Obituary: ‘Anytime you met Donal Devine, he was smiling’

Paul Fitzpatrick remembers former Westmeath and Castlepollard hurler, Donal Devine who passed away in February.

In Castlepollard’s little hurling universe, the club grounds on the Pakenham Hall road is the sun.

Around that, everything revolves.

The Devine family home was just across the road. When the Devine boys – all seven of them – walked out their door, the hurling pitch was what they saw first. Their day started, and often finished, with hurling.

And with a father, Frank, who hurled with the county and won three senior championships with ‘Pollard in the 1960s, they couldn’t miss anyway.

All seven lads wore the blue and gold, with five – Noel, Alfie, Brendan, Oliver and Donal – following in Frank’s footsteps and helping bring home the Westmeath Examiner Cup.

Donal, affectionately known as ‘Duck’, was the pulse of those teams which won Westmeath senior titles in 1995, 1997, 2003 and 2005.

A midfielder by trade, he could do a job anywhere on the pitch. He chipped in with plenty of scores but his greatest strength was his work ethic, his desire to put it all on the line for the team.

That was ‘Duck’. In the 2003 county final against Clonkill, Darren McCormack scored a dramatic late winning goal. It was a play straight from the Devines’ back garden – Donal managed to keep alive a ball that was going over the sideline, he passed it to brother Ollie and the rest is history.

Around such obscure feats are local legends made and in the close-knit world of Castlepollard hurling, that was the status in which Donal Devine was held.

And then, on February 14 last, a light was dimmed. After a training session, Donal suddenly fell ill. Frantic efforts were made to revive him but he passed away that night in hospital, a few short miles down the road in Mullingar. He was just 40 years old and left behind a wife, Deirdre, and two small sons, Emmet and Ronan, both of whom he had, naturally, enrolled in the club since their birth.

As the dreadful news emerged that night, the tremors immediately spread throughout the GAA world and, in Westmeath and Castlepollard in particular, the after shocks are still being felt. Because the club didn’t just lose a friend – here was a player, coach and inspiration, a beacon of a family with over five decades of hurling history behind them. It was and is unfathomable. “Donal was an out and out hurling man – he played a little bit of football with Castletown-Finea but hurling was his first love and that’s what he died doing,” club chairman Mick Macken recalled this week.

“What sort of player was he? He was an all-action man. Most of his life he played midfield. He wasn’t a big build but that never stopped him. He never stopped going. He played in the last county final we were in in 2014 and scored a goal and almost single- handedly brought us back into the game. A warrior is how you could describe him - a warrior, for sure.” The young Devine’s talents were recognised from an early age. He won a Leinster Minor Hurling B Championship with Westmeath in 1993 and a Leinster Minor Hurling League medal the following year.

And one of his proudest days came in 2005, when he was part of the Westmeath panel for the inaugural Christy Ring Cup final against Down. The midlanders won a classic by two points and the celebrations went on for days.

A few days later, the Westmeath Examiner carried a large front page photograph of the players partying with the cup outside a bar in Mullingar.

Under the heading “Nobody told us there would be days like this...” were 19 players, a county board official and the pub owner – and there in the back of the middle row was Donal, wearing a maroon and white novelty hat, a grin on his face and a fist raised aloft.

That beaming smile is something they all mention when remembering their friend, whose family home was deep in enemy territory in Collinstown, something he would joke about.

“I first recall seeing Donal with his big bushy head of hair, carrying a hurley bigger than himself, aged about six,” said Ned Flynn, long-time club stalwart and former chairman.

“And one thing never changed was his smile. Any time you met Donal Devine, he was smiling. He was a marvellous hurler and had a marvellous commitment to hurling from an awful early age. He was a shocking likeable garsún and he was the very same to the very end.” Barry Kennedy, a club and county team-mate, summed up the warmth of Devine’s personality.

“Donal,” he said, “would put you in good form even if you were in bad form.”

And club President Donie Cassidy added: “He was an incredible influence, as a player and club officer, particularly on young people coming up through the ranks of the club.”

The popular Devine family’s enormous contribution to hurling will carry on. Donal’s brother Alfie is a respected inter-county referee and his nephew, Allan, is currently a star player with the county. And the clan and the wider community will be out in force on Easter Sunday when a tribute night takes place in his memory. The event will be held in his home town and is being run by the club in conjunction with the county board, who will present last year’s National League medals to their senior panel.

Another special presentation will take place on the night, too; the club will hand over the last medal Donal won – from the Junior B Championship final, held in late November last year – to his wife Deirdre.

Poignantly, Valentine’s Day – the date on which Donal passed away – marked 20 years to the day from the pair first met.

“It’s going to take a long time to get over the like of this. A long time,” sighed Macken.

“It happened at training and that was where he loved to be. He was a very fit fella – but there was probably an underlying problem and no-one knew it. He had a big family and they are all involved in the club. Donal was playing last year but he was still training away and was still going to hurl this year. He was not a man that would give up.”

And that is how they will remember him.