ALL-IRELAND CLUB SENIOR HURLING FINAL/PORTUMNA v BIRR:Sometimes the grassroots are honoured more in rallying cry than reality. Niall Hayes sees Monday's big game as a case in point, writes Keith Duggan
'CLUB IS FAMILY - that is what it says on the billboards," Niall Hayes declares as the rain hammers against the window. All day long, the radio weather bulletins have been predicting some class of perfect storm but although the summer yachts are bobbing vigorously on the Shannon, the hurling town of Portumna in the extreme south of Galway seems solid enough to resist any high winds.
Niall is the second-eldest of the five Hayes boys who will hurl for the town in Croke Park on St Patrick's Day and he works in the family car business. Al Hayes's garage is located just outside town, an impressive complex with its trademark Volkswagen icon easily recognisable from a distance against the turbulent sky and with so many shining cars on the grounds we might be looking down upon a vast parking lot in suburban Berlin.
But it is a family business, friendly and intimate, and as he roots around the cupboards in the small kitchen in search of sugar, Niall gets a small gripe off his chest.
"There are a few things in the GAA world that annoy me too. The GAA will preach to you about the importance of grassroots. Portumna are grassroots, even if we have become a small bit successful.
"They (the GAA) have a thing that they only allow 24 guys to be named on the panel for this All-Ireland. So we have six guys now who would travel from any part of Ireland, who do the same running and get the same grief from the manager if they don't apply themselves as much as Ollie Canning.
"All they want to see is their name in ink on the match programme. Everyone will tog, all 31 of us will be in the team photographs and we will all sit in the substitutes' arena and we will take the fine. Club is family. It is true. I have four brothers on this panel. You need 30 lads to have a training match. And we would reassure those guys they are a huge part of this. But I think what most people look for in life is recognition. It is the biggest reward you look for in life. And to deprive those guys the ink at the end of a page with their names on it is pointless."
Hayes delivers all this with his customary good-humoured grin and high spirits but he is deadly serious. Although Niall has been a fixture with Portumna, an instinctive forward with a goal-poaching touch, he never quite got the breaks his talent probably merited with Galway underage and senior teams.
Damien, an All Star in 2005, is the best-known of the Hayes boys. Derek is the eldest, Alan and Ronan the youngest. Orla is the lone girl. But they are agreed that the best of the lot of them was Keith, a sensational minor star who at just 19 was killed in a car crash just a few miles from home in 1999.
The rise of Portumna from being a senior club of relatively modest accomplishment to a national force came at a perfect time for Niall, who admits that a few years ago he faced the choice of "either being the guy with the good social life in Dublin or else trying to make it here in Galway".
In many senses, it wasn't a choice. When it comes to the deep-rooted loyalties that define GAA towns, it is easy to slip into cliches about the supremacy of the parish. Portumna is geographically unique, just across the bridge from Tipperary and close to Offaly and Clare.
"We are proud Galwaymen," Hayes clarifies. "But to find our own identity, we probably did take strength from the neighbouring counties. We are a good hour's drive from Kinvara, whom we beat in the county final, and we are just 20 minutes from Birr, whom we are playing in the All-Ireland final."
Niall used to play rugby along with Simon Whelahan and Niall Claffey in Birr and went to Nenagh for athletics.
When he talks about Portumna, it is obvious he is deeply attached to the place. He talks fondly about the bunch of lads he ran, or rather cycled, with as a youngster.
Portumna has the castle, Lough Derg forest park, the Shannon and good pubs, adequate distractions to grow up with. And it became clear by the time Niall was leaving national school there was a special generation of young hurlers knocking around as well. Niall was devastated to be among the last four players cut from the Galway minor team that won the 1994 All-Ireland championship.
He was still eligible the following year but broke a thumb and had to settle for a place as an unlisted substitute. He turned down an invitation to join the under-21 panel and spent a few summers in the US, hurling on a Chicago team with Alan Browne, Peter Barry and the consummate craftsman John Troy.
"And he was the craftiest," recalls Hayes. "He was like a quarterback. He ran the show. A brilliant man."
Niall's kid brother had that same uncanny craft as the Lusmagh genius. He had it in abundance. Keith was going to be special. Ollie Canning had been transformed into one of the best corner backs in the game and word had already begun to spread about the prodigious ability of his younger brother Joe. Damien Hayes could terrify teams with his electric pace and accuracy.
It was obvious Portumna would start rumbling once all these lads came of age. Keith Hayes had announced himself in the classic tradition, earning a man-of-the-match award in the 1997 minor All-Ireland final defeat to Clare and in the county minor final against Kiltormer a year later. He scored 2-9.
"From play," Niall nods.
Late that winter, Keith was scooting home to get some gear for a challenge match against Ballyboden of Dublin when the crash happened. In a country where road deaths have become terribly common, it is not hard to imagine the localised grief, but the fact Keith clearly had such a flamboyant gift for the national game seemed to deepen the sense of tragedy and pointlessness. None of them can believe nine years have passed, but the family talk about Keith regularly and inevitably muse as to how he would have matured - on the field of play and as a person.
"He was great fun, actually," Niall says, smiling broadly. "The special attribute I think he had was that he was a fantastic listener. You could talk and talk to him and he would take it in and he could understand it and know what to say. Keith had this great energy and had the ability to convert that into the right channels to make himself a better player.
"I remember us fighting over the most stupid things, punching each other and the usual. Then you would see him in Croke Park doing phenomenal things with the ball and you would see him beforehand, how relaxed he was. He enjoyed it.
