The Club

by Christy O'Connor

  When you begin training at the outset of every year, the promise of long summer evenings and the thrill of championship matches on a hard summer sod are invariably the stimulants that keep propelling you through the muck and dirt. You just assume that your first championship match in early summer will be played on a dry pitch with a fast ball.

  But the weather was absolutely desperate for our match with Ballyea. As we went through our warm-up in Gurteen beforehand, torrential rain was drenching us, the dampness and cold soaking into our bones. As we did one warm-up striking drill, sliotars were consistently getting slow-tracked in the saturated grass or becoming lodged in surface water.

  Before the team was named, we gathered in a huddle to do a stretch. As we did a back stretch, lifting our upper backs and necks with our prone bodies propped up by our elbows, the water was flowing so heavily from my hair that I could barely see in front of me. ‘Cool heads the whole time but we see what’s ahead of us,’ I said to the group as we got up to loosen out our arms. ‘This is going to be a fucking war in the trenches. And we better be ready to go over the top to drive these fuckers back.’

  Driving to the game in Clareabbey was like going through a ride at a water-park. When we got to Clareabbey, it was too wet to walk the pitch: it was like a paddy-field.

  The dressing room was busy and cluttered. Bad weather means more gear, extra pairs of boots and less space. There was no space left on the benches by the time I got in so that I had to tog off on the floor against the back wall, with my hurleys leaning up against the physio table.

  The conditions were going to affect our game plan on short puckouts so I called the half-backs, midfielders and forwards into the shower area. ‘It’s just too risky today to go short. I’ll hit the odd one but we can’t afford it to break down on a pitch as bad as this. Just make the space out the field and I’ll try and find you.’

  Championship-day dressing rooms are always different. There’s no real roaring or shouting, just guys trying to find the optimum state of mind amid the nervous energy and tension. Before we got ready to go out, Patsy walked to the centre of the floor.

  ‘OK, lads, anyone here with a county medal, I want ye to stand up.’ Seven of us got up on our feet. ‘Look around now,’ said Patsy. ‘I’m sick of these same guys doing it every year for Doora-Barefield. It’s about time the guys sitting down started doing it for them. And it’s about time ye got yere hands on a county medal. Next year, Seánie, Christy and Ken could be gone and it’s time now that more guys started to stand up and drive this team forward. We deal with what we have to and we only focus on what’s ahead of us. But I just want ye all to remember that we need to do everything we can this year to get our hands on that county medal.’

  Darragh O’Driscoll, our captain, had the last word in the huddle before we left the dressing room: ‘Total focus. Take nothing for granted. Some people might think these guys are minnows. Well, there are no minnows in Clare hurling any more. Look at Tubber last night. Be ready for anything out here. Anything.’

  By the time the game began, the rain had stopped falling and the sun was trying to peek out from behind the clouds. But the pitch conditions were just desperate, almost dangerous. The first high ball dropped in on top of me after about 90 seconds and, as I focused on it, I could see the moisture spinning off it. One slip and the consequences could be deadly in a game like this.

  Ballyea were on top early. They had the first two points on the board and then their right corner-forward ghosted in for a goal after six minutes. A shot from out the field was topped and he was running across the angle inside the 13-metre line as the ball dropped. As soon as he caught it, I came to meet him but he got the shot off quickly and I couldn’t get my body in front of it. As the ball hit the back of the net, Darragh O’Driscoll was running back in as cover. ‘Who the fuck is supposed to be marking that guy?’ he said to me.

  It was Niall White, one of three young players making his championship debut. ‘Whitey,’ I called out to him, ‘keep your head up now, stay positive and forget about that goal. But don’t be ball-watching, make sure you know where your man is at all times.’

  Ballyea were really going for it. The early scores had given them a huge confidence boost and on ten minutes they had another goal chance, which I saved. Afterwards, Patsy came down behind the goal and I was impressed with how cool he was. There was no need for panic and that was the message he was clearly transmitting.

