Perseverance Pays Off For Those That Wait

I don’t keep records of the amount of Gaelic Games matches that I attend each year. I have however kept copies on all Matches that I have reported on since the middle of May 2013, some of which can be found by searching my blog. I had reports of games before this back to the early weeks of 2009 when I was asked if I would be interested to some reporting, but sadly for myself in May 2013 I lost the memory stick on which I had them saved and never managed to find it.

If I was to count the number of games that I attend each year, be they hurling or football at any level from underage up to senior Inter County Level or club and inter county games in both Ladies Football and Camogie I would say it would go well into three digit numbers.

While attending games I try and remain calm as much as possible. I believe in reporting on games that it is important to stay level headed and to try and give the details of a game as they are and maybe not as you would want to see them. To get excited or ‘to lose it’ at a game is often very easy to happen. Official’s sometimes make mistakes which could be the difference of winning or losing of a game for a side or to celebrate a pacific score is often easy to lash out about or to dance in the stand, on a bank or on a terrace about, but it is something that I try and not engage in.

That is not to say that it does not happen to me. The last time I remember getting excited while watching a match I was not even at it. I was watching on the Television. It was August 2008 and I was a patient at South Tipperary General Hospital in Clonmel. It was the day of the All-Ireland Senior Hurling semi final was on at Croke Park. Waterford was up against Tipperary, a game that I had a feeling Waterford would win. I was admitted the afternoon the day before the game suffering with chest pains. I was told that they were going to monitor me for a day or two as it was the second time in May 30 of that year that I had presented with such pains.

I was in a room with six others, next to the nurses’ station. None of the others in the room refused to have the match on the television, when I insisted that we have it turned on.

As we all know this was a game that Waterford won 1-20 to 1-18 and as the game neared its conclusion I was pacing the room. Every ball that was stuck in Croke Park I was also striking in Clonmel. After all when Waterford are beating Tipperary where best to watch the game if you are not actually at the game is in Tipperary surrounded by people from Tipperary. I suppose the same could be said of any county that Waterford beat in any sport. After the game some of the nurses came in with a Doctor and asked how were the chest pains I had come in with. I told them they were gone. It was then that they told me that there were observing me throughout the game and as I did not have any pains they were letting me home, but would have to go for further tests at a later date in Cork which they could not carry out on me. They also told me that I used some language during the game each time Waterford scored that they were sure were some sort of Waterford local language.

While I don’t get excited much at games in recent years that’s not to say that I don’t feel delighted when a certain team wins, even if I don’t always show it. In the last number of years I have had the great privilege of reporting on some games that really mean something to me. Back in 2015 when Waterford beat Kildare in both the Intermediate Ladies Football and Camogie All-Ireland Finals at Croke Park will always mean something to me and I would love nothing than to report on one or both of these sides in the very near future playing and winning a senior All-Ireland Final at the same venue.

Last Sunday was another important day for me. In my lifetime the Sliabh gCua/Saint Mary’s G.A.A. Club have appeared in a number of County Finals. Writing an article for the Sliabh gCua Annual last week ahead of Saint Mary’s win over Ballydurn I commented that I had attended all but one of the County Final’s that the Club had played up to and now including last Sunday. My reason for missing the 1981 Junior Football County Final which was held over to the spring of 1982 was that I was in Hospital in Dublin for a few months at that time.

After the full time whistle on Sunday afternoon last there was scenes of great joy at Walsh Park as areas of the field became a sea of yellow and maroon as supporters of the Touraneena Club went onto the field to congratulate their hero’s who had just won a first hurling title for the club in 30 years.

I watched that game from one of the radio commentary boots at the back of the stand overlooking the centre of the field. Right throughout I remained calm while others from the area were saluting each score. That is not to say that I was not sharing the same delight as everyone else. I was.

And I was delighted for one player in particular. Even though Touraneena is a small area, I won’t make claim that I know every one of the players in the squad and the management team and their backroom team, but I do know the most of them. One player that I have known most of my life is the Saint Mary’s Goalkeeper John Patrick or JP Fitzpatrick. He was a year behind me starting school but caught up with me after I repeated second class after my long spell in Hospital in the early months of 1982. He is a player that has done it all. He is a great club servant, has represented the county at all levels of hurling. He was part of the Waterford Minor team that contested the 1992 All-Ireland Minor Hurling Final against Galway at Croke Park, but up to last Sunday afternoon he had never won a hurling medal at club level in the adult grades, something that is not to be put to right and I have no doubt will be a prized procession in his house once he manages to get his hands on it.

I never got to play hurling competitively because of the disabilities that I was born with, but have never allowed them to stop me having a huge interest in the game. From an early age I had my own hurley at home and would puck around a tennis ball or a sliotar in a very unconventional way with my brothers and used to have a hurley in my hands in school in Touraneena as well when others would have them.

In my time in primary school, we had some very good teachers in the nine years I spent there. In that time there was a number of female teachers but only one man, Joe Devoy a Kilkenny man who was the principal in the school for over 20 years up to his retirement in 1993.

