Former Limerick captain Gavin O'Mahony: 'I keep saying is that I have no regrets'
The past month has been ‘tough’ for Gavin O’Mahony, having called time on his inter-county career last year — but having been part of the Limerick evolution, he’d love nothing more than for them to finish the job tomorrow, he tells
For most of the summer he had been fine with it: back in the role of a supporter, something he hadn’t really been since he was drafted up to the seniors his first year out of minor.
He hugely enjoyed going to the team’s games in Munster and dissecting them with friends while still getting in a fortnight travelling some of the west coast of America, the kind of trip he and Becky would never before have been able to do that time of year.
The game down in Cork, he reckons he must have been ‘the loudest person in the stand,’ urging on the 14 men in green to claw out a precious draw.
But Gavin O’Mahony will be honest, the last game against Cork wasn’t quite as straightforwardly joyous. Sure, he was happy. But part of him was sad. Bittersweet, he thinks they call it.
I’ll be honest, the last month has been tough. To me, there are two medals [missing] that would still gall me – a club All-Ireland and a senior inter-county All-Ireland. So the closer the lads are getting to it, it is hard.
He watched the All-Ireland semi-final up in the stands alongside Paudie O’Brien, who he soldiered with not only the time Kilmallock made it all the way to Croke Park on St Patrick’s Day, but also in the cause of the county, O’Brien’s time with Limerick only ending on the eve of the 2017 season, O’Mahony retiring at the end of it.
“We completely lost the run of ourselves!” O’Mahony softly laughs. “We were jumping about the place, roaring on the lads. But when you come back and leave the match and everything settles down, it’s only natural but very difficult to find yourself saying, ‘God, I’d give anything to still be involved.’ There’s no point in saying otherwise.
I found it okay all year. Wasn’t a problem. But when they got to Croke Park.
His first year out of it could be the very year that they win it.
He was aware that was always a possibility though when he made his decision last autumn. From being part of the set-up in John Kiely’s first year, he knew Limerick were on to something with this management in charge. Kiely himself gave him every chance to remain on board. When O’Mahony rang a few weeks after the first-round qualifier defeat to Kilkenny to say he was calling it a day, Kiely told him to hold on a while and reconsider.
A few weeks later they met up and had a similar conversation. Just hours before the group met back up in the Woodlands Hotel in Adare, O’Mahony put the call into Kiely. “John, I’m 100% certain.” At 30 years of age, Gavin O’Mahony was finished playing inter-county hurling.
I knew it was time to go. It was what my body was telling me. Even last year was probably a year too long. I had never missed a Limerick match through injury; any little knock or niggle I had was never enough to keep me out.
"The last year or two then, I had a few things at me – my groin, my knees, my thumb. I was forcing myself to drive on and get on with it but it’s not really enjoyable when you’re going through that and you’re not getting a place on the team and your confidence is low.
“I didn’t want to let myself get sour with the whole thing. Even if I had been able to train away and still not get my place, that wouldn’t have been an issue for me. I just felt I wasn’t going to be able to go from the end of October right through the season 100%. Physically, I just couldn’t.”
He had attacked the previous season hard. Although he and Becky had an October wedding, he was soon back into a training programme expertly tailored for him by Joe O’Connor. They had particularly targeted the opening game of the league, a potential promotion decider against Wexford, the day after which O’Mahony and his bride would head off on their honeymoon to South Africa.
The first weekend of January, he broke his thumb playing a challenge game against Mary I. He didn’t say anything to anyone about it for a while, determined not to lose any more credit in the bank ahead of the honeymoon, and played right through the Munster league. But the Friday before the Wexford game and South Africa, he ended up having to go for an operation and then watching both Davy’s new team and the lions on safari with his hand in cast.
When he got back, he couldn’t get back on the team. He came on as sub in the league quarter-final and semi-final but the only game-time he saw in championship was as a blood sub for Declan Hannon late on in that qualifier loss down in Nowlan Park.
He’d like to think that for all his own struggles he still helped the younger players with their own challenges. Meeting them for a one-to-one, just a casual chat over coffee. Or marking them in training and reminding and steeling them for what a John Conlon or Walter Walsh might throw at them in their next championship game.
His guidance and experience had long been appreciated within the Limerick camp. When Donal O’Grady was tasked with clearing up the mess left by the shambles of the 2010 season, he appointed O’Mahony as team captain, even though the 2009 season had been his only year as a regular starter. After O’Grady’s 12-month stint, his successor John Allen likewise tapped into O’Mahony’s leadership.
Gavin O’Mahony was the ideal and ultimate team player,” says Allen. “On the field he was very competitive as well as very stylish and off the field he was also a real leader.
“Any team trying to achieve anything now pays attention to things like nutrition and S&C but starting out, Limerick’s attention to those things wouldn’t have been great. So when we were introducing the idea of fellas looking to lose whatever percentage body fat or put on whatever muscle strength, it was made easier by fellas like Gavin buying into it straight away.
“In my second season [the Munster-winning campaign of 2013], we set up a leadership group and Gavin would have had a pod of players to keep an eye on and be aware of what was going on in their lives. Gavin off his own bat would have taken them out to the dogs for a night, as part of a bigger picture, to build that kind of connection.
It meant that when he did maybe have to challenge fellas, they knew it wasn’t personal, it was for the good of the group. He’s an extremely mannerly, likeable person but he’d have no problem pushing fellas on to do things properly. I was fiercely impressed with that kind of initiative and the leadership in general that he showed.
O’Mahony certainly experienced a lot in his time: the good, the bad, and the ugly; how the game has changed; how big games were lost and won. He was there in 2007, albeit just on the fringes of the panel. He loved Richie Bennis and how he connected with players, but in hindsight the build-up to that year’s All Ireland final showed there could be a naivety in the simplicity and innocence of that set-up.
