Brendan Bugler's Hurling Hands: 'Even milking the cows I’d be pucking against the wall of the shed'

Brendan Bugler

Hurling hands - Brendan Bugler, Whitegate and Clare.

The hands are pretty good, though looking at them on the table in front of me now there are a couple of fingers going in different directions.

I’d have taken a few knocks over the years. I probably had small breaks, hairline fractures, in fingers without getting them x-rayed or diagnosed.

They’d be a bit sore or swollen so you’d get them taped up and play on. I wouldn’t have missed games with injuries too much - I suppose if you have a slight crack in a finger it isn’t like a leg break, where you wouldn't be able to move.

I can still write with them anyway - and play the box whenever needed.

A big turning point for me was getting picked for trials for the primary schools game when I was in sixth class, the curtain-raiser to a Munster championship game.

That was huge, because I ended up playing before Clare-Cork in the 1998 Munster semi-final. That was a big day, the first time I put on a county jersey and get a taste of playing in front of a big crowd.

There’s probably been thousands of hurlers more naturally gifted than me but I put a lot of time into hurling as a kid. I’m from a farming background so if I was out around the farm after school I’d have the hurley with me all the time - whether it was looking after cattle or just standing in a gap, I’d have the hurley and ball with me, practicing all the time. Even milking the cows I’d be pucking against the wall of the shed.

I’d bring the hurley to school every day and in third year I can remember discovering the handball alley in Scarriff GAA club, which is the club next to us. Eddie Moloney had the key to it and whether he should have or not he gave me a key, so I’d go up there to practice.

There were times I’d tell my mother I was staying back to study after school but I’d head up to the ball alley for two hours and then come back for the lift home at half six. That alley was somewhere I found great peace. I loved going there either alone or with the lads to work away on my striking.

Someone who helped me - and a lot of other players - was Naoise Jordan, who played for Clare in the sixties. He’s a legend in our club. He’s a big believer in ball-wall sessions - I’d say he’s painted targets on the walls for hurling practice in nearly every club in Clare. His hands are still fantastic, even though he’s probably nearly 80. He’s on the Clare team of the century, and I learned a huge amount from him about hurling.

Bugler's hurling hands

With hurleys, when I was in the thick of it I was probably obsessive. I’m a bit more relaxed now. I’d have rotated my hurleys: during my time with Clare I would have gone to John Tuohy in Feakle, and to Torpey’s, the Cannings. All of them made good hurleys and if I picked one up and it felt good I just went with that.

My game didn’t revolve that much about striking, so as long as it felt good I was happy with the hurley: I liked a light hurley to get the ball into my hand fast and then lay it off to the lads who could do damage with it.

One thing I was obsessed with was the grip. I’d change that before every game, it was just one of those things that made the hurley feel a lot nicer to me for a game.

A lot of the players I admired were lads who played in the same position or line of the field as myself. I was about ten or eleven when I began to take notice of inter-county players - it was around 1995, so the Clare half-backs of that time were big heroes.

Liam Doyle had fantastic hands, Anthony Daly, Seanie McMahon’s striking . . .Liam Dunne was another great player at that time, and Brian Corcoran was a great back who reinvented himself as a forward.

But Brian Whelehan was one player I always looked up to. His skill levels, his striking, they were phenomenal. He was God to me. And a number five as well, until he became a forward in one All-Ireland final and won it for Offaly.

Looking at individual skills, here in Clare we’re watching Tony Kelly for the last few years with Ballyea at club level, and nearly every game he does something that you’d say ‘did someone record that?’ 

I remember Joe Canning’s hand pass against Cork a few years ago in a game in the Gaelic Grounds - he just passed the ball behind his back as he moved away and the Cork defender moved with him but the ball was gone. That wrong-footed everyone in the ground. Michael Cleary from Tipperary did something similar back in the nineties.

Staying back in the nineties, I remember John Troy of Offaly in one All-Ireland when he flicked the ball up into one hand, then he was gone and he roofed it - it was so quick you almost weren’t sure what he’d done, you’d have to catch it on the replay. There are some players and they’re just able to do things like that - they can see the possibility of doing something that ordinary players just can’t see, and then they can do it.