Hurling hands - Cáit Devane: 'The hurley needs to be an extension of your hand'

Cait Devane of Tipperary in action earlier this year. Picture: INPHO/Brian Reilly-Troy

My hands are in good nick.

We would always have been coached to make sure any time you put your hand up for the ball, you have the hurley up to protect it as well. The other side of that was you didn’t get much sympathy if you did get a bang across the fingers.

I might strap a couple of fingers that I’ve sprained over the years just as extra protection in a game but I haven’t had too many serious injuries. I get scratches and nicks around the knuckles, the usual small stuff.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a GAA-mad household where everyone took an interest. We all honed our skills practicing out the back - my father would always say the hurley needs to be an extension of your hand, that it needs to feel like it just belongs there.

So having the hurley in your hand all the time was a big lesson, and to this day I’d firmly believe that what you do with the hurley away from training and matches is what makes the difference.

I can remember as a small child practicing drop-shots in the garden, but when I was six or seven I had the wrong grip. One evening I went over to Rossmore, the local club, and the coach over the seniors that time, Donach O’Donnell, spotted me running around pucking the ball.

He said to me, ‘If you want to get better you’re going to have to change your grip’.

I came home and I can remember taping my right hand to the top of the hurley. It stayed there for a couple of weeks until I got the hang of the new grip.

I was lucky to have great coaches in school and with the club at underage level. For example, Liam Kearney, who passed away since, set up a little league for primary classes, boys and girls.

That was my first exposure to competition and games, they were like All-Ireland finals to us. But having those structures in place was a huge bonus for us - the time the likes of Liam put into the game, and others in clubs all over Ireland, is something you’d have to appreciate.

I played up to U16 with the boys - I have two U12 A county medals that I won with them at full-back. Physically and skillwise, it certainly helped in my development as a player - as Anne Dalton said here last week, your first touch has to improve, because you’ll be lifted out of it if you don’t control the ball first time.

Cait Devane's Hurling Hands

I’m pretty picky with my hurleys. If I don’t like a hurley I won’t use it - I go up to Jim O’Brien in Drangan once or twice a year, and I get three or four at a time so I’m not stuck if one gets broken

I might bring two or three to training and use them at different times in the session, because if you break your favourite in a game then at least you’re used to the second or third option.

I like a different weight in the hurley at different times of the year - a slightly heavier one for the Ashbourne Cup because you’re playing from November to February, and a slightly lighter one for the summer games.

Hands? I’d have two players in mind, and the two of them were my idols growing up, players I modelled my own game on - and two players I was lucky enough to share a dressing-room with at the start of my career and the end of theirs.

Eimear McDonnell and Claire Grogan are the two players. They could be unmarkable, they could do anything with the ball, and what they did for Tipperary camogie was unbelievable. I was in awe of them.

With hurlers, Eoin Kelly of Tipperary was probably top of my list. I’ll never forget one game against Cork in Semple Stadium, he was running towards his own goal - away from the target - with a player covering him. He took one touch and, without looking, hit the ball over his left shoulder and over the bar.

To me, that defied all the rules. He was going in the opposite direction to where he was shooting, he had a marker breathing down his neck, he never even looked at the goal - and yet somehow it went right over the black spot.

I suppose it was his trademark score. I think JJ Delaney said on Laochra Gael that sometimes in a game you knew that was what he was going to do but you still couldn’t stop him.

It’s a passage of play where everything is wrong on one level, and yet he got it right. Only a genius can do that.

Interview: Michael Moynihan