The Club

by Christy O'Connor

  One of the umpires spotted me straight away. ‘Jesus, go down. I’ll get him to stop the game.’

  And then it hit me. This game is over for me. I’m out of here. My season is over. Jeez, I don’t know if I’ll ever be back here after this. Ah, no. My dream of winning this county title is over.

  As I sat on the goal-line while our physio Eugene attended to me, the tears came to my eyes. I was thinking of Róisín. I had so much emotion inside, I wanted it to burst out of me. I wanted that to happen on this field, but not in this way. Not like this. Please God, no.

  A few of the Newmarket players had gathered around to examine the commotion. Seánie Arthur began rubbing my hair, patting me on the head, trying to comfort me. Then suddenly, Mikey Rosingrave, our third-choice keeper, a 17-year-old cub, was kneeling beside me, with his arm around my left shoulder. And in that moment, the tears left me. All I could think about was what a smashing young fella Mikey was.

  As they were waiting for the stretcher to come on to the pitch, Paul Madden, our sub keeper, was now standing beside me on the line. As he got ready to take my place, I switched back on to autopilot. ‘Total focus now, Paul, you’ve been here before and you’re well capable of doing it. Best of luck now.’

  As I was being carried off on the stretcher, all I could see above me was white fluffy clouds, puffing out against the backdrop of a canvas of grey sky. In one sense, part of me was slightly relieved because there was no way we could win this game. If they got a late run on us, they could destroy us again. And I just didn’t have the heart for that.

  But then I started thinking again and emotion got the better of me again. ‘Jeez, this is not the way it’s supposed to end,’ I said to the lads who were carrying the stretcher, even though I didn’t even know who they were. ‘This was not how this year was supposed to end.’

  As I was loaded into the back of a blue van which had been converted into a makeshift ambulance, Jamesie had decided to come with me to the hospital.

  ‘This has gone all wrong for us,’ I said to him.

  ‘Forget about it, just forget about it now,’ he responded. ‘Getting yourself right now is all that matters.’

  When we got to the A&E at Ennis General Hospital, the first thing I asked the nurses was if there was a radio around the place, where they could tune in to Clare FM for some updated reports. I’m sure there was but they said there wasn’t.

  ‘Send someone a text there, find out what the story is,’ I asked Jamesie.

  A couple of minutes later, his phone beeped in his pocket. The message read: ‘Newmarket ahead by nine, ten minutes left.’

  It’s definitely gone now.

  After getting pumped up on intravenous painkillers, I was just waiting for an ambulance to take me to University College Hospital Galway to undergo plastic surgery. About 20 minutes later, Conny and Joe Considine arrived over to the hospital. They had the final result.

  Newmarket-on-Fergus 2-18

  St Joseph’s 0-10

  Colin Ryan got Newmarket’s second goal in the last minute, but it was still a hammering. Fourteen points. I traced the history of our recent championship results in my mind and quickly concluded that it was our biggest ever defeat in the championship over the last two decades. Heartbreak.

  It was even harder to take, given how confident we felt, going into the game. Given how much we had invested in this game, in this season. We genuinely felt that we could win a county title, but where do we go from here? Can we legitimately have those aims any more? Given the age profile of the team, will we even be a senior team in four or five years’ time?

  After getting an X-ray, I then had to sign a form with my VHI number before the ambulance could be sanctioned to pick me up. My case wasn’t an emergency, so I had to wait until the ambulance – whose company were contracted to VHI – came from Castlebar. I was wheeled into an empty ward, where a nurse turned on the TV and I tuned into Premiership Soccer Saturday.

  Soon afterwards, the club chairman, Tommy Duggan, arrived with my gear-bag. I took off my jersey and changed into a T-shirt. I folded the jersey and handed it back to Tommy.

  ‘You’ve had it a long time now,’ Tommy said to me.

  ‘Twenty years,’ I responded. ‘I hope I’ll see it again.’

  ‘No doubt you will, no doubt you will.’

