TOM HUMPHRIESfinds the coach hasn't forgotten the old days in Clare but he's living for the new days with Dublin
YOU WOULD have to know Crusheen’s windswept plain to see any luxury in O’Toole Park. If you and your sweat and your blood and your youth were part of Crusheen’s history as a crucible of suffering for Clare hurlers perhaps you can stand in this patch of Dublin mud and grass under the weak and watery light, stand here on this field stripped of goalposts and lashed with rain and wind and just feel at home again. Pampered even.
People ask Anthony Daly what are the training facilities like above in Dublin and like an old uncle who had been to New York before anybody else in the family he describes the wonders.
“I describe it as an upmarket version of Crusheen. There’s buildings and a wall and the lights are better. At least we can hurl a little bit during the warm-up here.”
It’s a Thursday night that would make Jack London wilt and Anthony Daly’s face framed by a woolly Yankees hat and a high-reaching anorak collar is beaming as he tells stories about the old days.
He is remembering that once upon a time Michael O’Grady, the former Dublin manager, brought himself and the Sparrow O’Loughlin on a trip to Scotland. This was before either himself or the Sparrow became storied warriors of hurling’s revolutionary period.
He remembers the innocence of arriving back and being told to wear their green Ireland jumpers with pride and going into Powers and telling everyone who would listen that the singing of Flower of Scotland was the most hair-raisingly intimidating thing they had ever heard.
“Jesus, I’d say there wasn’t 300 at the match but sure we thought this was the big time.”
Behind him 30 Dublin hurlers are bending to the tasks of winter. Daly chuckles to himself when he looks at who is flying and who is carrying a bit of acreage after the winter feeding season. He’d have struggled with excess baggage out on Crusheen and on the hill in Shannon and recalls with envy the words of his great friend Fergie “Tuts” Touhy who used to disdain league play and the purer tortures of winter announcing grandly, “Ye’ll all be shite for the league and by the spring they’ll be begging me to come out.”
A fine and forgotten art the early league sit-out.
More and more as Daly watches this Dublin team they remind him of the Clare teams he played on in the early 90s. The other night he was watching Dublin’s league game with Cork from last year and found it frustratingly representative of the genre.
“They reminded me again of ourselves. There they were against Cork and the game is there to be won. The chances are coming and you want them to drive on and they lose by five points! You come away from that disgusted. That’s a terrible feeling not being able to drive past. It’s like the marathon when they hit the wall and they can’t get past anybody. We were like that in Clare.”
So! Open the bag of tricks! Make them run up and down a hill somewhere! Force them to play savage games in training and then make them win an All-Ireland. Tell them how to make speeches passionately ending the era of the Dublin whipping boys!
“Things like that will still happen,” he says crushingly, “sure it comes with the times. We’ll be about learning from defeats.
“One of the first things I said was there will be days coming home from league matches when we will be low. There is going to be a defeat and it will sicken us. It could go wrong on the biggest day of the year. We could lose to Antrim. And if it happens we’ll have to pick up the parts. It’s all part of the learning process. For now, there is great potential there.”
And he nods his head to the heaving bunch of hurlers who are setting off on yet another gallop into the gloaming, great clouds of steam issuing from the pack as they exhale in the night.
Dublin both made progress and consolidated under Tommy Naughton but you suspect this is a new experience in the lives of most Dublin hurlers. On January 1st when the gate went up and collective training began again for county teams they played the Blue Stars in the annual games out in Kilbarrack. Since then they have played challenges against LIT , DIT and Offaly as well as training.
If it is a big commitment for players, the frisson of excitement which Daly’s presence in the capital has created means that very few have been counting the cost and the extended panel he is now working with includes returnees like Damien Russell, Alan McCrabbe and Shane Martin.
There is the sense, too, in the pack that Daly’s commitment seems as fierce as ever it was back home in Clare. His typical week involves leaving Clare for Dublin on Tuesday, getting to the city early, doing some gym work himself and then going to training and heading home again.
He comes up early again on Thursday and stays in Castleknock after training. Sees anybody who needs seeing on Friday and then does ball work with the team on Friday night before hitting the road for Clare again.
He’s driving all the time. Eating the roads.
“I have my bearings now. Mary is the only woman I have trusted and obeyed in my life. She’s the sat nav lady. She says ‘go left’. I go left. I didn’t start driving till I was 26 so it’s still a bit of a novelty!”
What made him do it? When Gerry Harrington from the Dublin County Board first called he said he hadn’t really thought about it because nobody had asked him. By the time a three-man delegation form Dublin got down to meet him he was enthused by the idea.
“I think when they called they were at the stage of just ruling out fellas. I said I’d meet them. I was fairly positive when I thought about it and they made a great case.
“For me what’s it in it, though? Well the wife would answer that. I’m happier in the last three weeks than in the last two years, I’d say. I love it. I was depressed for three months after giving up Clare. I could have stayed with Clare for a fourth year but I felt that if I failed for a fourth season there was no way of ever going near it again.
“There’s plenty to be done here in Dublin if you want to do it. And I do. I would stand behind players all night, every night at training. I love the buzz, the dressingroom, the field, the chat and the work. It’s my addiction.”
And then there is that little strain of romance which always clings to Daly in his endeavours. Dublin just remind him of the old days when Clare couldn’t buy a bit of luck.
“I just liked the thought of them where they are. I thought there would be a bit of a kick in them, that they would respond well and so far, they have. I’m delighted, to be honest.
“In fairness, there’s no sparing the effort from the lads. It’s already a good sign that I know it will be very hard to cut the panel. I thought we would be wondering about who to keep. It’ll be tough to let lads go.”
Daly’s task is difficult to define. Dublin have reached a certain point on the mountainside. The slopes above are dotted with many of the teams who will play in this year’s Leinster championship. What success will be in Dublin will probably only be known when something happens which feels like success.
In selling the Dublin job the delegation referred again and again to the tipping point, to bringing Dublin to or beyond that point where momentum is irresistible and the great work of recent underage campaigns bears real fruit.
He knows the names of every player now, a facility he learned working in the bank years ago, and he is absorbing himself into Dublin hurling life. Before he came to Dublin Niall Gilligan had told him to watch out for Christy Sweets, Dublin’s most stalwart supporter. Last Sunday in Kinnegad he marched up to Christy and introduced himself and invited him to eat with the team. Another friend made.
He stands by the gate near where the last run of the night finishes up. He makes a comment to each finishing player. “Well done, Mikey”. “Good boy, Cathal”. And so on. Inside there is steaming tea and 40 meals awaiting. This is Thursday. On Friday night they will meet for ball work. On Saturday they will go to Limerick to see Ger Hartmann.
On Sunday, tomorrow, they will play Kilkenny, a wrecking ball of reality swinging into Parnell Park.
“Go handy now,” he says, “don’t go writing anything that will make Cody think that we think we’re going to beat them.”
