'The wheel does turn' - Ballyea star Paul Flanagan's hurling philosophy
UNDER LIGHTS: Paul Flanagan of Ballyea ahead of the 2022 AIB Munster GAA Hurling Senior Club Championship Final.
It keeps churning. After a crushing defeat at the hands of Cork, Clare had to get away. In the summer of 2021, they set sail for the Aran Islands and let loose. David Fitzgerald had watched from the sidelines as his side lost out in a thriller and Paul Flanagan could see he was still low.
“The wheel does turn,” he offered. This feeling, as fierce as it is, will be fleeting. The ground is shifting beneath our feet. Fast forward one year later.
“It’s mad,” Flanagan says with a shake of his head. “He walked past me and I got the chance to say it to him again last month, only this time he was collecting his All-Star. ‘The wheel always turns.’ I suppose I just think a lot of the time we are our own worst enemy.
“Worrying about stuff outside of our control rather than the potential within ourselves to push on. I found that has helped a lot.
“It comes from an Irish phrase I have used with the boys before: Casann an roth. The idea that, for a long time I would have felt I was stuck. For anyone, if you get stuck in a rut it can happen easy and you don’t realise what is happening outside of it or how you can push yourself out.” He knows that road. Journeyed solitary miles and escaped from a rut to a place where he is at ease. Now he is sitting behind enemy lines in a Limerick city café and totally at home. The school he teaches in, Ard Scoil Rís, is just around the corner and he exchanges formalities with several enthusiastic nearby tables before eventually sitting down.
When he does, the waiter offers a warm welcome to his ‘friend Paul’ and periodically swings by to provide World Cup score updates. Flanagan is among the most popular figures around here and in the game of hurling.
Originally it was because of his story. At this stage the fundamentals are well told, a staple of Clare’s golden era of underage success. He was a product of St Flannan's famed hurling nursery. In 2010 he captained Clare to the minor All-Ireland final. He was a corner-back when they won an U21 title in 2012 and captain when they backed it up a year later.
Then things stalled. After eight long years, Flanagan finally made his first senior championship start in 2020. He knew it all about the game between the white lines; he knew nothing about the one between the ears.
“You are a product of your environment. We were very lucky in a lot of ways that we met Paul (Kinnerk) when we were 18. He brought us up from our first year minor when we won a Munster and lost to Kilkenny in a final. Himself with Donal and Gerry gave us our first sense of what it is to be in a high-performance environment and to achieve within that.
“We got good groundings in the basics. There was a real taste of that. But mentally, it is different.
“It is funny. I look at myself, I was very young and developed in that environment. But I think there does come a point, it takes time, when you get to a stage of knowing yourself to a deeper level and what works for you and what doesn’t.
“I struggled to find that. I remember I went from minor to U21 and started the championship in Cusack Park in 2011. We played Limerick in the first round and we were beaten, knocked out. Going into that game, we’d a meeting in the Temple Gate and I was awash with nerves. I mean frozen with them.
“I was listening to Cyril Lyons talking and began to realise how deeply nervous I was, but I probably didn’t know the effect of it at the time. I felt like it was normal, everyone feels like this. Energy levels way down, struggling to get to the pitch or concentrate.” In recent years he completed a master’s degree in Mental Health, Mental Skills and Performance Psychology. He looked back on his mental preparation and how it provided the perfect template of what not to do.
That realisation dawned partly thanks to education and mainly from experience. In 2019 he went travelling around Australia and Asia and that did wonders. For so long he was trying to build it all up; the key was dialling it back.
Who was he? For too long, Paul Flanagan the hurler. Self-imposed parameters that confined every day, every conversation. Now when people come up and chat with him about the game he can take it for what it is; a part, not the whole.
Flanagan is effusive in his praise for his partner, Sarah. She helped him see the wood from the trees and feel less restricted: “Without a doubt the best thing that ever happened to me.” As he charts his rise, it is clear he wants it to be more than inspirational. There is a strong focus on the clinical. What anyone can achieve with the right system.
“We came from a successful period, but success doesn’t equal performance. I don’t see it as that. if I looked coldly at my own performance over that time, was it to the level? It could’ve been better.
“There was a time where I was completely in the doldrums. Going to training just showing up. No traction in terms of any game feedback because I wasn’t playing. Successive injuries on top of it.
“I had no point to go off and no way to garner confidence. But in an elite environment… I can empathise with anyone in that situation but the one thing I would say, you have to create it for yourself.” What changed?
“When I went back in with Clare, if I wasn’t playing it was fine. Because I was tracking my own performance, my own training, internal games, anything.
“You have to work off something. I wasn’t doing that earlier in my career. Not a hope. I’d go in, train, do a match for the second string come away disappointed without any confidence or work ons.” Every outing carried the same weight. The friendly against Newtownshandrum with Ballyea was as significant as the Munster final against Limerick with Clare. It is about the next frontier, one step at a time. Sitting down at the start of every season listing broad goals proved counterproductive.
