The Big Interview: Cathal Freeman on life as a doctor and a love for Mayo's hurling heartland

The Tooreen native aspired to be a senior hurler with his club more than a senior footballer with Mayo, though he achieved both

BAS MAN: Cathal Freeman says hurling was his first love, though he excelled for Mayo's footballers too. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie

The week before his goal and a couple of points helped his club win through to an All Ireland hurling final, Dr Cathal Freeman took time out from his hectic working and sporting schedule to make it down to Powerscourt, Wicklow, for the wedding of an old friend.

He and Rob Hennelly go way back, just as he does with Hennelly’s groomsman, Aidan O’Shea. It started with soccer, when the three of them “trained like dogs” as members of the Mayo U14 Kennedy Cup squad. Freeman played central right mid, O’Shea his occasional partner to his left. Hennelly, you won’t be surprised to learn, played in goals, and ahead of the big tournament in Limerick shaved his hair for the occasion.

By 2008 they were in Croke Park playing in a minor football All-Ireland. Freeman notching four points from wing forward, O’Shea again alongside him on the 40 kicking a couple of bombs himself, and Hennelly between the posts, saving bullets, this time sporting bleached streaks on top.

Probably the greatest measure though of the bond he shares with the two Breaffy boys is the summer they all played hurling.

Prior to 2010 O’Shea and Hennelly wouldn’t have picked up a hurley in their lives, or at least swung one in an actual match; in Breaffy it just wasn’t a thing that you did. But Freeman was from Tooreen, that rare place in the county where hurling is not only played but is king.

Growing up he aspired to be a senior hurler with Tooreen more than a senior footballer with Mayo, though he’d fulfil the latter ambition too. The family home had the archetypal gable wall that he’d bang a ball against, all day, all night. He and his older brother Adrian, affectionately known to all as Twink, would play imaginary All-Irelands in the back garden or down on the local club field. Even by the time Adrian was a minor, the pair of them would talk and dream about someday playing in an All-Ireland intermediate hurling final, possibly against Carrickshock, the pair of them calculating that Richie Power, an underage sensation they were closely monitoring at the time, would at some stage guide his club to an intermediate Kilkenny and Leinster title.

Then in May 2010, Adrian was driving along a straight barren Australian road with a few friends when a driver coming the opposite way fell asleep at the wheel, resulting in Twink and one of his friends dying. When his body returned home, Cathal gave the eulogy, ending it by reciting the Hurler’s Prayer, well, because the great referee had, prematurely or not, called Twink’s name and in his time he’d hurled like a man, he’d played the game. But where did that leave Cathal himself with the game when it had so many associations with Twink? That’s where a couple of other brothers stepped up.

“I actually went back to the football quicker than I went back to the hurling after Adrian died,” says Freeman. “I really struggled going back to the hurling. And Aidan and Robbie saw that, so all through that summer they came over and trained with Tooreen. They didn’t play in any official games because they couldn’t officially transfer but they trained away and played in a few challenge games. Aidan scored 1-1 one day in Athleague.

“Sometimes you hear people talk about Aidan and indeed Rob, questioning their humility. But those people don’t know them. What they both did for me that summer tells you a lot about who they really are. I mean, they had never played hurling before! And yet they were prepared to go out and play a game they were complete novices at because they knew how important it was to me and that I was going to need to rely on it and them to get through that time.” 

So that’s part of the reason why he was down in Powerscourt a couple of weeks there before Christmas. He had to be there for Hennelly’s big day after Hennelly had been there for him during his toughest days.

For a period of time the two of them even ran a business together, back when Freeman worked in the technology sector. All along though Freeman had a sense his true calling was in medicine, “something with a bit of soul in it” as the mother of Donal O’Sullivan, his old NUIG Sigerson teammate and Limerick goalkeeper, once put it. Urged on by that sentiment, Freeman at 28 took the plunge to go back to college to train to be a doctor.

Midway through his studies Covid hit, shortly upon which Freeman decided to combine one of the great passions of his life with another. One morning while obviously isolating and meant to be studying, he read on his phone about a James Campbell in England who had ran a marathon in his back garden. Within minutes Freeman was tweeting on his phone that if he got enough retweets he’d similarly run 42k around a patch of grass – only this time while soloing a sliotar on his hurley – to raise a few grand for the Irish Cancer Society and the HSE to acquire then-precious personal protection equipment.

