Hurling Hands - Ryan O'Dwyer: 'Hurling was a different sport to me. It was special'

Ryan O'Dwyer: 'I was a sub when we won the Dean Ryan and only got on the Harty team in fifth year'

Ryan O’Dwyer, Kilmacud Crokes and Dublin.

I’ve seen a few hurlers’ hands with fingers that are crooked enough to go around corners, if you know what I mean, but I’m quite lucky.

I’ve never had a splint on my hand. I’d suspect I got the odd slight fracture, but nothing that needed work.

Like a lot of lads I often had a sore hand for a week or two, and if it was the end of the season you might consider an x-ray, but most of the time you’d think, ‘ah it’s improving’.

You don’t want to miss a game anyway, no hurler worth his salt does. I’d be surprised if most hurlers didn’t have that attitude when playing - ‘it’s a bit sore but it can’t be that bad and there’s a game Sunday anyway’.

As a kid I played everything. Hurling, football, soccer, rugby, and I attempted basketball, but the teacher in school said I was playing too many sports as it was.

I’d say it was because I didn’t have a handle on the non-contact aspect of the sport.

I see a lot of parents now who want to dedicate their kids to one sport, particularly in Dublin, whereas down the country it can be about playing more sports because the numbers aren’t there.

In Dublin, there are always plenty of players but in a country place the soccer club, the GAA club, the rugby club are all pulling from the one group of kids, so they have to co-operate some bit. Those kids have to be free to play other sports.

That was my experience growing up in Cashel, that co-operation between the clubs, but I train my own young lad’s hurling team and on Thursdays a few of them always leave early for soccer training.

The co-operation helps because first, the clubs are all together in the community, but you also bring skills from one sport into another. Peter Creedon (former Tipperary manager) taught me in school and when he coached our hurlers he said to me once there was no need for me to practice footwork running the ladders, I had that from soccer, for instance.

In terms of my game coming on, up to third year of secondary school I was struggling to make the team. I was a sub when we won the Dean Ryan and only got on the Harty team in fifth year.

What changed was working on hitting the ball off my right. Up to then if I hit the ball off my right once a game it was a lot; I used my left side all the time.

But I got called in to train with the seniors in Cashel in 2001, so I worked on my right. And I practiced so much that my right became my stronger side: if I had to take a free now I’d use my right.

My first game for the seniors was a challenge against Killenaule, I was brought on and I was delighted. That’s when everything in my life took a back seat to hurling.

Ryan O'Dwyer's Hurling Hands

I think hurling would have come to the forefront anyway. I was a better footballer, a better rugby player, but hurling was a different sport to me. It was special, it just got my blood flowing. I know that’s hurling snobbery to some people, but that’s how I felt.

With hurleys, I used to go to Pa Fitzelle in Cashel, then Eddy Grant, Jim O’Brien, but Michael Verney gave me a Cultec hurley one day in college and I’ve used them ever since.

In the old days I’d buy eight hurleys at a time, maybe, but I might only use two of them. There’s a certain balance to a hurley that’s unique, and you might get the perfect one, your confidence is sky-high - and then you break it. You’re down, it’s a psychological thing.

But when I got the Cultec hurley I broke it after a week - then I picked up another one, the exact same weight and feel, everything, so I said, ‘If I get used to this then my confidence won’t be an issue because these hurleys are all the same.’

If I had to borrow someone’s hands . . . in 2007 Tipperary played Waterford in the league and I was centre-forward on Ken McGrath and I was so happy, so excited.

It was the easiest game I ever had to play because there was no psyching up involved, I was making my idol: Ken had skills, intelligence, bravery, speed, everything.

Other lads? Declan Ryan is from a rival club, Clonoulty, but his skills were unbelievable. John Leahy the same. I got to play with Conall Bonnar, which was a huge thrill for me; Raymie Ryan’s hurling was so good that he could probably tog off now and survive on his skills alone. A lad who played for years with Portroe, Dinny Hogan, was a man who could catch a ball no matter how it came to him.

Interview: Michael Moynihan.