LOCKER ROOM:The 'exodus' of young GAA players to Aussie Rules is nothing to worry about – most of them will be back, writes TOM HUMPHRIES
THE DUBS of the 1970s (would the congregation all genuflect please, thank you) have a story about a player joining the panel which was then, and in fact still is, quite a tight-knit group. The newcomer wasn’t quite of the blue-chip quality they had come to expect but to their surprise he survived and before each training session he’d pull into Parnell Park and unload his bag.
Subtle inquiries were made as to his continued presence. The word filtered back down. The newcomer was the thoroughbred’s donkey. As a donkey or a pony might be placed in a field to calm a thoroughbred, the player offered lifts and company to a player better than himself. He kept a superstar happy and in lifts. Thus he earned his keep.
I often think of that when I try to get worked up about the seepage of GAA players to Aussie Rules football. The Aussies haven’t yet gone down the road of the thoroughbred’s donkey (David Moran is too fine a prospect and has too distinguished a bloodline to be categorised as such). The Irish lads in the AFL seem to cling together for company and reassurance, the situation is such that almost as many of them will return home within two years as went away in the first place.
It’s a hard one to explain, of course, to the grieving folk in a place where the local prodigy has been lifted and sent off on a convict ship, leaving everybody wondering if he is ever going to be seen again, but the point is that the numbers going are still so small and the success rate so minute that there really is nothing more that should be done apart from organising a party at the dock.
They come back.
I remember being in Down a few years ago and great was the weeping and wailing which surrounded the abduction of Marty Clarke. The brightest and the best had been taken away and the like of him would never be seen again. Clarke looked as if he would be as much of a prodigy down there as he was up here.
When he made his full debut for Collingwood back in June 2007, against the Sydney Swans in front of 64,222 at Telstra Stadium, he looked to have cracked it with ease. He made 20 possessions and the local media, often sceptical about the pale-faced imports from Ireland, declared it one of the greatest debuts in the history of the game.
Within a year of arriving in the AFL he had won a rising star award.
But poor form and a cruel run with injuries held him back the following year. He came home last month, more passionate, he said, about playing for Down than he ever was about playing for Collingwood. Getting a player back never creates as many column inches as losing a player, but, generally, almost invariably they come back.
You go back through our weeping and wailing down the years. Dermot McNicholl came back. Anthony Tohill came back. Brian Stynes came back. Niall Buckley, Colm McManamon, Seán Cavanagh. Kevin Dyas. Brendan Murphy. Michael Shields. Kyle Coney. Ian Ryan. Aisake Ó hAilpín. Even Tadgh Kennelly. They all came back.
They came back as stronger, more rounded athletes. They came back with a professional’s work ethic. They all decorate the intercounty scene. Is this not a triumph for the GAA and the sense of place which is part of a GAA man’s DNA?
They come home. Colm Begley is home. Two years ago he was Rookie of the Year for the Brisbane Lions. Begley seemed to have found the short-cut to success Down Under. The Lions had him playing games almost before he had his luggage off the airport carousel. He went from strength to strength in 2007 but, when 2008 brought injuries, the Lions lost interest. Begley was cut loose. Professional sport is cold and callous that way.
So he trained with Collingwood prior to the draft and got picked by St Kilda’s, the club which has, at the moment, a great and passionate interest in all things Irish.
Despite Begley’s pedigree he got used once by St Kilda’s last year. He decided to come home.
Those who stayed Down Under and thrived are a tiny number, fewer than we will lose to emigration, fewer than we will lose to long- term injury, fewer than we will lose to alcohol and other distractions, fewer than we will lose to other sports closer to home.
Setanta Ó hAilpín is staying. Pearse Hanley looks to be making it. The Kerry boys are starting out. Hopefully they will enjoy it all. The odds are against them making it.
Tommy Walsh, for all his excellence as a Gaelic footballer, lacks that blinding bit of acceleration to take him past opponents. In the context of Gaelic football, however, he compensates with his power. That will be his first challenge. He will no longer be among the most powerful men on the field. And he won’t be among the fastest. The road to success at his age has a distinctly uphill look to it.
His Kerins O’Rahilly’s clubmate, David Moran, is conceivably just as big a loss should he choose to stay, but for Kerry he is far from irreplaceable as Anthony Maher’s form in the county championships suggested.
One suspects though that both players will enjoy their time down there, work hard and come back having had a shot at the long odds. They won’t come back rich, but they will come back no longer having to fret that some day they would regret what might have been.
They may even come back sooner. The novelty of constant sunshine and being a professional sportsperson wears thin in an environment where you are being paid to learn a new and complex game at which you will always be considered an outsider.
That nasty ill-informed attitude which some of us have toward immigrants “coming over here and taking our jobs” doesn’t cease to exist when you walk into an Aussie Rules club as an exotic import drawing media interest which outweighs your ability to actually play the game yet.
Any player who goes is missed but let’s have no more of the weeping and wailing. They go because they want to go. The game they go to play won’t make them rich but will buy a bit of space in the crowded house of youth.
We don’t have any great emerging stars anymore in the Premier League. No Duffs and Keanes starting to spreading their wings. All we have is the odd mention of Setanta in the Aussie Rules’ highlights. Another success Down Under would actually be quite okay. We are a long , long way form having to ask the last person out of the poor little country to throw in a penny.
