A TIME AND PLACE FOR EVERYTHING

A TIME AND A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING

THE weekend just passed was a very special one. Not because Manchester United won the premiership, or not because Kilkenny and Tipperary both put on exhibitions of hurling, but because our little daughter Chloe was born, joining my wife, Ruth, and little boy, Jamie, in the latest generation of Lawlor clan.

It was also a weekend for being there for Ruth and keeping my trap shut, the latter not coming naturally to me. A maternity ward is perhaps the greatest place on earth to be; a haven for little miracles but it’s also a potential minefield for the male species. Everything you say can and will be used against you in the Court of Cop On.

The last time I was there, two years back, the consultant held our little boy aloft and showed him to me. My wife enquired whether we just had a boy or girl. “I don’t know,” I blurted.

All I could see was a little face looking at me. I was in a heap. You’d want to see the looks I got!

This time around I went in with a clear vision of my role. I’d take on a Denis Irwin type role. I’d be hugely dependable, always there in the background if needed, but I wasn’t going to speak unless I was spoken to either.

It worked out just fine for the most part.

Sort of.

As the day rolled on I couldn’t help making a clown of myself all over again.

5 things a guy doesn’t say in a maternity ward….

1)      Jaysus, wouldn’t your arse get fair numb in this chair? – Indeed it would, especially after about 8 hours of sitting and waiting but, wait, in the grand scheme of things it’s not the biggest deal in the world that you are uncomfortable. I sort of grasped that when the nurse shot dagger number one in my direction.

2)      By God, they have a great spread in the canteen there today. – Her Good Self hadn’t eaten in about 24 hours and wasn’t likely to for another good spell. Turns out she didn’t want to hear what I had for lunch. Nor did the midwives. Dagger number two was launched.

3)      I’m so tired I could sleep for a week. – You certainly are. And you probably would. Again, though, this isn’t really about you. Shut up you ape.

4)      Breathe in now and hold it. -  I was only trying to help! Turns out you don’t breathe in and hold it at all. You blow out as strongly as you can when there’s a contraction coming. (or something like that – I don’t think that’s right either). Anyway, I was only thinking of the stretching exercises we did with the Tipp U17 footballers last year.

5)      I wouldn’t say no, nurse!  - Turns out the offer of ‘What would you say to some tea and toast?’ at 2am - when baby Chloe was safely delivered - wasn’t for me at all. Dagger number five.

Luckily for me, while I didn’t have a notion of what to do, the good doctors, nurses and midwives played a blinder. And thanks to them and my wife we all got there.

Mr Dependable himself, Denis Irwin, however, would probably shudder at my efforts.

JACKSON LORDS IT ONCE MORE

Back to sport and here’s a great yarn for you.

John ‘Jackson’ Kiely is over the Waterford minor footballers this year. Last Saturday, they took on Limerick in the Munster championship opener. Limerick had been training since October and Waterford only managed one 30 minute session before the game – that on the Thursday night before they played championship. Many of Jackson’s minors were involved with Dungarvan Colleges, Dungarvan CBS and St Augustine’s in respective schools All-Ireland championships up ‘til last week while many others were playing minor and U21 hurling and football for their clubs. So Kiely had no chance to get them together.

He didn’t panic, though. He knows every club player in Waterford and knew that the lads he wanted would be super-fit and well tuned. Earlier in the year they got a challenge against Carlow but that was it. There was no other gap to get the players together. A week before the game word went out that Jackson was looking to get a panel to play Limerick. 49 youngsters showed up for that one and only training session. 49! In a county where underage football has been struggling for oxygen for quite a while.

They played two 15 minute games, brought the players in, chose 34 of them and told them they were going to rip at Limerick from the start. There would be no blanket defence or anything like that. They told the other 19 lads they wouldn’t forget them and would be back to look at them.

With time just up Limerick scored two late goals but still came out second as Waterford clung onto a famous 3-10 – 3-9 win.