  One of the few positives from the day was the performance of Paul Madden, my replacement. Tommy said that he’d made a couple of very good saves and that his handling was excellent. I was genuinely delighted for him.

  ‘Fair play to him, he’s a great lad. Maybe it’s just time for me to hand it over to him now. He’s the future, not me.’

  After Tommy left, Jamesie stayed chatting until the ambulance arrived.

  ‘When you see the cutbacks around this place, today was only a minor setback,’ I told him. ‘But it’s still a sad day for us. Since we came up senior in 1994, we’ve always set out at the start of any year with the intention of winning a county title. Jeez, I don’t know, can we have those ambitions any more? We’ve got to be more realistic with our targets from now on and just make sure we don’t slip any further.’

  We had tried our best but we just had to accept where our place now was in the world. What I saw today in Newmarket – a young, coltish team, loaded with skill and class and pace and ambition – was almost a mirror image of ourselves in the late 1990s. The current Newmarket team still has to win a county title, but they have what we haven’t: youth. We had only two players under 25 starting today, while most of their squad was in that age bracket. Too many of us are trying to wind back the clock, still desperately clinging to that hope of an autumn windfall. And most of the guys on this team who really want it – desperately want it – just don’t have the legs any more.

  On the ambulance trip to Galway, I knew it was the last time I’d ever play with some of those guys again. Seánie definitely won’t be back. Neither will Davy Hoey. Those boys of summer will slip into retirement now. They have no more to give on the field. Their focus will just switch to the training ground from now on.

  I’ll miss playing with them. One of the most well-worn dressing-room clichés is that you could trust guys with your life; but there is a genuine feeling of brotherhood with club teams. When you’re in a bear-pit and the odds are stacked against you and you look into your teammates’ eyes – the guys you have been friends with since childhood – then you see that trust. And it always provides a massive security blanket.

  Lying on a trolley in the A&E department in UCHG that night, the texts of support starting flowing in from all the lads and from management. The Newmarket manager, Diarmuid O’Leary, texted me. And so did his chief lieutenant, Ciaran O’Neill. ‘Best of luck with the recovery,’ the text read. ‘Hard luck today, you played well. But just want to let you know that it broke my heart to see that happening to Joseph’s. I got no satisfaction out of today.’

  Say what you want about O’Neill, but the man is Doora-Barefield to the core. And I genuinely know that he’s hurting just as much as the rest of us tonight.

  At 11.59 p.m., I got a text from Seánie. ‘Keep the head up and look after yourself. Call you tomorrow.’

  I responded at once. ‘Sound. But just wanted to let you know that no matter what happens from now on, I wanted to tell you that it was an honour and a pleasure to play with you.’

  He texted back immediately: ‘Appreciate that boss and it was my pleasure to hurl with you too. We’d the time of our lives. Today was cat but we won’t forget the great days. You just can’t beat playing with your best friends.’

  16. Passion

  In the days after the defeat to Newmarket, introspection hit most of us like Novocaine: it helped numb the pain but it didn’t take away that low feeling. When I spoke to Darragh O’Driscoll three days afterwards, we siphoned the disappointment into separate rooms of discussion: the nature of the collapse; the hurt from being beaten so heavily; our lack of youth on the pitch; the future.

  A fe
w of the lads had already told me that Darragh had been very emotional in the dressing room afterwards but that he had spoken really well. In my mind’s eye, I was trying to picture that dressing room because I knew it would be the last time that I’d ever share one with some of those guys as players. Paul Madden told me that Davy Hoey had cried. I could picture how devastated Patsy would have been and how low the rest of us would have felt after suffering our biggest championship defeat in two decades.

  I was trying to imagine more than the mood because it’s nearly always easier to recall the scene of a losing dressing room than a winning one at the end of a season. Maybe that’s because your head is bowed and your eye level is focused on the detail of the detritus: empty bottles, discarded sticky tape, broken hurleys, jerseys strewn across the table, fresh grass stuck to a wet floor. Faces are concealed behind the mask of disappointment, conversation stymied from the lack of interaction.

