for the farm-hardened men from this rural parish in the hills beyond Lismore.

“One day alone we had 17 tractors stuck in the field – they had to be pulled out one by one!” laughs Pat Bennett, a local star who would go on to play with the county.

“I remember that day,” recalls long-time club secretary Breda Clancy. “The field was an old commonage, The Scrailm it was called; lots of families had rights to it and we had to get everyone’s agreement before we could start the work. I’ll always remember Michael (her husband) coming home one Sunday and telling me every tractor had gotten stuck. We had a Curate here at the time and because most fellas were working during the week he said we could do the work on Sundays. The older people reckoned it was God’s way of punishing us for that! A lot of the people who were involved then are still involved now, which is great. Michael had been full-back on the team that won the county junior title in 1972. He still cuts the grass there every year, sometimes two or three times a week. I probably have grounds for divorce now!”

Twenty years later, wearing the same number three jersey as his father, Michael and Breda’s son Kieran helped Ballysaggart to another county junior title, the club’s second.

Already too he had followed the example of his parents and was stuck into the work at the club and a couple of years earlier, only 18, he had worked alongside Pat Bennett in the installation of their new goalposts.

“I was with him digging on one side, four lads digging the hole on the other — we finished way before them, he went across and started finishing the one they were on. Even at that age he was already a man, big, very strong, bordering on 15 stone but a fit 15 stone.

“Like his father he was a great worker, into everything, the land, roofing, all manual work. They were very close, always. Kieran’s two brothers, Mark and ‘Sham’, were also super hurlers and all three of them played minor and U21 for Waterford, but Mark is now in Abbeyleix with Teagasc, Sham works with GOAL — in fact he’s just back from Afghanistan. Kieran was the one who stayed at home on the farm.”

One fateful fatal day, however, a bolt right out of the blue and a very different memory for Pat Bennett. “We were playing a league match in Touraneena one night and Kieran just went down — ‘I’m caught in my chest’ he said.”

True to form, however, brave, big-hearted, totally committed to Ballysaggart, Kieran tried to play on.

“We thought he was after getting a hit to the chest but while we were talking to him the ball came back down the wing; he ran out and got it, tried to hit it out and went to his knees again.”

Persuaded to go off, as Kieran was walking with his father to the dressing-room he collapsed and Bennett ran to his side. “I went into the dressing-room with him. He was drifting in and out of consciousness — he’d say something, I’d say something, having a laugh with each other, as we always did. Then the doctor came from Clonmel and he said that was fine, he’d deal with it from there. The ambulance came to take him to hospital in Ardkeen, I followed on in the car with Mike and Breda. When we got there they said, ‘We need to talk to ye’. They took us into a room and told us he was dead – just like that. It was a weakness around the heart.”

As he speaks the pain is still in Pat’s voice, the memory as raw as though it happened yesterday. “19th of April 2003 – I’ll never forget it, it was a total shock, affected everyone. Kieran was married only a year and a half, he was working as a carpenter but his father had signed the farm over to him — he was always going to be brilliant for us because he was always going to be around.

“Ever since then you take life as it comes because you never know what’s going to happen.”

If that’s how it affected Pat, think of how it must have impacted on Michael and Breda, on his wife of just 18 months, Úna, on all his family. “They were devastated. Mike was the heart and soul of the club and he was really close to Kieran — we knew he’d never be the same. Kieran was at home with him, was on the farm with him – he was shattered.”

It’s odd though how the life works. We often speak of the GAA as family but it’s simple truth, and never more so than in the case of Ballysaggart and the Clancys. This year, with a team of young colts (eight of them under the age of 19, including Pat’s three sons Kieran, Stephen and Shane), Ballysaggart have again won the Waterford county title and tomorrow they face Limerick champions Feenagh-Kilmeedy in the Munster club JHC final in Mallow.

For the club, a new lease of life; for Michael and Breda Clancy, likewise. Pat: “We were saying only last week, this is the best we’ve seen him since then. For Ballysaggart to win Waterford, now to be in a Munster final, he’s just thrilled, it’s changing his life completely.”

Breda: “We might all give out about the GAA occasionally, how much of our time it takes up but the GAA has kept him going, the interest in all the lads. And this team, my God they’re his little Gods, he thinks they’re great!”

Everywhere they go now the club brings a defibrillator with them. It wouldn’t have saved Kieran, but it’s a reminder. An even more unusual reminder, however – that number three jersey is now in the Clancy home, never to be worn again by anyone from Ballysaggart. Pat: “Afterwards we retired the jersey, said no-one would ever again wear the number three — now we use the number 30. We got a new set of jerseys sponsored by the local pub for the Munster championship but when we opened them up there was no 30 — we had to use 23 that day. We have got a number 30 since though. It’s just our mark of respect for Kieran.”

The GAA has so many strengths but arguably its biggest is in how it pulls a community together, not just in the good times such as Ballysaggart are enjoying, but in those terrible times when tragedy touches one of its own. It’s that kind of support that helps people like Breda Clancy – still secretary of the club – carry on.

“It has happened to a lot of clubs now and there’s no answer to it; it’s something you just never expect.

Unfortunately that’s life, you can never predict.”