"He had this wild energy when he was young but he learned how to use it and do his thing. He had the confidence and the determination. And he was just a great lad to have around the place. He was only 19. It was tragic. I don't know how you explain it. I can't . . . You miss him around the place. I remember once having a dream and he walked in through the back door. And I remember being just so happy to see him again that we didn't even bother asking where the hell were ya. We were just delighted.
"I think a lot of the team grew up with him and had respect for him. Our tradition in the family is that we go visit the grave before every match. We go up and talk and say a prayer and ask him to help us score an extra point or two. The lads do miss him and think of him. The last All-Ireland final, we had a picture of Keith and Joe O'Meara, who died in a freak car accident back in the early 1990s.
"They were coming back from a hunting afternoon or something and a tree fell on the car. Joe was a terrific hurler too and so we had pictures of them both on the dressingroom door. And ah, it just meant they were still there. And I suppose you didn't want to let them down as well.
"I don't mind talking about Keith because I don't like to think of him as 'gone' gone. I reckon he would be working here now. If Galway had Keith I have no doubt he would have made it. He was by far the best of the Hayeses. By far. For his age, he was the best of the minors and I reckon he would have been a huge asset to Galway. And I think that is well appreciated around Galway too."
If anything, that seems a modest tribute. Those even vaguely interested in Galway hurling turn sad-eyed when they consider what ought to have been for Keith Hayes.
His brothers hurled on. They had no choice. After his own minor setbacks, Niall returned to Portumna and began posting performances that saw him called into the Galway senior squad in 2002. He started several league matches and in the championship against Down but was on the bench thereafter.
At 25, he was perfectly placed to claim a place but then Noel Lane was axed and Conor Hayes came and he was let go from the panel.
After the teenage setbacks, he had the composure to accept the latest twist so he concentrated on Portumna, who landed a county title under Joachim Kelly and have been a simmering force in Galway ever since.
At lunchtime, Niall's brothers hurry into the kitchen and in record time have made soup and sandwiches for the table. They waste no time in tearing into Niall about this interview, Damien demanding to know if he has mentioned he was married last year or has told the yarn about Derek's broken jaw. Niall confesses that neither subject has come up.
"Then what were you talking about?" Damien demands and insists, before disappearing to take a phone call, that Derek tell about his one and only outing for the Galway hurling team. Derek is the eldest and tallest of the boys and talks with wicked humour, a gentleman off the field and, his brothers vouch, tough as nails on it.
His jaw was indeed badly broken and he displays a left hand bearing the oddity of a missing knuckle, shaved by a stray hurl.
The story of his Galway career is reassuring for those who want to believe the GAA is still amateur in spirit. It was during Noel Lane's time in charge and the Tribesmen were opening a pitch down in Clare, travelling with 16 men, two of whom were injured.
Derek had put in a heavy night before in the nightclubs of Galway city and was on a pitch outside Nenagh for a club challenge match at 11 o'clock. He was destroyed with tiredness by the time he showed up to support Niall at the Galway-Clare match and was surprised to see Noel Lane pointing at him as he ambled through the turnstiles. The manager strode up to Derek and thanked him for coming.
"No problem, Noel. Sure I would follow Galway anywhere."
Things took an odd turn when he found himself being escorted through the Galway dressingroom like a visiting dignitary, nodding to the likes of Joe Rabbitte and Brian Feeney, still too dazed and bleary from the night before to absorb what was happening.
"Fair play to you, Derek - sure we'll stick you in centre back," Lane whispered and promptly left. Shorts were borrowed from Ollie Fahy, boots from Niall and a hurley from Ollie Canning, who warned him to guard it with his life.
"The first ball that came in, Tony Carmody pulled and broke the hurley in two and all I could hear was Canning yelling at me from the corner. No praise, like," Derek says sheepishly.
He ended up at full forward on the legendary Brian Lohan. "We'll take it easy on each other," he suggested to Lohan, who was scrutinising him from under the famous red helmet. "Go for a bit of an oul gallop."
At the final whistle, a group of youngsters ran up to Niall and asked him if Eugene Cloonan was on the field. Niall pointed across to his brother and said, "That's him."
At least 20 Clare youngsters now have unique sticks bearing the signature of Derek Hayes. Noel Lane thanked him for coming and Derek headed back to Portumna and dined out on the story for a week. He tells it with the timing of a great comedian.
"I decided to call it quits there and then," he concludes with mock hauteur. "I believe The Irish Times carried a lengthy tribute story."
But lightly though he laughs at himself, Derek is dedicated to his hurling. Birr and Portumna has a heavyweight feel about it and Derek will participate in what might be a cracking All-Ireland final on Monday. Not many sportsmen can say that.
Lunch done, the brothers melt back into the vast emporium. Before we leave, Niall shakes his head in acknowledgement it will be special to be on an All-Ireland field with a player of the calibre of Brian Whelahan.
"He is beyond anything. But it is not something you think about now. We spent long enough being beaten by the likes of Joe Cooney and Hopper McGrath. The first time, you think about who you have played and the second time you just hate losing. Playing Birr and a player like Brian - it will be something special to look back on in years to come. But being in an All-Ireland final is special."
It is a special day, St Patrick's Day, when old men wear suits and kids observe tradition with a splash of green and people get half soused and sentimental and watch the national games on television.
Club is family. Thirty-one Portumna boys will line up on the field in Croke Park before the hurling final. Alone they know the day is as much about those players and friends who aren't there as those who are. And that whatever the names listed on the souvenir programme, it is not about ink but blood."We are proud Galwaymen, but to find our own identity, we probably did take strength from the neighbouring counties.