Like nearly all Kilkenny men he had a great interest in the game of hurling and in his years in Touraneena instilled a love of the game into many. Some of course would get a ribbing off him when Kilkenny were winning Leinster and All-Ireland Finals and the only time those that got it could give it back was when Waterford would beat Kilkenny in the National Football League almost on a regular basis but in truth that was nothing much to boast about.

I can vividly remember the time when he got the boys of my age playing hurling for the first time in the glassed area in front of the school’s front door, an area where many who have gone on to win honours at different levels down the years have got to show off their skills to those that were prepared to watch them play down the years.

Sides would be picked and medals would be bought. The two teams might play once or twice a week over six or eight weeks with the scores at the end of each game recorded and the side that had the highest score at the end was deemed the winner. I have no doubt that on occasions the winning margin in some games was later made different to keep an interest flowing in the games if one team was stronger than the other. 

To me Joe Devoy was always a very fair man, one of two that I can think of that I could say this of, at that period in my life. Strangely the two were next door neighbours, the other been Fr Seamus O’Dowd the local Curate at the time.  Both men while respecting that I was disabled and somewhat different to others were prepared to overlook this. They made me feel that I was the same as everyone else even if I knew I wasn’t.

When it came to the time that boys (at the time) started to serve Mass Father Seamus insisted that I could do it as well as anyone else if I wanted. I remember telling him that it was not possible I was not able to genuflect as required a number of times during mass because I wore callipers at the time, he said to me maybe so but said that I could bow and that was the same thing.

Joe Devoy was the same. When it came to playing hurling in goal I was told that I was to bring my hurley to school. None of ‘the bigger boys’ would be involved in the leagues he wanted to have played meaning everyone was of the same strength. I was ordered to stand in goal for one of the teams throughout the league and it was fixed that JP who was the best player of the group would be on my team and would be told to play full back no doubt to protect me in goal, even if this was never said by any of the teachers at the time.

JP was even then a talented hurler. His father John was a good hurler who had won honours in the game, his uncle Declan or Deckie was an even better hurler who had played for the county, one of a number of players from the Touraneena area in the 70’s and 80’s to do so while Saint Mary’s were playing Junior Hurling and some did not look out of place against some of the best players in the country at the time. And when it came to JP even back then, when the apple fell it did not fall far from the tree. Hurling was in his DNA and it still does.

Hurling and football is not always about the amount of All-Ireland Medals you win, how many Man of the Match awards you collect or how many All-Stars you are nominated and win. Hurling and Football is also not always about playing in the senior grade at a club level. Some clubs despite craving to do so will never get to play and win senior county finals. Some are just as happy competing in the Intermediate or even Junior Grades.

The measure of a player when he or she calls time on their playing career is not always about how many medals they won in their career. When a player wins one medal in their lifetime it often means more to him or her that the bucket load that other players win in their playing career.

John Patrick or JP Fitzpatrick prior to Sunday last was no stranger to winning medals. He had won a number of them playing underage hurling and football for Naomh Brid. He had won a Munster Minor Hurling medal in 1992. He had won Western and County Medals in Football playing with Sliabh gCua and also prior to Sunday last had won three Western Junior Hurling medals playing with Saint Mary’s.

Seeing the Sliabh gCua/Saint Mary’s G.A.A. Club win a County Final for the ninth time was a day of great joy for me. I am absolutely delighted for each and every one of the players and the team around them that they won, but if I am honest I am more delighted that J.P. is winning a first county hurling medal at the age of 45, as I know it was in a game I know he loves.

Seeing Saint Mary’s win on Sunday to me proved that dreams can happen for those that wait for them to happen.

Something struck me after Sunday’s win. As pointed out J.P. was a playing member of the 1992 Waterford Minor Hurling Panel that reached the All-Ireland Final. I am wondering how many if any other than J.P. managed to play Championship hurling at any grade in 2019, nearly 30 years later.

For the record the Waterford Minor panel in 1992 was: Patrick Haran (Ballygunner), Tom Morrissey (Dungarvan), Paddy O’Donnell (Lismore), James O’Connor (Lismore), Anthony Kirwan (Portlaw), Ger Harris (Portlaw), Tom Feeney (Ballyduff Upper), Tom Kiely (Saint Patrick’s), Fintan O’Shea (Portlaw), John Patrick Fitzpatrick (Naomh Brid), Derek McGrath (Saint Saviours), John Joe Ronayne (Dungarvan), Raymond Ryan (Naomh Brid), Paul Foley (Stradbally), Paul Flynn (Ballygunner), Brendan Ormonde (Lismore), Brian McCarthy (Fourmilewater), Colin Fanning (Roanmore), John Cleere (Mount Sion), Pat Veale (Abbeyside), Darragh O’Sullivan (Ballygunner), Neil Connors (Kilrossanty), Brian Beatty (Abbeyside), Chris Gough (Dungarvan).

Some of this panel went on to have a very successful career playing with some giving up playing hurling soon after the 1992 minor championship. Sadly Paul Foley would die in September of 2015.