This is mad stuff . . . the sheer bile of hurling is really heartening, writes ANN MARIE HOURIHANE
DONAL ÓG Cusack's autobiography, Come What May, is certainly the book of the year, but perhaps not altogether for the reasons that Dónal Óg might expect.
In Come What May, Donal Óg, a master hurler from Cloyne in Cork, reveals that he is gay. The resulting publicity has been enormous. But there are quite a few people who will find his book shocking for other reasons. To many, hurling is more exotic than homosexuality.
You may say that this is a rather stereotypical Dublin and Irish Timesstance – which is true. Our familiarity with hurling is limited, and Dónal Óg knows those limits. In a brief mishap while training in Dublin's Herbert Park, the Cork team knew who they needed to negotiate for them. "We pushed Seán Óg to the front to face the mob. Even in Dublin 4 they know Seán Óg."
But on the whole, hurling is a mystery that the GAA guarded jealously for years, in the sporting culture of Ireland where a system of apartheid always applied. It is only now that a new atmosphere of tolerance has begun to emerge, and that we can lift our eyes from our respective home grounds and have a look at each of Ireland’s sporting worlds in turn.
Cloyne is a sort of hurling paradise. “Hurling runs the town. The town runs on hurling. It is our love and our celebration and our identity and our source of community. That’s what we talk about. Hurling. That’s what we daydream about, hurling. That’s what we do. We hurl.” (page 10.)
When he was a little boy, Dónal Óg’s auntie Fay made his Cloyne jersey for him. His father, his grandfather and his uncle Pat had all been goalkeepers. In a local match in Cloyne, single men against married men, Dónal Óg and his father were at opposite ends of the pitch, playing in their respective goals. “In our world,” as Dónal Óg puts it, “where hurling was religion and everything else was distraction.” On the one hand, what is most striking about hurling is the love that men show each other – Dónal Óg’s father, also Dónal, having his brilliant young schoolboy son given steak every day, and for breakfast on match days, as the less favoured siblings looked on, and bringing him up his porridge every single morning.
Hurling is an intimate language. “Even then I knew the way of the world: the main thing that was driving the man up the stairs every morning with the porridge was hurling.” (page 14)
When Dónal Óg’s hero, Cork goalkeeper Ger Cunningham, surrendered the mantle to the younger player, an emotional Dónal Óg returned to the dressing room to find a good luck card that Cunningham had left for him in his kitbag which read: “To the Number 1. Keep your eye on the ball.” On the other hand, what is most striking about hurling is the hate, which is framed in the most Irish way. “I wouldn’t be gone on them,” says Dónal Óg of Cork’s Kilkenny rivals, who have won all round them and whom he thoroughly loathes. “I am not a fan of their over-passing style,” said Cork’s controversial new manager Ger McCarthy on his appointment shortly before all hell broke loose.
The Cork hatred of Kilkenny is never really explained. "Under those stripey jerseys beat hearts with genuine disdain for us and what we stand for" (page 1). But for the outsider, there is never a clear outline given of what Cork do actually stand for. I mean, how different can they be from Kilkenny when you think about it? Whoah, baby. The Cork lads are the rebels against the suits of the GAA. They are the rebel county. The Kilkenny lads are the good boys. "The GAA's version of the Stepford Wives" (strong stuff – page 6).
Cusack is frank about the violence. In Boston in 2005 both Cork and Kilkenny teams were present, I think staying in the same hotel. “They got into the lift and we actually thought for a minute to chase in after them and have the fight there and then . . .” (page 54). This is mad stuff, and expressed – happily – without apology, or any hope that one day all this violence will be a thing of the past. The sheer bile of hurling is really heartening.
The story of how a rival goalkeeper faked injury to make it look as if Dónal Óg Cusack was his substitute, instead of his equal who was appointed to come on for the second half of a demonstration game, is a fantastic illustration of small town spite.
Hurling culture is so conservative that Ger McCarthy’s appointment as manager of Cork is summed up thus: “It was an arranged marriage between two different faiths and it was never going to work.” To Dónal Óg, letting in a single goal is a torture, a moral matter. “The goal burned a hole in my heart and gnawed at my brain all that winter. I put myself through hell over it” (page 109).
This attitude makes the players' strike, of which Dónal Óg was one of the leaders, all the more powerful. It makes his coming out as gay more incidental, if anything – although not, naturally, to the thousands of gay men and women and gay teenagers in rural Ireland. Publicists are always saying that certain books are a fascinating portrait of Ireland now. Come What Mayis just that.