  When I asked Darragh to try and describe the dressing room, he said that he’d write me an email on it. The following day, it landed in my inbox.

  Christy

  There are a few things I remember from the dressing room but not everything. I was the last one to speak after Patsy had spoken. The dressing room was silent, heads down everywhere – you can imagine it yourself. Dave Hoey was in tears. I actually hadn’t prepared to say anything – you don’t prepare to give losing speeches, I guess. As I started to speak, I remember my voice started to break and I paused for about ten seconds to gather my thoughts and to try and stop myself from crying … pure silence, everyone waiting for me to start again. A few tears but I managed to stay composed for the rest of it.

  I started again by saying, ‘What a year’, in reference to the turmoil and emotion of the season. I looked around the room and thanked each of the management team by name for their commitment. I saw Tommy [Duggan] and Dan [O’Connor] by the dressing-room door and I thanked them for their contribution in what was a very trying year for them. I remember seeing Paul Hallinan [young hurley carrier] and thanking him for hardly missing a training session all year. Then I thanked the players. I didn’t mention Ger or Father Mac by name but I remember coming out with the line, ‘We wanted to honour people this year but I’m not fully sure if we did.’

  I mentioned the great tradition in the club and the fact that we were a junior club for much of the 60s, 70s and 80s and came through many years of disappointment to the pinnacle of an All-Ireland club title. I said that we always tried to play the game the way it should be played and that we can be proud of that fact. I said we needed younger players to come through to add pace to the team and to drive the club forward. I’m pretty sure I finished up with the line: ‘We’re Doora-Barefield and we will be back.’

  Talk soon

  Darragh

  Darragh was a great captain, one of the best I’ve ever played under – totally committed, genuine, brave, a good leader. More than anything, though, his passion for the club and his grasp of what St Joseph’s stood for framed a huge part of his make-up. I remember him at half-time in a county semi-final against Clarecastle in 2002 after having dislocated his shoulder earlier in the game. The guy was in absolute agony but he addressed us with tears in his eyes and a tone of heartbreak in his voice. You could always tell how much it meant to him.

  He was a guy who commanded respect and someone who played with pride and honour – the three words that many of us in the club liked to think represented everything St Joseph’s stood for. And the feeling that we weren’t always true to those principles this season has made the disappointment even more acute. It feels like an offence against our core values.

  The Newmarket defeat was not the fitting denouement we had in mind, and we’re all hurting. But deep down inside, we have real regrets as a team, which has only shovelled more salt into an open wound. We let ourselves down because we know there is more in us. We know that we could have been more committed, more determined, more relentless in our pursuit of our goals, which might have led to glory. Winning the county title was always going to be a stretch, but that’s why we needed to push ourselves to even greater extremes to have a real chance. And we didn’t.

  Then again, maybe emotion got the better of us. And so did fatigue with having so many dual players. They’re not excuses, just reality. There were only two dual clubs in the senior hurling and football championships this season – ourselves and Wolfe Tones – and it’s becoming more difficult to compete in both codes because most senior clubs in Clare specialize in either hurling or football. That is a huge challenge for us going forward.

  Whatever about success though, this season was ultimately about honouring people and that’s why Darragh rightly questioned the legitimacy and substance behind that promise in the dressing room afterwards. If there was any season to show what St Joseph’s was all about – pride, respect and honour – this was it. And that’s the most devastating aspect of the whole lot.

  Darragh was an exemplar of that club loyalty and code. Apart from the captaincy, part of the reason why he put so much into this year was because nobody embodied the values he spoke about more than Ger Hoey. In fact, Ger probably inculcated Darragh with those values more than anyone else. It wasn’t surprising that emotion engulfed him in the dressing room afterwards.

