Alan Geoghegan seeks to extend Indian summer
His club, O’Loughlin Gaels. “I hadn’t played senior since the 2013 quarter-final,” he notes. “Didn’t feature in 2014 and wasn’t even on the panel in 2015. Just tipped away junior. This day last year, I was over 16 stone. It’s a fair load when you’re 5’9” and 37 years of age…”
Later that evening, Alan Geoghegan and Henry Shefflin were hazing and messing in a pub on John Street. Geoghegan and Shefflin are old friends from sharing a house in WIT days, late 1990s into early 2000s.
“Henry was on to me I should still be out there,” he recalls. “I was saying: ‘I’m too overweight.’ He was saying: ‘That’s up to you to solve.’ Drink talk. You know yourself… Usually goes nowhere.”
Geoghegan elaborates: “I wasn’t really friendly with Henry in school. We kind of got to know each other going up and down to Waterford on the bus, in first year. He used to be on to me to keep him a seat. You couldn’t have The King standing all the way from Ballyhale to Waterford!”
They soon knew each other well: “Ah, to be fair, he was just Henry and great craic, and becoming a serious hurler. I went down to WIT to do Business Studies. Hurling wasn’t really mapped. I wasn’t one of those lads first up in college for the GAA club. I was looking for other things.
“But Willie Maher [current Tipperary U21 Manager] asked me to play Freshers. So I did, and ended up a sub for the Fitzgibbon in ’98. Hurling just took off.”
That assessment is lovely understatement. Alan Geoghegan won a Fitzgibbon Cup at midfield in 1999 and at wing forward in 2000. “We had this great spirit under Andy Moloney as captain,” he relays. “The first win, up in Templemore against UCC, was unbelievable. Enda Everard was on that panel, and we stopped off in his home pub in Templetuohy on the way home. We didn’t spare that week in Waterford…”
Two decades later, many shapes and forms, Alan Geoghegan was a different man. But here is a seed. Day after that disappointment against Clara, he was out and about in O’Loughlin Gaels circles, everyone trying to look forward.
He ended up chatting to the team’s trainer: “Mickey Comerford mentioned the same as Henry: why not come back? Again, I thought it was only drink talk. But myself and two other lads, Brian Murphy and James O’Keeffe, met up with Mickey later that week. We took him as a personal trainer, and the three of us drove each other on.”
A serious programme ensued: “I did seven straight weeks and only took a week off over the Christmas. The first three weeks, when I wasn’t seeing much change, were really difficult. Everything went: drink, takeaways, the whole lot. I was looking for a total lifestyle change...
“But the three of us kept going, and by the end of January I’d two and a half stone lost. I hadn’t been that weight for nearly 10 years…”
Still the man doubted: “I was saying to myself: losing weight is one thing but am I fit? So I went and did the hurlers’ fitness test in early February.” Comerford rang two days later: he had performed best of the group.
Geoghegan rode fresh confidence the whole way to October. He sketches the path: “I had to go home and talk to my wife, Niamh. We have two young boys, Robbie and Conor. Being out of the house at least three evenings a week is massive commitment. But Niamh was all for it, thankfully.
“I played the senior league games except the last one against Ballyhale, because I’d junior the next day. I was doing alright and getting back confidence. Mainly just doing a job for the team, helping out my midfielder, helping out my wing back.”
Alan Geoghegan’s career includes three senior seasons with Kilkenny, 2001-03. He made Brian Cody’s radar as corner forward on 1999’s champion U21 side. A sub in the 2002 Leinster final, he earned a Celtic Cross that season.
“I pulled out in August 2003,” he says. “I wasn’t dropped. I just wasn’t getting enough game time, and felt I was too detached from the club.”
This October saw his crowd back in the senior final.
Their opponents? Shefflin’s Ballyhale Shamrocks. That hazy conversation in John Street found a potent swerve.
Alan Geoghegan hurled a solid hour, joining up the play, paying his way. The Gaels overpowered the Shamrocks in the final quarter, value winners by four points.
“I was just delighted to get back in and do a team job. It was great to get back into a dressing room with Gorta [Martin Comerford] and Hogie [Brian Hogan], who are our two main voices.
“We lost a junior quarter-final to Dicksboro last year. I wasn’t great and lads told me afterwards I should pack in the hurling entirely, that I was gone 37. I met a few of them up in the clubhouse at the meal after the senior win. What can you say? I suppose there are negative people in every club…”
The man smiles. He is entitled to smile. He is, in no small sense, a different man.
Here is Alan Geoghegan, 38, waiting for Sunday and Oulart-The Ballagh.
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