“I’d be all for the small details. A lot of people in Limerick equate winning an All-Ireland to reaching the top of Everest but someone like Caroline Currid, who is in with the current set-up, will break it down to the lads that it’s not. You just have to take these steps, tick these boxes. Something even as basic as match tickets. This year each player has nominated someone to hand out their tickets instead of having to take that upon themselves.
In 2007, we were driving around the county handing out tickets. And having to go back for more tickets, then having to sort out the money for them.
“About 10 days out from the final, we had a supporters’ night in the Gaelic Grounds where we trained, only you couldn’t class it as a training session; there were swarms of people in on top of the drills and after about 40 minutes we just canned it. We went up then into the stand where we lined up behind tables, signing autographs and jerseys for three or four hours. Still in our togs and socks like, straight from the field. It’s not an excuse but it’s just not the way to do things.”
In 2009 there was more “crazy stuff”. They travelled up to their All-Ireland semi-final against Tipperary that morning by train with their carriages fully accessible to the public. Supporters were coming in, asking for and getting photographs and autographs. There and then the Limerick challenge was derailed, if it wasn’t already. Tipp tore them asunder, striking for six goals.
For O’Mahony, both that morning and afternoon were not just embarrassing but unacceptable, symptomatic of a deeper malaise. Another player would have been happy with finally breaking onto the starting 15 and winning an All-Star nomination as well, on the back of scoring eight points from half-back in an All-Ireland quarter-final win over Dublin. Instead that New Year’s Eve, O’Mahony rang Justin McCarthy, the manager who had given him his first run on the team, to inform him that like a core of veteran players, he wouldn’t be making himself available for 2010.
It was a hugely frustrating time. You’re after just coming into the team with all this enthusiasm and the next thing… Like, what a mess. From all sides. Players were wrong, the county board was wrong, Justin was wrong. It was just so poorly handled.
Donal O’Grady’s appointment would see both O’Mahony and a sense of optimism return and then under John Allen an even greater sense of belief blossomed. In college, O’Mahony had played and lived with Tipperary’s Shane McGrath. Would have considered the pair of them as equals as well as friends.
“We’d have done very similar training until the gap was created around 2009. That semi-final showed just how much we had regressed. But before John started asking us questions, we were kind of just going from motion to motion. There was no ‘Hold on. I’ve been in college with these fellas. Now they have an All-Ireland medal. Why shouldn’t we win one?’”
In 2013 they had a right chance but again the lead-in to a big game in Dublin wasn’t what it should have been.
“We were probably as good as Clare going into that semi-final but again just got caught up in the hype. There was a five-gap between winning Munster and the semi-final and I’d say in the third week you still had people being called upon to go here and there with the cup. For me after the first week the cup should have been taken and put away in John Allen’s house until the season was finished.”
Still, there’ll always be the shining memory of that Munster final day. Funny, it’s only now when he’s finished with the county that he’s come to fully appreciate and recall it; when he was in the bubble it was all about the process – the next gym session, the next bit of recovery, the next match. Now he can savour that final’s final moments: his team nine points up, the county seconds away from a first Munster in 17 years.
“We won either a free or a 65 and I was going over to take it when Shane Dowling came running out. ‘Please! Please! Let me take it!’ I remember laughing to myself, thinking, ‘He wouldn’t be running out if it was it draw it!’ He must have drove it 20 feet wide, out over the terrace and into his own back garden I’d say.
I was marking Cathal Naughton by the end of the game and as soon as the whistle went, I ran after him. He must have been 20 yards away but I wanted to shake his hand; I’d have played a year’s soccer with Cathal in Charleville. Once I got to him we were swarmed straightaway.
There was a couple of brilliant photos taken that time of the crowd engulfing and chairing O’Mahony and recently he came across them again. After his retirement the 2018 Limerick panel put together a framed collection of images from O’Mahony’s career as a gesture of their thanks for his service and help through the years, similar to a gift they’d also present to James Ryan.
They actually got around to getting it to O’Mahony though only the other month: Declan Hannon works with Becky in town and passed it on to her, along with a card signed by all the team.
In the coming weeks, he’ll hope to rub shoulders against a good few of them in the club championship. He’s still playing for Kilmallock, buoyed by the coaching of his old Mary I teammate James Wall and the steady management of former county football manager John Brudair, but frustrated by how the year is scheduled.
“We played two championship matches in April but it’s of no benefit to the club, going four months then without another championship match and having to face into another preseason. The inter-county system is very good at the moment but they need to tighten it up by another month. What we have now is unsustainable. There’s not another sport in the world that carries on like it.”
Before he encounters them on the field though, he hopes to see his old county team-mates sometime during the middle of next week — with Liam MacCarthy, he suspects as well as hopes. He’ll travel up tomorrow with Becky but come back down again that night; better to wait until things have calmed down somewhat, then take off work for a few hours either Tuesday or Wednesday to meet up with the lads.
I’d still have very close connections with most of that team. Some of them would be my best friends. Of course I’d love for them to win.
“The last couple of weeks every second person is asking, ‘What do you think? Are you happy with your own time in there?’ And what I keep saying is that I have no regrets. Everything that was put in front of us we attacked head on. That’s a huge thing for me.
“I just loved the whole thing. A challenge game on Sunday – right, gym tomorrow. Just building towards something. And the kick then you’d get when things were going well and you were after a couple of wins…”
As he says himself, he’d give anything to still be involved. But he has the solace – nay, the satisfaction – of knowing he gave everything when he was involved.
And those photos and that card from old teammates as a reminder that he set the example for those still involved.
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