It took on a life of its own. The tweet went out on a Tuesday. He ran – well, soloed – the marathon in six hours and 55 minutes on the Sunday (“I didn’t want a case where people would be thinking, ‘Would that fella go run the thing rather than keep talking about it?!’”). It went viral, with Mayo GAA TV streaming it live on Facebook and roping in a series of commentators and co-commentators ranging from Mike Finnerty and Liam Horan to Tommy Walsh and Andy Moran to entertain the audience; sure what else would they be at when, as Horan quipped, it was the only live sport in Europe that day? Sometime after Freeman had completed those 1,400 laps of the 30m-circuit on a patch of grass close to his house on the UL campus and the money was all totted up, he had raised €65,000.

He graduated last summer and is now on his intern year, moving from hospital to hospital every few months. A stint in Portlaoise ruled him out of committing to play for Mayo in 2022, but in recent months he saw to it that he was stationed in Castlebar and living in Ballyhaunis so he could cut down on commuting and give this assault at an All-Ireland club title everything in his power. This past week he began in University Hospital Galway. Another place where it’s manic, people are overstretched but he’s fully absorbed.

“I love the job, though not necessarily the conditions we’re all working in. It’s chaotic but the work itself is so bloody interesting. On one hand it’s dead serious and I mean literally; we’re often dealing with bad news, usually imparted by a senior doctor or consultant, with us interns then on the ward following up on it. But at the same time there’s this weird duality where while all around you people are sick, at the same time people are only mad to have the chat and bit of humanity and interaction. There is an unbelievable level of humanity to be found in a hospital.” 

BIG BALL: Cathal Freeman in full flow for the Mayo footballers. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie

He’s thinking of a patient he had there a couple of months ago. A man in his late-30s, long-term cancer, complex case. After undergoing abdominal surgery he had to be fed through a tube before finally getting back to eating but he was a picky eater, and with them unable to find little to his satisfaction, he was losing weight. Eventually Freeman came across a solution and started ordering Chinese takeaways on his shift.

“I’m not a fan of Chinese. But he is. And I know for him those takeaways gave him the biggest kick out of anything. I was off for a few days when he got discharged and when I came back he had left three books for me. The Count of Monte Cristo. 1984 by George Orwell. And Meditations by [the Roman emperor] Marcus Aurelius.

“I’d read some Marcus Aurelius before and had spotted the book on his bedside locker, so I picked it up and we talked about it. Here was this young man, very ill, reading up on stoicism. And he told me, ‘It has really helped me.’ He wasn’t just reading it passively or for the sake of it. We had a full discussion about this idea of making the most of whatever is within your control and accepting the things that are outside your control.

“I just thought, isn’t that powerful for someone in his position to have that outlook? And where else would you get to develop those kind of relationships and have that kind of human interaction with someone than in a hospital?

“I’m in an unbelievably privileged position. If you’re a patient sitting in front of me, I essentially know the deepest secrets in relation to your heath, your social circumstances, what’s going on at home. We might never have met each other before but suddenly I have an active part in your welfare to ensure all this information can be entrusted with me and I do everything I can within reason to help you.” 

*** 

If there’s one thing he finds in this world being as privileged as a doctor in a hospital, it’s that he hails from Tooreen. It might be one of those classic blink-and-you’ll-miss-it spots, with no pub, no shop, just a church and two hurling fields – named in memory of Adrian ‘Twink’ Freeman – but still it has a sense of community and identity as vibrant as any within the county.

“One of the lads put it well in an interview before the semi-final when he said, ‘I’m from Tooreen first and a hurler second.’ I couldn’t put my finger on it for a long time but I think it goes back to something ingrained into us at national school. We had a chant there that Tooreen is the best place in the world. And I remember growing up as a kid actually thinking it was a fact, not an opinion. I know now that’s not necessarily the case but we had that sense that it was different to anywhere else. Thirteen of the fellas who started the county final last year went to Tooreen national school.” 

