WHEN Barack Obama stood on the front lawn of Áras an hUachtarán on Monday morning, holding a hurley in his golfer’s grip and swinging it from the elbows like he was warming up in a batting cage, we all knew how he had come to be there.
We’ve all read the stories of his young life in Hawaii and Indonesia. We learned of his nascent political career on the spit-and-sawdust Chicago political shop floor.
We saw him win an election and take an oath and duck through the door of Marine One onto the Phoenix Park grass.
On Monday morning, he smiled as he took the unfamiliar stick in his hands, stepped towards the already-charmed press pack and half-joked of ‘paddling’ members of the United States Congress with this Irish ash if they ever stepped out of line again. We knew how he’d reached that point.
But how did the hurley get there? Phil Archibold put it there.
Let’s rewind a little. The Dubliner was working in the post and print room of stockbroking firm in the capital. But he – bravely- jacked it in and set himself an another road, one leading towards dual passions: sport and history.
“I’m a tour guide at Croke Park now and when they rang there looking for something to give the president on his visit, I think someone out them on to us.
Archbold is someone who bookends phone messages with a ‘dia duit’ and a ‘slán’. After two years leading tours through ghosts in Kilmainham Jail, you suspect he knows why its important still to do so.
When he moved across the river to Croker he fell in love with the small ball code.
“I only found hurling in the past few years. I grew up in the Coolock -Darndale area, we would’ve been lads in the late 1970s and 80s. You know, it was a working class area of Dublin, and generally there wasn’t too much hurling around.
“I was always a football or soccer fan and followed it for years but I’m all about the hurling now. I came in one day and said it to the lads – I can’t go on following everything so it’s just hurling now,” he adds. Case closed, Heffo.
Archbold and his wife noticed a gap in the market sometime later and Heritage Hurleys was born.
“We have a small gift shop and there was no real hurling gift out there, we realised. It’s such a unique thing – hurling – it’s our own 2,000 year-old sport and people love learning about it when they’re here let me tell you.
“Myself and the wife whenever we get the chance are off in the car and we’re down the country and we saw there too that none of the gift shops have anything really to do with hurling. So i looked around the web myself and there was a a few guys customising hurleys but we wanted to move it on a bit. We put in our own money and made up a couple of samples and got things going ourselves.”
The hurleys are souvenirs – he pitches them to me as perfect for weddings, club awards, tourists, whatever – with customised images or crest. It seems like one of those Post-It notes ideas; why didn’t anyone else think of that?
“It’s going slow at the moment – it’s tough trying to do everything and hold down a job. I could do so much more but who can afford to jack in the job?
Some weekends, I might get in the car and use up a load of petrol some days and get them out there a bit more – and no one has not taken one when they see them – but there’s a lot of work in it. But we have the website up and running now and hopefully this will make a difference.
“We couldn’t get any investment, the bank wouldn’t even give us an overdraft. But hopefully it’ll move on a bit now.”
All the hurleys are those with bad grain and this was one of John Torpeys from Clare. Archibold imprinted the Celtic symbols of “circles of eternity” from the Newgrange stone on the shaft.
An inscription reads: “Presented to Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, on the occasion of his first visit to Ireland, May 2011 by An Taoiseach Enda Kenny T.D.”
And if one of you products is kept under the Roosevelt desk in the Oval Office – your marketing budget isn’t so much of a worry any more.
How’d you manage that one?
“The taoiseach’s office was looking for something for a nice gift for the president. And there was a lack of gifts out there really that relates to hurling – same as we found – so i think someone suggested they contact us.
“I watched it on Monday morning. It was a very proud moment really. I don’t think I realised beforehand how much of a big deal it would be.
“It was like any other customer – I wanted to get it right . But that hurley is part of history now. It was a very proud moment.”
Adrian@thescore.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell















