The Club

by Christy O'Connor

  That year, Ger moved to Portlaoise, when he began working there with the AIB. He didn’t have a car at the time, only a bike, and a friend would drive him from Portlaoise to Roslevan and back, twice a week, for club training. Without a car, though, the effort was unsustainable and Ger joined Portlaoise the following year. In 1989, he won his first county medal after Portlaoise beat Camross in the replayed Laois senior final.

  In 1991, Ger got a transfer to the AIB branch in Patrick Street in Limerick and he immediately moved back to St Joseph’s. The following year, he and Siobhán bought a house in Caherdavin, less than a mile from the Clare border. He was back where he belonged. In 1993 he captained the club to the intermediate title, breaking down in tears during his acceptance speech afterwards on the field in Tulla. A year later, he captained the club to its first county senior final appearance in nearly 40 years.

  Outside of work, all he did revolved around Doora-Barefield, and when the club finally began to enjoy success towards the end of his career he absolutely revelled in it. Although he had three young kids, he was still probably the most committed member of that squad. He set immense standards. He radiated positivity and was a man of massive self-belief.

  ‘I’m going to be man-of-the-match today,’ he told us in the dressing-room huddle before the 2001 county final against Sixmilebridge. ‘And I defy any man here to be better than me.’ He had that unwavering conviction in his own ability, but he was also challenging everyone else to try and surpass the standards he had set for himself.

  That 2001 county final was his second-last game for the club because, the following January, Ger and Siobhán and the family moved to Baltimore in the USA, where Ger took up a new position with AIB. Twelve months later, he was promoted to manager of the AIB branch in Carrigaline in Cork.

  He continued his playing career with Carrigaline, where he won his last hurling medal, a South East Cork junior title, in 2003. The Hoeys lived five happy years in Cork until he got news that a vacancy had arisen for manager of AIB Ennis. The conversation with Siobhán about the prospect didn’t last long. They were coming home. Ger started work in April, while Siobhán and the girls moved up in July. They rented a house in Ennis and then bought a site in Doora-Barefield because Ger wouldn’t live anywhere else. The plans were being drawn up for the new house when he passed away.

  Ger’s working life had almost come full circle since he joined the AIB when leaving college. The zeal which he carried on the hurling field sustained him during his professional career. He became a branch bank manager at 30, a grade two manager at 34 and a grade one bank manager at the age of 40. Yet everywhere he went, his Doora-Barefield identity still defined him.

  After he was initially promoted to branch manager in Patrick Street in Limerick, his manager, Denis Brosnan, suggested to him that he might need to take down the framed photograph of the 1999 All-Ireland club-winning side from his office wall in the middle of Limerick City. Ger politely told him that the photograph would not be coming down. The person he had become had been partially shaped by the people on the wall staring down at him.

  The impact of his death cannot possibly be explained in terms of accumulated nostalgia. Ger Hoey was the type of guy who had values and ethics that you would want your own children to adhere to. He was so assiduous in his manners and his remembrance of duty, so faithful to the person he was reared to be, so loving and committed to his family, that it is almost impossible to appreciate fully the magnitude of what he achieved during his short life.

  The night before Ger was waked in his parents’ home in Roslevan, a group of us went to the house together: James, Seánie McMahon, Donal Cahill and myself. Ger’s sister Maeve was sitting outside the back door as we made our way in. ‘The hurlers are here,’ she said quietly. ‘The hurlers are here.’

  We embraced Ger’s brother Davy, who was in the kitchen, before tentatively making our way through the hall and into the front room where Ger was laid out. It was an unbelievable shock to see him in his black suit. But he looked graceful, almost like he was smiling up at us. It was a surreal image, and it was impossible to fully grasp that he was gone. One of his old hurleys was resting against the coffin, his St Joseph’s jersey was draped across its base.

  After we offered our condolences to Siobhán and the family, we waited in the corridor for about half an hour. Nobody was talking. Nobody was doing anything. We didn’t know what to do or where to go. It was like we were suspended in a vacuum of denial and disbelief.

  When we returned for the removal the following evening, the club had arranged for a guard of honour outside the house, and then along the route between the first roundabout heading into Barefield village and the church. Players and officials from the club were lined up on both sides of the driveway, two human chains snaking from the front door to the front gate. After Ger’s coffin was carried to the hearse, Davy pulled Ger’s car around from the back and Siobhán and her three daughters got in. Siobhán was in the passenger seat and she smiled at Davy, before the two of them embraced.

  Maeve Hoey was standing in front of me, just beside the gate. ‘David had always wanted to drive Ger’s car and he would never let him near it,’ she said. ‘I’m sure Ger would never have believed that David would be driving his car at such a slow pace.’

  By the time we made our way to Barefield, the air was biting and raw. As we waited for the funeral cortège to arrive, the numbers for the guard of honour had swelled with the arrival of nine people from Portlaoise, including former Laois players Pat Critchley and Niall Rigney. They all had their green-and-white jerseys draped across their shoulders, their tribute to a man who had won a county title with them 20 years earlier. Less than ten minutes later, the numbers had grown bigger again when a group from Carrigaline joined the line. After the coffin was carried into the church by some of Ger’s colleagues from AIB, four jerseys – St Joseph’s, Portlaoise, Carrigaline and Clare – were draped across it.

  The funeral mass the following day was said by the parish priest, Fr Michael McNamara. During his homily, he told an anecdote from the moment he found out about Ger’s passing and how it triggered a dream he had that night. On the evening Ger passed away, Fr Mac was coming out of Doora church after a parish meeting when he met Lorcan Hassett, who captained the club to the 1999 All-Ireland club title. He told Fr Mac the tragic news and that he was going into the church to say a prayer for Ger.

  ‘I didn’t sleep much that night, and at one stage I had a vision,’ said Fr Mac. ‘There was this big empty room, with a chandelier in the middle. Certain things were reflected from the chandelier and I saw this image of myself and Ger and Lorcan. It was from after the 1999 county final, when I presented the cup to Ger – when I was county board chairman – and then Lorcan made the speech because he was still captain.

  ‘There were other things also reflected from the chandelier. At one stage, I saw this man who has since passed away. At one stage, he was experiencing difficulties and Ger had really helped him. Ger helped a lot of people because that was his nature. They were the primary images from my vision. Of Ger playing hurling and how much he gave to people. It summed him up.’

  Fr Mac also mentioned how Ger sang certain songs – ‘Spancilhill’ and ‘My Lovely Rose of Clare’ – and that he was also learning the words of ‘Slievanamon’, which Siobhán had taught him. Siobhán hailed from Clogheen and her loyalty to Tipperary was unquestioned, but when Ger’s brother John spoke on the altar afterwards he said that he could ‘categorically deny that Ger ever sang “Slievanamon” ’. The Clare blood in him just wouldn’t allow it.

  Mostly, though, John tried to articulate the essence of Ger as best he could. How he always stood for ‘courage, honesty and integrity’. When John struggled to get the final words out, David and Maeve joined him and assisted him. ‘He was a great father, brother and son. A special person who we will never, ever forget.’

  On the last leg of his journey to his final resting place in Templemaley cemetery, the family had de
cided that four groups would carry him home: a group of Ger’s friends, some of his former Carrigaline teammates and friends, and two groups of his former St Joseph’s teammates.

  I was part of the second-last leg of Doora-Barefield players. With the grave looming into view, we passed Ger over to his closest St Joseph’s teammates: Jamesie, Seánie, Donal Cahill, Ciaran O’Neill, Lorcan Hassett and Joe Considine. In a beautiful corner of the cemetery, beneath a large tree, with speckles of early spring sun breaking through the branches, Ger was laid to rest.

  His brother David put three of the jerseys – Portlaoise, Carrigaline and Clare – into the grave. The St Joseph’s jersey had been rolled up by Donal Cahill and given to Siobhán, who was holding on to it tightly. She didn’t want to let it go.

  After everyone had moved on, a group of us remained in the corner, talking, for almost half an hour. Then the lads began filling in the grave, each one taking turns, each shovel of earth acting as a thudding confirmation of the finality of it all.

  When all the earth had been moved and the flowers were placed on top, the funeral undertaker Joe Daly gathered us around him and we said three Hail Marys.

  With Ger finally gone, we all slowly walked up the hill, staring into the bright spring sunshine, but with the darkest shade imaginable lodged in our souls.

  There is no easy way to define death and its impact, but it often feels like larceny. It has a habit of breaking in on us and stealing the irreplaceable. Now that Ger has gone, you wonder: will life in the St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield club ever be the same again? Will hurling even mean anything to us this year? Yet that misses the point. The void which Ger leaves behind reflects the sort of person he was and his understanding of the true perspective in which to view the game he loved and played.

  After the Tyrone footballer Cormac McAnallen passed away in 2004, the legendary sportswriter Tom Humphries elegantly wrote about the impact of his death and the magnitude of mourning which greeted it. Humphries rightly acknowledged that the sport which Cormac McAnallen loved and devoted himself to wouldn’t shrink in importance because he was gone; that it wouldn’t be unseemly for football to be played again and for Tyrone people to lose themselves in the passion of it. It would be fitting and welcome.

  ‘The glory of an All-Ireland does not stay long,’ wrote Humphries. ‘The glory of an honest, robust life is the community’s glory. What made the difference was a full and passionate existence. The best commemoration of a passionate life is passion itself.’

  It doesn’t feel like that now, but as the season unfolds we hope that daily life of the St Joseph’s club will become more vigorous and more visceral than ever before. That the pitches in Gurteen will be singing with kids’ voices and the air will be full of hope and promise. There will be rows and scrapes and good days and bad days, but it will all be fuelled by passion and energy and drive. That’s what Ger Hoey was all about. That’s exactly what he would have wanted.

  The club will be our refuge. Our sanctuary. After Róisín was buried, I didn’t leave the house for three days. When I finally ventured out, the first place I went to was Gurteen. To the hurling wall. A hurley and a sliotar and a wall was all that seemed normal at that time. It was the only place where I could clear my head. Where I could find some peace. No separation.

  The last time I met Ger Hoey was in Drumcliffe cemetery, just five days before he passed away. He was the last person I spoke to before we left the graveyard that day, just after we’d buried Róisín. When I think of the two of them now, I hope they’re in a better place. And if they are, I know that there’s nobody who I could rely on more to keep an eye out for Róisín than Ger.

  4. Down to Business

  On Friday night, 13 February, the senior panel met the new management for the first time. The meeting had originally been planned for the previous week but was cancelled owing to Ger Hoey’s funeral. So in a small function room upstairs in the Auburn Lodge Hotel, a top table had been set up, with a maroon cloth – the club’s colours – draped across it.

  Behind the table, Patsy Fahey was flanked by Brian O’Reilly, the physical trainer on his new management ticket, and John Carmody, who was effectively coming on board as manager. Patsy couldn’t tout Carmody in that capacity before the AGM because Carmody had worked closely with Ciaran O’Neill in the past, and some players might have assumed that he’d recruit O’Neill as part of a new backroom team. O’Neill had managed the team in 2006 and some players on the panel didn’t want him back now. Two more selectors, Vinny Sheedy and Steve Whyte, were sitting on either side of Carmody and O’Reilly. The five lads looked full of ambition, but the player turnout didn’t exactly reflect that zeal. Only 20 players were present, including ten of last year’s starting team, plus four U-21s.

  The club chairman, Tommy Duggan, who was sitting in the front row of the assembled line of chairs, got up to speak just after the meeting was supposed to begin at 8 p.m. He wished the new management team all the best for the season, but his contribution inevitably focused on the tragedy of the previous week and what Ger Hoey had meant to St Joseph’s Doora-Barefield.

  ‘Sometime later in the year, we’ll honour Ger’s memory,’ he said. ‘At the start of a new year, we all have great hopes and intentions. But maybe carry the thought with ye all season that this is the year to really bring the county title back in honour of Ger.’

  Before Patsy spoke, a sheet detailing the schedule and timetable for club senior hurling and football league and championship games was handed out. The league agenda nearly always remains the same, but the championship schedule is dependent on how the Clare hurlers fare in the Munster and All-Ireland championships. Darragh O’Driscoll just gave a wry smile when he looked at the sheet. Adhering to the timetable last year, he booked a holiday in August but missed the championship match against Corofin and lost his place for the next game.

  Patsy spoke next. ‘I’m looking forward to starting,’ he said. ‘I know ye as my friends, former teammates and men with great character. I’m just so looking forward to working with ye. I haven’t seen some of ye for a few years but most of ye know how enthusiastic I am. I had great enthusiasm when I managed Corofin and Gort and if I was jumping up and down the line with those teams, what am I going to be like with Joseph’s? This is a dream job for me. It’s an honour.

  ‘There are just a few things I want to outline from the start. One of my pet hates is bad timekeeping so I don’t want to see any lads coming late to training. My philosophy on training is that we train for one hour fifteen minutes, no more. We train at top speed and with full intensity for that one hour and fifteen minutes and that’s it, we’re gone home. We won’t be keeping lads for over two hours, but we’ll be working on whatever aspects of our game we feel we need to address. From ground hurling, to winning aerial possession, to handpassing. The sessions will be varied and enjoyable, but we want to see leaders emerging at training every night. We want to see guys constantly improving and we want to see infectious enthusiasm. They say that a team should be a mirror image of their coach and that’s what I want.’

  Then he went through his backroom team, introducing each one of them individually. Brian O’Reilly, a former Kilrush Shamrocks footballer living in Doora, had trained numerous teams over the years and was last involved with St Joseph’s in 1996 when he was on board as physical trainer early in the season. Brian’s arrangement would be broadly similar again this time around.

  ‘Brian was delighted to be asked and delighted to be asked by one of his own,’ said Patsy. ‘He will work on our fitness for the next few months and then he’ll slip away when the hurling begins. And then he’ll come back every so often to top up our fitness.’

  Vinny Sheedy was a former player and a close friend of Patsy’s.

  ‘He’s already with the juniors, so he will be a good link for me to have between both squads,’ Patsy said. ‘I respect his opinion on hurling and you need guys who are going to be around the whole time. And I can guarantee everyone here that
Vinny Sheedy will not miss a single training session this year.’

  Steve Whyte wouldn’t be able to match that 100 per cent commitment, simply because of his job. ‘Steve is a farmer and he has to go to the mart every Thursday evening,’ said Patsy. ‘He won’t be at training on those evenings but he will be here for every other session.’

  When John Carmody managed Kilmaley to the 2004 county final, recruiting Ciaran O’Neill as his trainer was deemed the masterstroke. O’Neill was an excellent trainer but, when he took us over in 2006, the move just never worked out. After we lost our opening group match to Éire Óg by a point, having surrendered a six-point lead with 15 minutes remaining and having failed to score for the remainder of the game, I felt O’Neill panicked. He believed that we weren’t physically or mentally strong enough, so we trained like animals over a long and inactive summer without championship games and we were burned out by the business end of the season. O’Neill walked away after we lost a play-off to Newmarket by one point, when one player – Bernard Gaffney – scored Newmarket’s entire total of just 0-10.

  We could so easily have won a county title that season, but there was still an undercurrent of tension from 2003 when some of the younger players had backed Kevin Kennedy ahead of O’Neill. It seemed to me that O’Neill never fully trusted some of those players who, he believed, hadn’t always shown the intense commitment which he demanded.

  So a man who would die for Doora-Barefield departed the job in a more acrimonious manner than he deserved.

  O’Neill had coached Newmarket to hammer us in last year’s semi-final, but nobody doubted his loyalty to Doora-Barefield or his closeness to John Carmody. There were concerns from some players that O’Neill would also be signing up with Carmody. That was never a runner, but in that context Patsy originally had to dilute the impact of the role he saw Carmody fulfilling.