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In the running with Dan the Man

August 13, 2010 in Columns, GAA, Hurling, Sport | View Comments

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Mind your heads while I throw in the first cliché, if I may; in sport, there’s no gain without pain.

Mostly however, there’s no gain despite the pain. Just ask a Waterford hurler.

I pulled on a pair of running shoes and fell in behind almost-greatness as he lapped the local GAA pitch these past pregnant days before the season’s end.

Running alongside Dan Shanahan, we drew right angles in the corners of Dungarvan’s Fraher Field as if Davy Fitz himself was watching us on Google Maps on his laptop back in Clare.

A relaxed Shanahan did not seem like a man marching inexorably towards his last game. After 13 years on the inter-county dance floor, the final game of his Waterford career is now rising in the east.

If he was frisked on the way through the Croke Park gate on Sunday morning, the Garda would toss four Munster championship medals and three All-Stars onto the floor beside the Lismore man’s wallet and car keys. I’m sure he doesn’t carry his National League medal around.

Later that day, a defeat to Tipperary in Dublin will see the curtain fall at last on the Lismore man’s time in the national spotlight — after almost a decade and a half of wonderful goals’n’gums.

But defeat their near neighbours and rivals and the blue and white roadshow stays on the tracks as Kilkenny’s freight train whistles into sight again.

If it ends there — a casualty to history while the Noresiders park the drive-for-five — Shanahan will know he’s trained as much as any of those marching behind the Artane Band. You control that much. And live with the rest.

Now, he’s trotting down the sideline in an Argentina shirt, distinctive tattoos flicking from beneath his short three-striped sleeves. Like Marco ‘Matrix’ Materazzi — the Italian centre half/footballing assassin who commemorated his World Cup and Champions League victories with vivid tats of the respective trophies — Shanahan will surely have to ink a painful portrait on his body of the Liam MacCarthy Cup if Tipp and then the Cats are accounted for?

“My god,” he laughs, “You can do it yourself — full size and on my back or something, with the date underneath it .” Silence for a moment, “That’d be nice.”

But, no pain, no gain — in tattoos and sport.

This is supposed to be a day off the training for Shanahan. He was put through his paces by Fitzy and co last night. And the same tomorrow. After this run he’ll go back to work. Tonight he might grab a quick massage or a swim.

“The sport now is a completely different ball game compared to when I started . The stuff you would have got away with wouldn’t happen now for sure,” he day dreams.

“You could go out every night and still play a match — the speed of the game, the skill, the mental side has all changed since myself, Ken and Tony started I suppose 12 or 13 years ago. But it’s changed for the better.

“Players are much faster and much stronger. When you see what has to go into it to even stay competitive… It’s certainly semi-professional. Games are harder to win.

“I do a lot of my own. You get a programme at the start of the year. I kept back on the weights this year and concentrated more on the flexibility and core work; that’s all the rage at the moment.”

And has ‘Dan the Man’ filed into the local community centre for a yoga class, like Roy Keane?

“I’ve never done the bit of yoga — you wouldn’t have the time — with your own training and your hurling training with Davy then and the selectors. It’s time consuming.

“I’m lucky enough to be in full employment at the moment. So it’s hard to fit in all the training. Your family suffers, to be honest with you. I’ve a daughter now who’s 11 and she’s never been on holiday.

“But I’ll call it a day after this season — it takes up an awful lot of time — but I love it. I absolutely love it, I don’t know what I’m going to do when I finish. If I’m not playing I love encouraging the lads when they play and stuff like that.”

The sweat, as we head past the grandstand again, is now hopping off one of us. (I’m reminded of Carla’s response, when Norm admits he ‘may perspire a bit’, in Cheers; ‘We could grow rice’) Shanahan however seems as cool as one of his finishes in to the far corner. He looks like a man who’d stand up well to harsh studio lights in a life after sliotars.

“I’d like to get into the media side of things after I finish. I know the game having played it up to now. The speed of the game and everything. Some people can’t see things on the line that should be seen and I would be interested in that now. Radio or television… it would be interesting.

“It’s nice to put your point across, to give players that aren’t maybe getting the thanks for runs that aren’t seen or whatever, rather than the players who are getting the points and then the credit.”

After running less than a mile in his shoes, we sit back into Shanahan’s car. the familiar tattoo flashes across his forearm: “If you don’t know me, don’t judge me.” If the last full stop in his artful career is inked on Sunday, we will certainly feel we’ve known him. But maybe his final hurling judgement will come in September.

Dan Shanahan uses the adidas micoach. To become faster for your sport, download the adidas miCoach app and run in Supernova trainers. Visit facebook.com/adidasrunning to find out more

Adrian.russell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell
This story first appeared in the print version of the Irish Examiner newspaper

Inventor close to big-leagues breakthrough

June 25, 2010 in Baseball, Columns, Hurling, Uncategorized | View Comments

This is going to be about a hurling man – but let’s start with some baseball.

Like boxing, America’s Game is one that lends itself to great sports-writing. And it entices some of the best to huddle here with us in the damp, shadowy corners of the back pages.

