'The most brutal of all': What’s the hardest thing in Irish sport?
Boxer Jason Quigley and his partner's daughter Sierra, age 9, during a training session in Ballybofey, Donegal, in May 2020. Picture: Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile
The question is a simple one, but the answers were varied, to say the least.
What’s the hardest thing in Irish sport?
It was sparked by a throwaway sentence in an American sports book long forgotten, which suggested that hitting a ball pitched by a Major League baseball player was the hardest thing in sport.
(All sport, if you don’t mind.)
Once the chauvinism of the comment was discarded, it got me thinking.
And making phone calls about the hardest thing in Irish sport, a concept left deliberately vague.
Former All-Ireland-winning manager Donal O’Grady went back to America first: “The quarter-back dealing with a collapsing defence, trying to read a defence up the field while opposing players start to close in on him, intent on hitting him hard - that’s a pretty tough situation, you’d have to say.
“In terms of Irish sport, I’ve always thought that a hooker taking a crucial throw-in to a line-out is under huge pressure. Particularly if it’s, say, the last couple of minutes, the team’s six points down and needs a try but the line-out is near his own line.
“There’s a game to be won so they have to get up the field - the safe option, throwing it to the number two, isn’t as attractive as being more positive, going further back the line to start an attack.
“But the pressure there - the hooker’s relying on the lifters, the jumpers, the call that he gets from the captain or the guy running the line-out, the opposition is trying to figure him out, maybe the wind is howling down the field and the touch judge is on his shoulder making sure it’s not a crooked throw . ..
“‘Oh, the hooker’s darts are off today’, but look at the amount of things that have to go his way to get it right.”
Dublin footballer Mossy Quinn’s first thoughts were of the hardship involved in being a hurling goalkeeper, but then he added: “The fact I've played team sports my whole life, I'm drawn to people who are competing in individual sports.
“Every sportsperson will have a team around them to help them prepare for competition, but I have huge respect for the Irish golfers such as Shane Lowry, Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley who have survived and excelled on the world stage in such a highly skilled and mentally challenging sport.
“When it comes to toughest, though, it’s hard to look past Irish boxers. Toughness and boxing often go hand in hand but for me it's as much about what fighters go through in advance of the actual bouts that defines their toughness.
“The physical regimes that the likes of Mick Conlan, Katie Taylor and Carl Frampton put their bodies through to prepare for the big fight nights is incredible - the level of detail required in their diet to make fight weight while still training at a high level, and that’s before they even step into the ring.
A fair argument. What would Michael Conlan himself say?
“I'd probably say making weight too, but in terms of something that's hard to achieve in boxing I'd go with the challenge of becoming a crossover star like an Ali.” (His older brother Jamie had an interesting view of that hardship: “Making weight would be the obvious one for a boxer, but it’s just part of the job and everyone has to do it. In terms of other sports, I'd probably go for the perfect hat-trick (left, right, header).”)
The extra layer of difficulty for the individual sportsman struck a chord with Galway United manager John Caulfield.
“What always impressed me was the guys going in the Tour de France, racing non-stop for 20 days, maybe one day off in the whole lot of it, up and down mountains in savage heat...
“I always thought that that must be the most brutal of all sports. I always felt cycling, and in particular the Tour de France, had to be mind over matter for any Irish guy who took part in it. Insane.
“Any individual sport is tough - my brother was a very good runner in his own time, he won a scholarship to the States and when he’d come home on holidays he’d keep up his training - he might get up at 6 in the morning, run from Enniskeane to Dunmanway and back again, have his breakfast, go back to bed - and then get up later in the day and go training again.
“He was trying to make the breakthrough, like millions more, and cycling is the same.”
Sheer physical punishment is certainly a challenge, but are there other, less obvious hardships?
Dr Éanna Falvey, chief medical officer of World Rugby, sees location as a potential issue for many Irish sportspeople.
“Specifically, not being from Dublin.
“I mean it in geographical terms, the farther you live the more commuting the members of your team have to do.
Moving beyond the training field or gym broadens the terms of engagement: former Olympian Jerry Kiernan’s suggestion is another interesting angle.
“I’d pick swimming as the hardest thing in Irish sport on the basis that swimmers are up in the morning very early to train from a very young age.
“I used to teach a boy called Stephen Manley in second and sixth class, and in second class his mother was bringing him to the swimming pool every morning, and he’d come to class afterwards.
“He continued that through primary and secondary school, and then he went on scholarship to America. He was also a good student, there were never excuses - ‘I can’t do that because I have training’, nothing like that.
“And it was his mother who’d bring him to training every morning, so it’s a commitment from the family as well.
“Now if you asked him about it he might say, ‘but I loved doing that’, but when I hear people talk about the sacrifices they make, that annoys me.
“I’d be of the opinion that most sportspeople don’t train hard at all.
“I’m not just talking about our local sports, I’m talking about professional soccer players as well - they do enough, they do what’s required, but they don’t train hard in relation to rowers, long-distance runners, swimmers, certain individual sports which are cardiovascular-based.”
We did leave the question vague, after all.
From next week on we’ll have a deeper dive here with a single interview subject on the matter. If you have a view on the hardest thing in Irish sport get in touch here: michael.moynihan@examiner.ie
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