  Darragh came into the team as a young player; but Ger had that ability to connect with people on every level, and their relationship was fostered from playing in the same defence for four seasons. ‘When I first joined the panel, I really remember how encouraging Ger was to the younger players like me and Ken,’ says Darragh. ‘But the one thing I probably remember most about the glory days was the dressing room before big games when the backs would go into the showers for a chat. We’d usually find Ciaran O’Neill in there before us, getting ready for the game by running at the walls. After O’Neill had nearly demolished the place, then Ger would start talking and the rest of us would start listening. He would implore each man to “look at the size of us”. To not come off the pitch “without having worked our socks off and if that meant being carried off, so be it”.’

  Although he was 11 years younger than Ger, Darragh probably developed a greater understanding than most of what the club meant to Ger, primarily because they got to travel extensively together when they both played with the AIB hurling team. Among Darragh’s many memories of Ger are two incidents from the 2005 AIB tour to Australia and New Zealand. Firstly, the annual match against the Defence Forces was held in Melbourne as the Army were also touring at the same time. He was selected at wing-back, with Ger due to start in the corner behind him. However, Ger got injured in training and was devastated to be missing out on the big match of the tour.

  ‘Before that game,’ says Darragh, ‘players and mentors from each side were psyching each other up with the usual calls of “Come on AIB” or “Come on the Army”. I looked over at the sideline just before throw-in and Ger was staring at me with a clinched fist. He roared at me, “Come on the Parish.” That was the last thing I expected to hear in Melbourne but I was rarely as proud to hear it. The parish gave us both a great sense of identity and it was a great bond when we represented the Bank.’

  Two weeks afterwards, their last tour match brought them to Sydney to play a New South Wales selection. It was Ger’s last competitive hurling match and he made sure he was right for it. He was one of the best players on the pitch. ‘At the final whistle, I walked over to Ger to shake his hand,’ says Darragh. ‘To wish him a happy hurling retirement and, I must admit, to slag him that it was no longer a game for old men. Instead of shaking my hand, Ger hugged me and, after a few moments, he said he was delighted to have played his last game with a Doora-Barefield man beside him. I still believe I was more delighted to have been playing alongside Ger. That tour and that memory is something I will always cherish.’

  When we began to finalize the arrangements for our ten-year reunion trip to Kilkenny last March, we also began to loosely plan some small way for our squad to commemorate
Ger. We weren’t really sure how to go about it until Donal Cahill – who had been co-opted on to the committee – came up with the idea of commissioning an artist to do a pencil sketch of Ger from an old photograph. He knew a Dutch artist living in Ireland – Stan van Rensberg – and had been impressed with his work. When Cahill brought some of his drawings along to a meeting one night, we decided to press ahead with that option.

  In the process of gathering numerous photographs and trying to decide on the best one which would allow van Rensberg to capture Ger’s passion and character for his portrait, we came up with another idea. We decided to get John Kelly, a photographer from the Clare Champion newspaper, to assemble a collage of photos on a large framed poster. We would present the portrait to Siobhán and the girls, while the collage would be given to Ger’s mother and father.

  The collage was made up of ten photographs of Ger in action, which wrapped around the centrefold picture of him raising the Canon Hamilton trophy in the middle of the field after our first county title in 1998. The portrait was sketched from a pose for a pen picture before the 1999 All-Ireland club final. At the bottom of the frame the inscription read: ‘Ger Hoey – leader, team-mate and friend. A true inspiration.’

  On the night it was presented to Siobhán, we were a little concerned that she might become emotional, but her face lit up when she saw the portrait of Ger. She was delighted with it.

  The photographs which we assembled for the framed collage were selected because we felt they offered the neatest collective snapshot of Ger’s career: walking with his eldest daughter Elaine in the parade before the 1998 county final; celebrating with his brothers, John and David, and Jim Felle on the field after the same game; about to receive the Munster club trophy along with Ciaran O’Neill after the 1999 Munster final against Ballygunner; bursting out past Athenry’s Donal Moran with the ball in his hand during the 2000 All-Ireland club final; being interviewed on the field after the 1999 All-Ireland club final, in which a plaster has failed to staunch the bleeding from a nasty cut across his nose.