At this stage, Tom O’Meara reckons there’s no going back.
He’s been living in New York for 2½ years and can see a life stretching out ahead of him there.
“I’m from rural north Tipperary and I think I’d find it very difficult to adapt back after living the big city life,” said the New York hurler with a smile.
He got home for a couple of days earlier this week, after the Lory Meagher Cup semi-final defeat of Monaghan.
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The 31-strong playing group, and coaching team, landed in Ireland last Thursday, set up camp in Mullingar, where the Monaghan game was played, and will relocate to Stillorgan in south Dublin on Thursday morning in advance of Saturday’s Croke Park final against Cavan.
It’s been one big whirlwind and not something O’Meara ever saw on his horizon.
His earliest Croke Park memory is attending the 2010 All-Ireland final and salivating as Tipp romped to success at Kilkenny’s expense.
He remembers breaking down in tears afterwards when his parents told him they’d have to shoot off immediately to rescue the family car they’d abandoned on some highway or byway.
At that stage, if you’d told any of them they’d all be back in the summer of 2025 for a Lory Meagher Cup final against Cavan, which O’Meara would be playing in, they’d have carted you away.
“Never, not in a million years would I have thought I’d be playing for New York, let alone playing for New York in an All-Ireland final in Croke Park,” the Kiladangan man said.
O’Meara is based in Queens now, working in construction as a project manager. Three times a week he makes the hour or so journey to Gaelic Park for training. Other days, he and some pals will puck a sliotar around Central Park. It was novel at first to draw attention from interested passersby but the questions and the queries soon got old.
“Every Tom, Dick and Harry is asking you what’s that?” said O’Meara. “I’m sick of telling them it’s hurling. It’s usually, ‘What? Curling?’ I say, ‘No, not curling, hurling’. I’ve just resorted to, ‘Ah, it’s cricket’ and they seem to walk away. You get a lot of that, and gawking stares.”
Hurling has not exactly fully caught on over there just yet. There’s just one home-grown player in the New York hurling squad.
“James Breen, he’s born and reared in the Bronx, a great hurler,” said O’Meara.
Men such as former Cork senior Sean O’Leary-Hayes and 2017 All-Ireland winning Galway forward Johnny Glynn are picking up the slack in the meantime. Glynn has embraced New York more than any of them, lining out for the senior footballers previously. He’s currently the GAA board’s vice-chairman.
Cavan, no doubt, will have their hands full with the big forward who clipped two points in last weekend’s 1-29 to 2-13 defeat of Monaghan.
“He’s a cult hero out there now,” said O’Meara. “Any man that watches hurling knows Johnny’s ability in the air. He’s been one of the best to field a ball. He always keeps himself in very good nick, a hard trainer also. He’s still well able to go.”
This is the first season that New York has been included in the hurling’s fifth-tier competition. There have been suggestions that they’re too strong for the grade.
“I can see where they’re coming from, saying that,” shrugged O’Meara. “Galway had the same set-up back in the day, getting straight to a semi-final in the Liam MacCarthy. It can be an advantage or a disadvantage. For the first 10 minutes of the Monaghan game we were sitting ducks. I don’t think we scored at all. We hadn’t played any competitive games. In New York, you can’t organise any competitive match to the same standard. So there are positives and negatives to it.”
