'I deal with them': Mary I manager Jamie Wall on life's challenges

The Mary I manager reflects on injury, imposter syndrome, law, ambition and finding peace with the pace of his own life

Jamie Wall of Kilbrittain watches the closing moments of the All-Ireland Junior Club Championship final match between Easkey of Sligo and Kilbrittain at Croke Park in Dublin. Pic: Piaras Ó Mídheach/Sportsfile

Friday evening’s Fitzgibbon Cup final hardly gets a look in. The centrepiece of Jamie Wall’s week is snubbed and squeezed out.

Fifty-three minutes of conversation come and go without mention of Darragh McCarthy, Adam Screeney, and the rest of the UL cast. The conversation menu is more life orientated.

And anyways, when the Mary Immaculate manager is up until “stupid o’clock” each night scrutinising every feature of the UL cast, there’s little reason to have his Tuesday lunch break also taken over by match minutiae.

The venue is Red Bean Roastery at the bottom of Cork City’s South Mall. Jamie sends a text to say he’ll be over by 1.10pm. He’s finishing at his desk the spaghetti and meatballs he batch-cooked the evening before.

The lunch hour disappears. So too does the flat white and pot of tea. The tape is still rolling. In hurried tone, I tell him there’s one or two crevices still to explore. His reply is to “drive on”.

He’s in no rush on this Tuesday afternoon, hasn’t been for some time now.

The “mad rush” of his early wheelchair existence is no more. There’s clarity on who he is and where he'd like to go. The pace undertaken in attempting to reach these various destinations will not be forced.

What’s for him, won’t pass him. And what isn’t, he’s comfortable enough in himself to allow pass.

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Work is a stone’s throw up the street. He’s in his final year of solicitor training at RDJ law firm.

In the same month of June 2014 when his legs ceased to function and his lived reality was cruelly redrawn, Jamie received his final exam results from Mary I.

A qualified teacher that never took to the top of a classroom. The ambition slid past and there are no regrets.

His classroom instead became the Mary I dressing-room. A different group of 35 lads every September. The same job of finding out what makes each tick.

“That is why I don't feel the loss of not being in a classroom because the things I loved about teaching, I am still getting to do,” says Wall.

Wall manages from the sidelines during the Fitzgibbon Cup Final against UL in 2024. Pic: Natasha Barton/Inpho

“This week aside, for the other six months of the year it is ‘how is this fella getting on’, ‘did you notice his form is a bit off’, ‘did your man pass his exams’, 'what can we do here’? You are trying to help them come along as lads, help them develop.” 

Law and Accounting, at UL, was the one non-teaching course Jamie put on his CAO application back in 2011. It propped up his list of preferences. When the application was filled out a second time in 2018, it had been promoted to first choice.

After “losing” two years in hospital and trying to set himself up to live independently once again, it was time to start thinking about the rest of his life.

There began four years at the University of Limerick, the FE1s endured and survived, nine months at Blackhall, where Friday trips to Dalymount became his favourite Dublin pastime, and, finally and presently, onto the South Mall where his three-year traineeship reaches full-time later this year.

“I applied to RDJ because I wanted to be back in Cork and had heard really good things about the firm in terms of its culture,” he explains.

“I'm 33 now, going to be qualifying at the end of the year. I didn't want to be qualifying in somewhere in Dublin at 34, working there for two, three years, and then at 36, 37, saying, ‘right, how am I going to get back to Cork’.

“That is not to say I didn’t enjoy my time in Dublin. Going to Bohs matches was my thing when I was up there. I went to the league opener against Rovers at the Aviva last year, and ended up sitting beside Ross Tierney's mam, Ross’ partner, and their child.

“When Ross scored the winner, I could see his partner wanted to celebrate, but she had a child in one hand and a bag of chips in the other. I was like, ‘give me the bag of chips’, and so I held her bag of chips while she celebrated Ross' goal.” 

Jamie contemplated tying a bow on his Mary I involvement following the 2024 Fitzgibbon final win over today’s opponents. The perfect note on which to depart.

Chatting to RDJ managing partner Jamie Olden one nondescript afternoon, he threw into conversation his intention to step away from soft January sidelines.

“I said to him, ‘I think that's it now, going to get the head down and focus on the traineeship’, and he was like, ‘no, don't do that, you have to have your things that you enjoy’. I was looking at the next year and a half thinking this, but he was looking at the next 10 years knowing you have to have the things that make you you.

“Whether for better or worse, I am pig-headed with a lot of things, but in a professional sense, I was very much more open to listening because the imposter syndrome can be real when you go into these offices. In this sense, I didn't have that bulletproof confidence.

