Some things just take a bit more time: Peter Duggan discusses his dyslexia

Peter Duggan was in London with his brother over the winter when his phone lit up with a text message from his old schoolteacher Fiona de Buitleir.

A few weeks earlier, after winning his first All Star, the Clare hurler had been invited back to speak to pupils at the Ennis National School.

He moved there himself as a child to attend the Senior Reading Class, which offers support for fifth- and sixth-class pupils with dyslexia.

Duggan, now 25 and in his final year of a Business Studies with Sports Management degree at Limerick IT, was initially diagnosed with the condition while at his local Clooney National School.

“I went back into the Reading Class and I was telling them that I didn’t care too much about school back in the day but that I regretted it because school is everything,” said Duggan. “I actually got a text message then off my old teacher, Fiona de Buitleir, regarding a child in the class that wouldn’t have been great inside in school but she said: ‘Over the last three weeks since you’ve been in, if you’d seen the different of him inside in class’.

“It’s little things like that that make you really enjoy what hurling has given me. It’s very humbling and it’d make you want to drive on and do it again and get the All Star again so you can be brought back into the schools and have a different story for them next year.”

Duggan doesn’t sugarcoat the facts regarding dyslexia and said he has had to put in more effort to get the same results as those without the condition. In college, for instance, he finds large sections of text difficult to digest and prefers to break things down into colour-coded sections.

“There’s coloured glasses you can use,” he said. “Sometimes for dyslexia, if you read with colour, you find it a lot easier. So when I’m studying for an exam, I do it on small yellow and blue colour-coded cards. When you’re looking down at the colours it’s just easier.

“I’d even find that I love having the right pens and the right equipment. When I have everything to a tee, it’s a lot easier, even with highlighters and making sure things are easily visible. I just found that I’d have to concentrate a little bit harder on everything. I’ve been to college in LIT a long time now, this is my sixth year there between swapping and changing courses.

You just have to put your head down a little more and make more of an effort than other people because it takes you a little bit longer to read a sentence, or you get confused when it comes to maths. But if you put your mind to it, you’ll still get it, there’s no fear of that.

Duggan’s hurling career with Clare has panned out upon uncannily similar lines, bringing belated success.

Back in 2017, after two substitute appearances in the Championship, he considered leaving the panel before eventually resolving to try even harder. He ended up as the Championship’s top scorer in 2018 and won that first All Star. There is no tangible link between dyslexia and hurling that he is aware of, though that determined spirit he has had to cultivate has certainly helped his game.

“That’s true,” nodded Duggan. “The only thing I’d say is that with me, the whole way through school I didn’t care too much and it’s only now, over the last three years, that I’m realising that school is a lot more important that I’d thought it was.”

The 2013 All-Ireland winner now wants to start his own landscaping business when he completes college.

He worked until last August maintaining the pitches at Clare’s centre of excellence and at Cusack Park before finishing up to concentrate on his final year in LIT.

There was another sign of that determination at Páirc Uí Rinn last Saturday evening as Duggan, after missing a couple of scoreable frees against Cork, split the posts from a 65 at an acute angle on the right. His bubbly, effervescent demeanour only darkens briefly when he recalls those who suggested over the years that his dyslexia would hold him back in life.

“Back in the day, there would have been talk that, ‘you can’t do such and such, sure you’re dyslexic’,” said Duggan. “Sure that’s the biggest load of rubbish you’ll ever hear. There’s nothing that a dyslexic person can’t do that a person without it can do. There’s no real hindrance, it just takes a little bit more time.”

That ‘can-do’ attitude crops up time and again with Duggan when the conversation turns to hurling. He had keyhole surgery on one of his knuckles last December but it didn’t fully work out despite his return to action.

“It’s not sore catching the ball, it’s more striking the ball, which is a little bit of a hindrance. But when you’re playing the game, the adrenaline would get you through anything.”

Similarly, ask him about finding an extra edge to keep him at the top of the game and he points to the only thing he knows — hard graft.

“It’s just about getting back to feeling like you can do anything, that would be where I find my edge,” he said. “Even doing the running at the start of the year, even though I hated it, it was getting that little bit of extra fitness that stands to you.”

He wants to catch more high balls this year and to improve his footwork. But if the worst comes to the worst and it doesn’t work out as he’d hoped, he won’t beat himself up over it either.

“Exactly, because over the years I’ve put in so much grind and there were years that just never worked out for me,” he said. “I’ve put in so many hours, maybe 50 hours a week on hurling, on diet and fitness and everything and it just didn’t work out. So the way I’ve adapted over the last few years is to say: ‘Look, what will happen, will happen’.”

Peter Duggan was speaking at the launch of Bodibro’s High Performance Sportswear 2019 GAA range. Bodibro specialises in personalised orders of training and matchday gear.