  We kept our heads and battled away. Conor Hassett was going well on the frees in the conditions, and we were in front on 20 minutes when Enda Lyons, another debutant, rifled a great goal through a phalanx of bodies. But their one inter-county player, Tony Griffin, was giving us huge problems. They were playing everything down his side at wing-forward and he had the physical power to dominate Darragh O’Driscoll under the dropping ball. In the first half, he scored four points from play. His dominance had ensured that we were only ahead by a point at the break on a scoreline of 1-5 to 1-4.

  As I was making my way to the dressing room at half-time, T. J. Flynn, a reporter with the Clare People newspaper, was cutting across the pitch, dancing over the puddles of water as he went.

  ‘God, the pitch is in some bad state,’ he said to me.

  ‘Desperate,’ I replied.

  ‘This game should hardly be going ahead at all,’ he responded.

  The second I got into the dressing room I sensed the kind of lethargy that I feared. I don’t know what it is about our dressing room, but we’ve had this tendency to almost paralyse ourselves with fear when we haven’t played as well as we know we can. Nobody was talking, bodies were stooped low and the aura was more reflective of a team in real trouble than a side that was ahead in the game.

  ‘Look at us again,’ said Davy Hoey, who was the first to speak. ‘We’re fucking dead, heads down, feeling sorry for ourselves again. The same fucking shit. Well, we better pick it up because we’re going out of this championship if we don’t win this game. We need to pick it up now. And we need a bit more bite.’

  Some of that bite we’d shown in the first half was headless stuff, which had cost us. ‘Stop the fucking messing of hitting guys after the ball,’ roared Ken Kennedy. ‘It’s a man’s game, so toughen up. If you’re going to hit someone, do it on the ball.’

  When Patsy, who had been in consultation with his selectors outside the door, arrived in, his comments were measured but laced with a degree of annoyance. ‘We’re in a dogfight, just as we expected. We’re up a point and we need to continue grinding it out. But we need to get a handle on Griffin. Lookit, lads, he’s no Jamesie O’Connor, who could win a game on his own when he was in his prime. We’re not going to be beaten by a team run by Tony Griffin. So get it fucking sorted out.’

  A switch was made to try to counter Griffin’s influence. Cathal O’Sullivan was stationed on him and told not to allow Griffin to catch the ball.

  Although we’d been slow in dealing with the influence of their best player, at least the issue had been addressed. But there was still too much negativity permeating the dressing room. Words and phrases like ‘we can’t get beaten’ and ‘we can’t afford to lose’ should have been replaced with ‘stay positive’ and ‘we will win’. Seánie McMahon, who was still suited up in his tracksuit, noticed this. ‘We are better than them and we will win the game,’ he said. ‘We just need to keep working hard and the scores will definitely come. Just keep going, keep going. The next ball, the next ball. Nothing else matters.’

  However, Eoin Conroy, who was also a substitute, felt that it was time to hammer home some of the points which had already been raised. We clearly needed something more clinical to snap us out of our torpor.

  ‘First things first,’ Conny said, ‘we are winning this game. We are fitter than them and we will outlast them. But a few things need to change. I don’t see that relentlessness that we promised to bring to the game. It’s not there. There’s no point guys feeling down in themselves or feeling sorry for themse
lves now. We need to go out that door and be angry, relentless animals. Fight like fucking dogs for that ball. Get angry. Davy is angry but not enough of us are. WELL, GET FUCKING ANGRY.’

  As the second half progressed, we were gradually getting our best team on the pitch. Mike McNamara, who hadn’t started the match due to hamstring trouble, came on and made a difference. Seánie was introduced at full-forward, while Noel Brodie came into the half-forward line, which gave us another ball-winning dimension in that sector.

