The Big Interview: How Barry Coughlan played catch-up to follow his Waterford dreams
It can take one late developer to see the real promise in another.
Although we’ve all heard that 12 is too late to take up as technically-challenging a sport as hurling and giving it up in your mid-teens for five years hardly helps your chances of playing county either, the battles Barry Coughlan and Dessie Hutchinson have had on the training ground in Ballygunner in recent seasons would shatter such culturally-ingrained beliefs.
Back in 2013 while Coughlan was in his first year on the Waterford senior panel, Hutchinson went off to join Brighton & Hove Albion.
In 2015 while Coughlan was on his way to winning a national league medal and the first of two All-Star nominations, Hutchinson was capped by the Irish U19 national team.
In September 2017, the same month Coughlan was walking around the parade on All-Ireland final day, Hutchinson made his debut for a Brighton team that were now operating in the Premier League.
In May 2018 though, the same month Coughlan would play his last championship game for Waterford, Hutchinson, coming off an injury himself, was released by Brighton and at 21 years of age came home.
He’d play a bit with Waterford FC, then a bit with the Waterford county footballers, but now he’s in with the Waterford hurlers. And despite how long the lad went without even pucking a ball, it doesn’t surprise Coughlan that Hutchinson got the call up from Liam Cahill.
There are a lot of reasons why Coughlan is enthused about this weekend’s Munster final and the team’s future under Liam Cahill.
The dynamism Calum Lyons has brought to the half-back line. The height and athleticism Jack Fagan from De La Salle brings to the forwards. Tadhg de Búrca back to his best after that injury. The fact that the pillars of the team — Jamie Barron, Kevin Moran, Stephen O’Keeffe — are still there, as dependable and motivated as ever. But “the big one” for him is the potency and potential of Hutchinson.
“I don’t think people realise how good he is — or at least how good he’ll be. I’ve witnessed it first hand from marking him in training the last two years and the fella is an absolute freak.
“I’ve never seen someone able to take up something or at least pick up something again and be as good at it as he has with the hurling. He came home that time from Brighton and within three months he was the best player on the Ballygunner team.
In his first championship back with the club, Hutchinson averaged five points a game. This past summer he went for a ridiculous 7-21, an average of more than 1-5 a game, again all from play, to help Coughlan as the team’s joint captain to lift a seventh consecutive county championship for the club.
“It’s not just his stickwork,” says Coughlan. “It’s his feet, his athleticism, his ability to turn, probably things he got from playing the soccer at the professional level. And that’s what Dessie is: a pro. He’s as close as you can get to a professional hurler.
“There was one night I was marking him in training last year and he absolutely skinned me three or four times. Now, I was used to marking enough nippy corner forwards from playing with Waterford and was able to hold my own on some of them but Dessie was a different level.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing how he gets on against Limerick and in the years ahead. The ball has to come into him in the right manner and if the opposition are dropping fellas back or man-handle him it will be challenging, but I still feel that he’s one that will thrive. He’s going to make a massive difference to Waterford in the years ahead.”
Although not as mesmeric a talent as Hutchinson, Coughlan in a way can relate. At one stage the idea of him playing county hurling also seemed unimaginable because of how long he went without having a hurley in his hand. He didn’t pick up one until he was 11. And even when he did, he soon let it down again.
He was born and lived in Monasterevin before the bypass, and so the summer of ’98 while his adopted county was ebullient over the exploits of Tony Browne and Paul Flynn in their best season since ’63, Coughlan himself was swept up in the magic of Micko and Glenn Ryan as Kildare made it to their first All-Ireland football final in 63 years; it’s one of most vivid sporting childhood memories, Ryan bringing the Delaney Cup into the local summer camp for Coughlan to gape at.
A little after Kildare won it again in 2000, though, work prompted Coughlan’s parents to relocate to Waterford, just by the regional hospital. Coughlan fell in with the local primary school’s hurling team, and after St Mary’s played in a Sciath na Scoil final, Mick Mahony, father of his friend Philip, mentioned that he should come down to the club.
“I played randomly for the school in sixth class but then when I went up to the club I didn’t like it at the start and gave it up for a year or two. I was a shy child, I suppose, adjusting to a new county.”
Then Derek McGrath came into his life.
In De La Salle College, hurling wasn’t a game just for the jocks, the lads who’d play Harty. The way Coughlan’s English teacher viewed it, it was a game for everybody, shy kids and all. Together with Dermot Dooley, a handy hurler himself from Coolderry, he ran inter-class first-year lunchtime leagues.
Coughlan was charmed by their infectious enthusiasm and encouragement so kept at it. By the year’s end, he still wasn’t able to make the Freshers first team. But he made their B team. Enough to pluck up the vim to go back up to Ballygunner. He was on his way.
He doesn’t remember hearing that at 13 it was too late to start hurling, or at least ever paying attention to it. He wasn’t going to be limited by such myths, even if he was simultaneously aware of his own limits.