Later that day I watched the U21 semi-finals and saw the finest specimens of athletes shoot wide after wide – the same in the hurling league semi-finals a day later. Maybe it’s too simplistic, but what a pity more managers just don’t let their teams out to play. Fellas that age are playing up to three to four games a week at this stage of the season and they need to be let enjoy what they are doing.

Rather than force them to cram their schedules more Jackson trusted the raw materials at hand to come together at the right time. And once again he was at the heart of a milestone for Waterford football, having led the county to two junior All-Ireland championships in the past before raising the senior team from also rans to a side to be reckoned with. I put that to him when we spoke on Sunday night, but typically he deflected the plaudits.

"Not at all,” he shrugged. “I always maintained that if we get the best lads out on the field at the same time in this county we’d be as good as anybody.”

One training session and one win. Waterford won’t win the Munster championship but all the same they buried a few myths last weekend.

IN choosing a topic for my first blog I glanced back at a few notes I compiled over the weekend.

All the usual stuff… What would relegation mean for Cork and hurling in general….How would the four NFL semi-finalists would have coped if a black card system had been in place on Sunday last? …Then a vague notion to check in with London hurling captain, John Walsh, to see how they managed to beat a lively Meath side and secure promotion to Division 2A next year.

Then he came into my head. I remembered that I hadn’t seen him in a press box this year. And it really hit me that those days are over.

Johnny Murphy was a friend of mine. Nothing special in that – he was a friend of most everyone that knew him.

But when I’d head off for a match on a Sunday morning and head over to Thurles, Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Dungarvan, wherever, I’d think of Johnny en route. And I’d look forward to hearing the latest yarn or story he’d have for me.

We first met in 1998. I was just out of college from NUI, Galway and working with the Evening Echo. Cork, like Galway, was a serious spot and I loved it. Not long into my role as a news and political reporter I was invited to a function for Johnny. He had clocked in 25 years service - or something in that region - as an Examiner journalist. So a function was arranged at the Garda Club and after a flow of orations I remember the formalities ended on this particular note from the editor of the paper at the time, Brian Looney.

“John A Murphy is a legend,” Looney said.

Cue much applause.

About four hours later I was heading for the gents and who did I see a few steps down the stairs from me only Johnny. He was mumbling away to himself. It was only as I got closer that I could properly make out what he was saying.

“They’re dead fecking right,” he said cheerily to no-one, his mouth slanting to one side.

“I am a fecking legend.”

On another occasion a Dungarvan sleuth and friend of mine recalled a publican hearing a catalogue of knocks and thumps on the front door of his premises many years back. It was past 2am and the owner still had a few locals inside, sipping away and chatting. He opened the door only to find the polis outside.

“I’m f***d here,” he thought to himself as he opened up only for two officers to march past him. They went straight to the scrum of locals. Johnny was flanking the group, always ready for a turnover.

“Will you come on, Johnny, for f**k sake?” one Garda shouted. “We’re waiting for bloody ages outside.”

They weren’t there to take names. They were there to give Johnny a lift home. Sure he knew everyone.

The stories go on. These are just two of my favourites.

Johnny was a right good reporter. He got some great scoops, including the kidnapping of Lord and Lady Donoughmore in Clonmel, the arrest of the Claudia gun running ship off the Waterford coast, and he broke the infamous ‘Angel of Death’ story, otherwise known as the Dungarvan Aids scare.

He was also the first man you’d ring for a number or a bit of advice. Last year the Gaelic Writers Association honoured him for his lifetime achievements and I’m so glad we did for it meant a lot to him.

It’s heading towards the start of the 2013 championship now and all our attention will focus on games, results, controversies, suspensions, Hawkeye, cynicism … you know yourself.

Slowly, there is less and less room for characters in Gaelic Games, and equally in the reporting world of Gaelic Games. It’s an era of mass media production and consumption. Everything comes in an instant and it has to. Nothing holds.

But Johnny took life at his own pace and it did him no harm at all. He bowed out surrounded by a loving family, content that he had an illustrious career behind him and he closed his eyes content in the knowledge that he managed to get on famously with most everyone. There’s a lot to be said for that.