“I always say to the boys I am coaching; hurling is so fickle. Don’t get bogged down in that. You have training this week and a match at the weekend, how will you get right for that? Aim to train right today. Having overarching goals for the year, I find it restrictive really.” Before he went travelling, he sat down with strength and conditioning coach Adrian O’Brien, the Kilmallock man who recently joined Clare’s backroom team. Flanagan still remembers walking into West County fitness as a fifth year and asking them for an over-the-counter upper body programme.
He dreamed of being souped-up and supercharged. O’Brien’s philosophy was to boil it down to the essential components. It’s like a chassis of a car, he explained. ‘If the chassis isn’t right, we’re going nowhere.’ Fundamental movements listed out in an app and performed diligently as he was travelling. Rep after rep, minute by minute, one foot in front of the other, moving better day by day.
“I say it to young players as well. I am 5’10, 5’11 on a good day. I can’t be 100kg. I can’t be 90kg even. Ever. I just can’t carry it.
“It was a realisation for me through working with Adrian. You can get strong in those areas but I was conscious I had to be running fit. Essentially, it is still a running sport. You have to be strong but in my position, you have to be able to move. I wasn’t as conscious of that before I went.
I mean you have to consider the all-Irelands of 2010, 2011, 2012 and the context of those teams. Galway, Kilkenny. Big physical sides. That is what we thought it was about.” He returned during the Covid championship and made his debut against Laois in Nowlan Park. Since then, he has been happy to trace that trajectory. He spent so long with the thoughts in his head. It is nice to be able to share them.
It was never a case of stumbling in the dark to suddenly emerging in the light. A tap of trials and tribulations is never turned off. The best week of his life was also the worst. That is how real life can go.
“I haven’t disclosed it really but one thing that was a factor in my life… It coincides with the debut I made in 2020. The game against Laois in Nolan Park. That was a tumultuous week. A great friend of mine was David DOC O’Connor. We were joint at the hip since we were in first year in Flannan’s. He passed away the week before that. His funeral was that week. My best friend…
“It is strange how things happen. I remember saying to his dad afterwards, like, he was my biggest supporter. He loved the craic. Loved going to games.
“We were living together in Limerick shortly before that. It was the most traumatic event I’ve ever had in my life and coincided with one of the best moments of my life.
“I probably relied on the guys around me, my team-mates, just to help me really. Going to training was a release. I trained on the Tuesday night and they really helped me through it.” That support was priceless. It was the currency he most valued. There were times during his Clare career he’d be looking to the sideline waiting for his number to be called. That was never the case with his club. Even while he was merely surviving with the county, he was thriving with Ballyea.
“I always felt when I went back to the club, it is not an element I delve into too much, but I always felt I had good backing there. A genuine belief from people that you were giving your all and had the ability.
“There was probably a consciousness there I wasn’t getting the most out of myself, which is ok for a young player.
“That wasn’t there with Clare at that time. That was a really competitive environment but an environment I struggled with, as much myself as anything. I feel victim to the overarching pressure of it.”
It 2016 they scaled the mountain and won their first ever county senior. They went on to win a Munster that year and three more titles since. One of the standout pictures from their 2016 triumph was Flanagan on the field, celebrating with his grandfather. He is 90 now and still going to games, still relishing it.
It was always a driving factor to deliver a successful period for stalwarts like that. Yet they also did it for themselves. By themselves.
“You talk about the memories that stand out. Stan who plays midfield for us drives a van now, but he previously had a Toyota Corolla, this auburn-coloured thing. Around 2014, we had no numbers at training, really struggling. No one was buying in. No success whatsoever.
“We called a players’ meeting in Ballyea. Anyway, the number of players who turned up was enough to fit in Stan’s car. He turned on the heating and we all just sat in. ‘What are we going to do? We have to change this. There is no point committing all this time.’ We were going nowhere but there was a genuine want to do something.”
They approached Robbie Hogan to come on board and steer the ship. Fergal Hartley joined as a coach. Success started to breed success, 2016 was the fork in the road. Young players surface and want to be part of it.
At one stage in Flannan’s, Flanagan coached the U12s. Limerick star Peter Casey and clubmate Aaron Griffin both featured for that team. “You get some land when you see them tearing around now,” he laughs.
That low ebb is why it is such a source of pride that they were able to pull it all together. Like every club, their dynamic is different and it is special. Griffin is from Lissycasey. Pearse Lillis is Cooraaclare. Tomas Kelly is Shannon Gaels. Cathal O’Connor, Coolmeen. Their first code is football. All committed to one cause and driving it on.
Next up is the formidable challenge of Ballygunner in the Munster final. A 17-point drumming from last year’s quarter-final still stings. Flanagan was a TG4 pundit for the subsequent provincial decider and saw the level they were operating on. The pitch they have to reach. It doesn’t need to be articulated or clarified; they understand what they need to do to take their chance.
Flanagan knows they are outsiders on paper. He also knows the terrain you can’t travel with paper.
“You are where you are. You are there for a reason. It is about this moment. Look, any given day… I know I keep saying this but it triggers for me how fickle the game is. How fleeting it all actually is.”
They’ll set for Semple Stadium and empty themselves into every tackle and turnover for the guts of an hour. When the final whistle sounds, they’ll embrace each other regardless of the outcome. And the wheel will keep on turning.
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