“I suppose I missed out on a lot of the ground hurling most kids would have done at that age, at least back then. But I’d always say I’m a full-back and I haven’t had do a whole lot of hurling there in general! Not to down myself but I wouldn’t have to hurl there as much as an Aussie Gleeson.”
All the time he’d develop, bit by bit, even if, as he explains, it wasn’t always step by step; the path was rarely straightforward.
“I think I started Dean Ryan [U16 colleges]. I didn’t start Harty Cup my first year when the lads won the All-Ireland but I did when we won it in my final year. I played minor for Waterford but it didn’t go that well; we got knocked out early on by Cork. I played two years U21 but we didn’t win anything and then at 22 I wasn’t playing for any Waterford team at all.
“That really motivated me. A lot of my friends were playing for the seniors and I nearly felt left out of it all. I said to myself, ‘Jesus, I need to do something here.’ I only started lifting weights around then. I then had a decent year with the college [UCC] and the club and Andy Moloney who was over the seniors put in a good word for me to Michael Ryan. I’ll always be grateful to Michael for calling me up.
Coughlan, a lead accountant by profession, would go on to be that steady, almost anonymous, class of citizen that every county team has and needs. You maybe didn’t hear his name too often — pronounced the way Dubliners say ‘Coughlan’ rather than how they do in Cork — but he’ll take that as a compliment. The job to him was all about avoiding the limelight rather than inviting it.
“It’s not the sexiest position on the field, trying to stop your man from scoring. If you’re not heard of, you’re doing a good job.”
More often than not, he did. While the swashbuckling team of the noughties constantly had difficulties in the position once Seán Cullinane hung up the number three jersey, trying everyone from Fergal Hartley to Ken McGrath there to pay Paul, in the Derek McGrath era, Coughlan’s consistency would mirror and shape Waterford’s.
From 2015 to 2017 they contested every All-Ireland semi-final, three national league finals, two Munster finals, and an All-Ireland final. While the sweeping Tadhg de Búrca often covered and protected him, Coughlan often covered for them all.
Jackie Tyrrell was someone struck by the “telepathic relationship” they had. “Go back and watch any recent Waterford game and count the number of times Coughlan deflects a ball into de Burca’s path,” he’d observe in 2017.
“He always knows where his sweeper is and never worries about getting the ball into his own hand if he can get into de Burca’s. That’s what modern full-back play is all about.”
And yet only 12 months later he was gone. Retired. At just 28. His last full championship game for Waterford would be the 2017 All-Ireland final against Galway. A few months after breaking his hand in Waterford’s first game of the 2018 championship, a defeat to Clare in Ennis, he decided to finish up around the same time Derek McGrath announced he was finishing up too.
He’ll admit, the two were not unconnected.
“I know 28 is young enough but I felt that I had given as much as I could. Things were getting very busy at work; I was after finishing my last years of exams and then just after getting a new role in my job as a lead accountant with CBRE [a global commercial firm]. And Derek leaving was massive.”
Right to the end his bond with the teacher that enticed him into taking up and falling in love with the sport was unique.
A few days after he sustained that hand injury in Ennis that they knew right away ruled him out of the rest of the championship, Coughlan decided he’d join his parents and a few siblings on a holiday to Nice; he was no use to anyone staying around in Waterford and showing his face at training just for the sake of it. Before he went, McGrath called over to the house with a get-well card.
“I was asleep upstairs when he dropped it over so I knew nothing about it. When I opened the envelope I found a few quid for the holiday, while what he wrote in the card was so heartfelt but typical of the kind of character he is.
He looks back at it all with only fondness. Even the tough days, like that 2017 All-Ireland final loss. “It’s a pity we didn’t win the fecking thing but it was a massive event, great to be part of. Even though we didn’t win an All-Ireland or any of those Munster finals, I wouldn’t change any of it for the world. We had a great lifestyle, giving it all we had.”
Playing and competing with a club like Ballygunner has been as ideal a transition as possible for such a conscientious player. Though it is a change. “It’s a different mindset. With the county you were always watching every single little thing you ate or did, even in the offseason”
He’d like to be gearing up for another preseason with the club soon. Now that inter-county is back, he hopes that people, especially the GAA, haven’t given up on the idea and demand for a blitz-like provincial and All-Ireland club championship.
“In Ballygunner we were sick that Munster wasn’t able to be played but hopefully it could be in the New Year. I think every club would love if they could have a go against the best teams. Once there’s a will, there’s a way. You could run it off in five weeks, and all we’d need is five weeks’ notice that it’s going ahead.”
As it is, 2021 promises to be an eventful one for him. He and his partner are expecting a child in January. At least he hopes that it’ll be January. Might be late December.
It won’t be the end of the world if they’re just overage. Hutchinson was a December baby while Daddy caught up and prospered as well.
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