When I was a kid each summer we'd spend our weekends at Nowlan Park watching Kilkenny club championship games. This was before the training sessions became so infamous and fashionable. The Fennellys, the Fenians, Billy Fitzpatrick, Joe Hennessy and Christy Heffernan were my favourites, but Noel Skehan was my hero. Why pick the middle aged goalkeeper instead of the swashbuckling mentalists bleeding and belting their way across the pitch to a tumult of crowd?
When it came to hurling I was a glory-hunting child. Everything I knew about the sport was heartbreak. My dad coached most of the teams in Athy, from senior to under 12's at one point or another and usually at the same time. Success was rare but endlessly there were jerseys to be washed, houses to visit cajoling players to play and convincing concerned parents that next time Seamie would know how to get out of the way of the stick wielded by madmen from Monasterevin. It was thankless. But the nights in Nowlan Park were obviously a draft of vintage, the good stuff that restored my Dad's faith in his mission to spread the gospel. I just liked the noise and the crowd and the history lesson I’d get on the drive down and afterwards.
So when it came to picking a favourite, and every six year old has to, I went straight to the top. I didn't care then, and don't really now, that Skehan hadn't won all his medals on the field of play. I understood that the subs also suffered; I had no idea then there was no shame in being second to Ollie Walsh, only that I had seen subs at all the games I’d been to when my Dad was prowling the sideline and they showed up and trained and screamed abuse like first teamers.
In 1982 or 1983 the train taking the Kilkenny team home from All Ireland victory stopped in Athy and waited as people shuffled on and off having their picture taken with the players and the cup. My dad went along the platform checking windows on the train before stopping two carriages down and knocking on the window. He pointed to the door. Then he waved at me to come down to the window between carriages. The second I arrived was the same second Skehan poked his head out the window. I was stunned. Star struck and dumb. I don’t remember anything about what happened next, except that there’s a picture of me being lifted by my Dad, Noel Skehan and the Liam McCarthy. I don’t know who took the picture.
As a Kildare football supporter and by my family connections technically an Antrim hurling fan I have no right to feel some sympathy for Kilkenny now their moment of history has slipped away. Theirs is a type of pain we lesser county supporting hordes can never understand. But I’ll always love their hurlers.
As a post-script – I was almost as star struck on Saturday evening when I got to spend some time in the company of Jimmy Doyle. He’s in his early seventies now but he was pretty sure on Saturday night Tipp would win. He was right. He knows his stuff. Jimmy won six All Irelands as a senior and was named on both the team of the century and the team of the millennium. For whatever reason his story is less told now than it should be. After one All Ireland final he won he didn’t stick around for the celebrations because his ankle was so sore from the double break he’d suffered in the Munster final. The pain killing injections before and at half time didn’t really work. He scored nine points in a one point win. He got the train home so he could get a cast put back on the next day. He played in his first minor final as a fourteen and a half year old goalkeeper. They lost that but won the next three. So technically he’s got nine All Ireland’s too. I’m happy to count them all. Eoin Kelly and Lar Corbett and Noel McGrath and Padraic Maher will have made him proud.