  We had the match-ups right and the scores began to flow more freely, but we kept conceding stupid frees. Niall White got caught on three occasions for over-exuberance and they slotted each free. After the third one, I went out to him. ‘Look, they’re not going to score from play off you. If he has the ball, keep him outside you and away from the goal. If you can’t get the hook or block in and he throws it over the bar then, there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  Another Ballyea point put them ahead by one with a quarter of an hour remaining, but we replied straight from the puckout with a fine score from Conor Hassett. Damien Kennedy’s excellent endeavour was helping us create the chances, but the last ten minutes turned into a nightmare because we just couldn’t score. We shot six wides in succession and each one was greeted with an agonizing groan from the crowd. We just couldn’t shake them off. By that stage, Ballyea had gone for broke by putting Griffin in at full-forward. They needed him out the field to get the ball in, but they were banking on him getting one chance and stitching it. They got a couple of sideline balls in dangerous positions and if one of those was hit with the right connection, and was loaded with enough spin in the wet, it literally could have ended up anywhere.

  We needed something special, and Seánie helped engineer it. He won a ball in the left corner, turned and played a pinpoint pass into the hand of Enda Lyons. Without hesitation, the young debutant drove the ball hard to the roof of the net.

  I just looked up to the heavens and let out a roar of elation. A game which was threatening to strangle us was finally under our control. Then Conor Hassett slotted another free in injury time to give us the result on a scoreline of 2-11 to 1-9.

  When Seánie made it into the dressing room, I went over and shook his hand. ‘Fair play to you. Jeez, I was never as delighted to see us score a goal in all my life. I thought we were going to blow it.’

  He just shook his head with relief. ‘Stop, I was thrilled to see it go in,’ he responded. ‘I was saying to myself, “We’ll get sucker-punched now, the year will be as good as over, and that will be me definitely gone.” But we didn’t panic and we toughed it out. And that’s the important thing.’

  Winning the first game in the group stage is not always paramount, but it has always been important for us. In every year from 2005 to 2007, we lost our first group game and spent the rest of the season trying to regain momentum. In two of those three seasons, we didn’t even make it out of the group.

  We’d got the result, but nobody was getting carried away. And some players had already begun making critical assessments on every aspect of our performance. From players to management. That night, I got a phone call from Conny.

  ‘Fahey was in Knox’s until all hours Saturday morning,’ he told me. ‘That’s not fucking good enough, the night before a championship match.’

  ‘Ah, I don’t know, Conny, I think you’re being a bit hard on him there,’ I replied. ‘I thought he handled the day well. And I thought he was very clear-headed and calm on the line.’

  Conny cut me off straight away: ‘No, that’s bullshit. That’s you showing him blind loyalty. He needs to have a clear head because an incorrect call here or there could be a disaster. And more importantly, that place is always full of Ballyea people and that was him sending out a wrong message from us. I’m not too happy about it and neither is Ken. Ken told me to tell you to have a word with him about it.’

  Fair enough. I need to talk to Patsy anyway about our approach at half-time because I felt there was too much talk and not enough information.

  I’ll ring him tomorrow.

  8. Crossing the ’Bridge

  Despite all their tradition and success, Sixmilebridge have never really been able to handle us in the championship. In the last 12 years, we’ve played them on eight occasions and we’ve beaten them six times. Big games, too: two county finals, a semi-final, a knock-out group match. They’ve only beaten us in one game that really mattered – a narrow win in a group decider in 2003 – because when they drilled us in a group match in 2002, both teams had already qualified for the quarter-finals.

  After we beat them again in last year’s championship, their manager, Paddy Meehan, came into our dressing room and told us that we’d played a brand of ‘hurling that you’d aspire to and which you’d be proud to produce’. On a wet Friday evening in Shannon, we pistol-whipped them around the pitch, hitting 1-17 in the process. A late goal from a 20-metre free was all that saved them from a total flogging.

  That performance was a huge endorsement of Seán Chaplin’s training methods and it involved a massive sense of personal reward for him because he’s a Sixmilebridge man. When they failed to qualify from the group afterwards, the ’Bridge cleaned out their whole management team and it was almost inevitable that they’d try and recruit Chaplin. When they did, he was never going to turn his back on them. And now that we’re facing them in our second championship match, he can use that inside knowledge to good effect.