The others have a special attachment to the place too. The club was founded in 1957 by a 15-year-old called Michael Henry who fell in love with the game while boarding in St Mary’s, Galway, for a year. Corner back for the current team is a Conor Henry, two generations on. He grew up in Oranmore, now lives in Dublin, never lived in Tooreen a day in his life. And yet it’s the only team he’s played for. As long as the commute has always been, the pull of Tooreen has always been stronger.

There have been bleak years, stretches when not everyone was all in on the cause.

Freeman remembers his senior debut in 2006 and the excitement coursing through him when the team manager called up to his parents’ house and informed them that Croke Park had given permission for their then 15-year-old to play in the county semi-final against Ballyhaunis. 

IN THE THICK OF IT: Tooreen's Cathal Freeman at the bottom of a ruck in the recent All-Ireland semi-final.

“I remember looking at my parents, ‘I’m feckin’ playing here, this is my dream!’ But coming back in the car afterwards I had this sense of disappointment. We hadn’t been beaten, the game had finished in a draw and I had come on, but I was thinking, ‘This is what I always wanted to do but do enough of the rest of these lads care enough?’ 

“I remember in 2009 I had broken my leg and the week of the county final Adrian coming home, beside himself with frustration, which was out of character for him, because there had been only 12 fellas at training. Even as recently as 2014 I remember Shane Boland and myself sitting in his kitchen table, writing out a list of fellas who we felt we could rely on to make Tooreen as important as anything in their lives. We came up with only seven.” 

Now that would stretch well into the twenties. He thinks of a fella called Niall Robinson. He’s about 25 years old, has never played a minute of senior championship in his life. But yet he’s central to it and feels central to it all, contributing in his own way; when the team had a mini-mystery tour a few days before Christmas, it was Robinson as the team social captain who organised the bus.

At the other end of the spectrum then you have Shane Boland’s brother, Fergal, who has won a national league and played in All Irelands with the county footballers. He’s always come from Tooreen first but now since he was dropped by Kevin McStay a few months ago, Tooreen and hurling has taken even greater priority.

“We’ve seen a side of him we’ve never seen before, to where he’s become the most dominant player on the pitch and probably the most important personality within the group. He’s just loved by everyone because he has no ego. And that’s widespread across the group. You don’t have to demand anything of anyone because lads are so bought into everything. There’s an appreciation that this is greater than what I am and what my individual wants are.

“It didn’t happen overnight. As Ernest Hemingway said, it happened slowly at first, then all of a sudden. We’ve been lucky. We’ve had success, people like success and to be part of it, and it’s just grown.” Over the last five years they’ve won an astonishing four Connacht titles, a haul Freeman could not have envisaged in those kitchen table chats with Shane Boland or even his brother Adrian the year before he died. But still there was the echo of earlier conversations between them, that someday Tooreen would make and win an All Ireland intermediate final.

Now here they are; after semi-final defeats to Ballyragget of Kilkenny (2018), Fr O’Neill’s of Cork (2020) and then Naas (2022), they negotiated Liatroim of Down last month. Their final opponents may not be Carrickshock or any team from Kilkenny; instead it’s Monaleen, the same club his good friend Donal O’Sullivan plays football for. Walking into Croke Park today, Freeman will sport a wristband, as will many of his teammates. It was designed by his namesake Alan and former county and clubmate: the blue and white representing Tooreen and the white and red symbolising their football club Aghamore. Ingrained in text is the word ‘Twink’, just as it’s enscribed into every club jersey of Tooreen’s.

Quite a number of those players never met Adrian Freeman. “He’s more a figment of their imagination at this stage than anything else,” says Cathal, or at least an ideal. And for Cathal himself wearing the band is a way of acknowledging and honouring his brother’s memory every day; the only time he takes it off is at work. Every day Twink, his life, his death, remains with his brother.

“I have a very clear appreciation from what happened to Adrian of my own mortality, and that in the time you have that you might as spend doing things that are meaningful to you. I’m fortunate. I have an able body, able mind and am able to use them in the cause of such things.” Like serving the cause of Tooreen or serving on the wards of our hospitals, discussing Marcus Aurelius and ordering Chinese.