“Even in life, people say you are strong or whatever. I am kind of like, ‘no, I'm just being alright with it’. And not even alright with it; hated lots of it, very upsetting, and still is at times, but I've always been able to say, ‘just fucking do it, you're grand’. I've been lucky that I have that.” 

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Jamie celebrates with brother Philip after Kilbrittain win the All-Ireland Club Junior Hurling Championship Final at Croke Park in January. Pic: James Lawlor/Inpho

Eleven and a half years on, the well-meaning comments continue. Strangers with the best of intention. They see nobody else on a Fitzgibbon or Sigerson sideline in a chair. When was the last time the Croke Park sideline hosted a wheelchair-using manager?

His story and proactive response are his business. By the same token, it’s reflex politeness that one would pass on their admiration and respect if ever in his orbit.

Nobody approaches him wanting to put their foot in it. Nobody knows that better than the chair-user himself.

He won’t always be in the humour to field well-meaning questions or well-intentioned observations. He will always, though, ask the name of the individual chatting to him and thank them for their good wishes. Basic manners are basic manners.

“Sometimes people get the autopilot which is where you are trying not to be rude, but you are also saying to yourself, ‘I don't particularly want to fucking talk about this right now’. Then sometimes in the right setting, you think, ‘no, I actually have time to give a thoughtful answer here’. It depends on the person and setting.

“I have seen so many people take different routes at it. The one thing I would always come back to is that person is trying to say something nice. But also, you don't want to have that chat in certain settings, like if someone comes up and starts talking to you in a crowded bar. Be polite, say thanks. 99% of people get it from your demeanour that it's polite but it’s also shutting it down.

“I do appreciate people with good wishes. Getting in and out of the car, older people, in particular, come up and they'd really earnestly offer you help, and I'd kind of be like, ‘I am way better at this than you!’ Thank you so much, but you'd probably struggle to lift this chair in and out,” he says, smiling.

The approaches were not always met with such self-assuredness. Questions such as ‘how are you getting on’ or ‘what’s the plan’ used to bring deep unease. The answers frequently changed. He wasn’t even sure of the answer at times. The future was then uncertain. The future frightened him.

“At this stage in my life, I know who I am. I really do. As I said, I have more flaws and problems than we can get into, but I very much know who I am, and pretty comfortable with who I am. And that's not a license to be a prick, by the way.

“It is more that you are comfortable in your skin. You are comfortable that these are the problems that I have to cope with on a daily basis, and I deal with them, and then these are the strong things that I am bringing to it too.

“Ultimately, there is nothing happens that you can't and that you don’t have to keep going from, so you may as well keep going when you can.

“Whether it is a really important thing like life or death, an unimportant thing like sport and you lose a big match, or something like an injury, and I know at the start of this, I felt like, I can't even be seen to be happy.

“But actually, if something is funny, just laugh. Because at the end of the day, you are going to be inside in your bed later on tonight and it is going to hit you anyway, and that is when you may as well be sad.

“The lows will hit you anyway, so you have to have a bit of craic when you can.” 

He met a fella from Abbeydorney while in Killarney recently. The North Kerry local told Jamie he still has the electronic scoreboard from the 2024 afternoon of Mary I’s 2-14 to 1-15 Fitz final win over UL. It represented his second win as manager, added to the 2016 breakthrough triumph where he was part of Eamonn Cregan’s management.

He’s 10 years on the Mary I sideline. The ambition is there to progress, at some point, onto an inter-county sideline. He previously looked after the Cork U15 and U16 development squads. 

There is no mention of not progressing further up that red ladder. His words instead return to the trust he holds in that simple creed that what’s for him won’t have passed him.

“It's funny how life works out that certain things I thought I wanted at a different time, and did want, but maybe was better off not getting at that time because I’m now considerably older in terms of my own head, more mature, and would do certain things very differently if given the chance than I would have years ago.

“If I was in a position to do the right thing, then yeah, but equally I am not of a mind to go forcing anything because right now I have got a lot to be at in terms of learning at work and elsewhere, so I am not panicked. I am not in a rush. I was in a rush when I was younger, a mad rush.

“Part of that was because I felt I should still be involved in this in a different way, whereas now, there is only one lad left in the Cork panel my age, Damo [Cahalane], and Séamie [Harnedy] is two years older,” reasons the former Cork minor and U21 hurler and footballer.

“Now I am strangely more relaxed with that. I am like, just tip away, do your bits. Learn, keep learning. I am way more comfortable to be like, it'll come if it's supposed to come. And if it is not supposed to come, it won't.”