  This is a big game for us – not a group decider, but a win will leave us in pole position in this group, which will set us up for the summer because we won’t play championship again until probably August. In that context, having two wins in the bag may take the edge off us over the summer and allow carelessness to seep in, but that’s not even a remote consideration at this stage. We feel that we’re on a roll and it’s much easier to motivate players over a lay-off when you’ve established a winning habit.

  We’re in a good place at the moment. Last Sunday evening, five days before the game, we travelled back to Quilty in west Clare to do a hurling session on the beach, just to freshen things up. The only problem was that nobody had checked the tide-times, and the tide was in. We had already arranged to have showers afterwards in the Kilmurry-Ibrickane dressing room, so we headed the short distance back up the road and trained on their sand-based training pitch, behind their main field, for over an hour. The balls were flying off the surface, our touch looked good and, with the roaring Atlantic Ocean as a backdrop across the road, the mood felt just right. Afterwards, most of us went back to the ocean for the largest ice-bath available. On the way home, we knew we were ready.

  Seventy-two hours before the game, Patsy was setting the scene, alluding to our comprehensive win against Sixmilebridge last year. ‘I saw ye blow them away last year and they’re going to be gunning for us. They might have a slight advantage – maybe two points – in terms of them being up for it more than us. But our hurling is spot on and if we’re tuned in, we’ll take care of them.’

  I spoke to Patsy afterwards about collating stats on the day and then I went through the template with Seán Flynn, who’s recovering from a shoulder injury. In the showers afterwards, Ken Kennedy and I got talking about our approach at half-time against Ballyea in our opening championship match and he remarked on Conny’s input. ‘He spoke well, didn’t he? He said exactly what was needed.’

  ‘He was spot on and I said it to him afterwards,’ I said. ‘He mightn’t be near the team but he has a big role to play with us. He can analyse a situation and address it perfectly. If he was playing, he’d probably be psyched out of his brain and he wouldn’t know what would be going on.’

  I was no sooner in the door after training when Conny was on to me. ‘I’ve got my little speech ready again for Friday night,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all day. It’s a line [Ollie] Baker used before the replayed game against the Tones in 2004. “There are two types of people in life – those who bully and tho
se who get bullied. Well, we bully.” ’

  In 2004, we played Wolfe Tones in an epic three-game quarter-final, which we eventually won. At the end of the first drawn match, Seánie scored a free from 100 yards in injury time to put us ahead by a point. As soon as the umpire signalled the score, their keeper pucked out the ball. But at the same time, Brian Lohan was retrieving another ball from the net, which he then pucked out. Half of us were following the flight of one ball while the rest were tracing the path of the second one. Our corner-back, Cathal O’Sullivan, caught the first ball and drove it back up the field, but at the other side of the pitch Daithí O’Connell caught Lohan’s ball and drove it over the bar for the equalizer. Seconds later, the referee blew the final whistle.

  Lohan was only doing what he felt was best for his team and it was poor officiating that had really cost us the result, but Baker used that line, more or less telling us that Lohan had bullied us out of the result. And that it was time for us to turn into the bullies. Now, Conny feels that the phrase is perfectly applicable because of the age-profile of an emerging Sixmilebridge team; they recently won the U-21A title and have packed their squad with those players.

  ‘We need to bully these fuckers back to the ’Bridge,’ he said. ‘Trample on them. Walk all over them.’

  ‘These boys won’t be easy to bully with Rusty Chaplin over them,’ I replied.

  Christy ‘Rusty’ Chaplin played with Clare in the 1994 Munster final, and although he played only one more championship match with the county he was on the panel for Clare’s All-Ireland successes in 1995 and 1997 because he was the type of player that Ger Loughnane loved: hard, robust, honest, physical. If Loughnane felt some player was going soft or getting notions above himself, he’d put Rusty on him during a training match to straighten him out.