When John Updike – one of the bold-face names of 20th century literature – gambolled into Fenway Park one sunny afternoon, he unknowingly sat into the bleachers of the famous old chocolate box of a stadium on the last day of the legendary Ted Williams’ career at bat.

The smiling writer watched curiously for the duration and was ultimately so exercised by the theatre that played out in his lap that he submitted a now-celebrated piece to the renowned New Yorker magazine.

Updike sketches wonderfully Williams’ curmudgeonly farewell speech to Boston, before he typically spits a final rebuke to those in the press-box or “the maestros of the keyboard up there”.

Ultimately, Updike explains how Williams dotted a full stop in his cartoon-strip career with a final, predictable home run.

“Like a feather caught in a vortex, Williams ran around the square of bases at the center of our beseeching screaming. He ran as he always ran out home runs – hurriedly, unsmiling, head down, as if our praise were a storm of rain to get out of. He didn’t tip his cap. Though we thumped, wept, and chanted ‘We want Ted’ for minutes after, he hid in the dugout, he did not come back. Our noise for some seconds passed beyond excitement into a kind of immense open anguish, a wailing, a cry to be saved. But immortality is nontransferable. The papers said that the other players, and even the umpires on the field, begged him to come out and acknowledge us in some way, but he never had and did not now. Gods do not answer letters.”

Gods do not answer letters. Home run, John.

(Incidentally, Ted Williams – the greatest they ever saw in Boston – died in 2002 . Sparking a very messy legal mud fight, two of his children froze his head cryogenically. Some insisted that the signature they insisted franked his approval of this unusual request was merely an autograph. Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly visited the icy head once, starting his subsequent column: “Hung out with Ted Williams the other day. Pretty cool. He’s spending his time in a one-storey cement building in a warehouse district next to the Scottsdale, Ariz., airport, frozen, upside down, waiting for science to bring him back from the dead.”)

Some time ago, I wrote here of Clare man Flan Marsh. A roofer by trade, he filled the now yawning days in his workshop at the end of the garden where he developed – slowly but surely – a hurley, that like himself, does not break.

His patent-pending technology involves lacing the hurley – still an authentic piece of ash – with a filament that holds it together safely as it cracks in the white heat of battle. This grit in the oyster prevents the familiar sight of half a hurley spinning dangerously into the summer sky.

I drove up to Broadford and stood in the centre of the club’s field before witnessing a full-blooded demonstration. It works.

So… here come the fast-talking Americans in ten-gallon hats and smelling of crisp dollar bills. A friend of Marsh’s in the States read the article online, opened up the Gmail account and fired off an email to baseball’s biggest of wigs.

Ten minutes later, a reply dropped in from ‘the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball’ on Park Avenue in New York. Now we’re in business.

This morning in Broadford in east Clare, the out-of-work roofer is waiting on 60 bats to arrive from the MLB.

It’s estimated – in the big leagues alone – that players go through approximately one bat every 50 at-bats. Where these sharp, fast-travelling missiles land, nobody knows. A firm of New York lawyers are kept busy with law suits caused by broken bats spiking into the cheap seats. With his new technology, Marsh will send the suits to the Hamptons early.

He plans to pump the bats with his silver lining and bounce them back to the new world where they await inspection in a lab by MLB’s experts. In the meantime, he’s kept going with the hurleys in his shed.

On Tuesday he bumped into former Banner manager Ger Loughnane and pressed one of the sticks into his hand. The Sunday Game pundit swung it around, examined the unusual spine with the intelligence that won two All-Irelands and offered Marsh his congratulations.

When Christy Cooney, GAA president, was in the county for the Feile na Gael last week, so too he was treated to a new hurley.

“I’m delirious. It’s very exciting,” he said this week. “The bats are made from ash – same as the hurleys – and we can fix them no problem at all.

“I’m run off my feet with the hurleys too – more than ever – and that’s great. But the baseball bats could be massive; they have a problem – and I can solve it.”

God may not answer letters. But he replies to his emails pretty quickly.

adrianrussell@examiner.ie Twitter: @adrianrussell

Evolve – very slowly, admittedly – or die

May 27, 2010 in Hurling, Sport, media | View Comments

So, we bought a Flip camera for the sportsdesk here and we’ve been messing about with it, getting used to the software and stuff. It’s a very nice bit of kit for the price – and handily enough – almost fool-proof.

UPDATE: My former Irish Examiner colleague Gavin Sheridan reminded me that we actually bought a very nice kodak Zi8, in the end.

I brought it with me to Broadford, Co Clare for the piece I did with Flan Marsh – the former roofer who invented the wonderful shatter-proof hurley.

He brought a few lads – including Banner senior Brendan ‘Bugsy’ Bugler – down to the club house and we went up to the pitch where I was treated to a full-blooded demonstration.

The footage, here, is pretty ropey, admittedly – but I enjoyed using it for the first time and Flan, and the patent guy who’s helping him with the process, were delighted to have it on Youtube. I’ll know better the next time I suppose.

I’ve a big feature in the pipeline as part of our World Cup coverage and we hope to use the Flip again for that.

In the meantime, have a look at this clip I found on The Story (with thanks to Mark Coughlan).

It’s a profile of a former gridiron star from Eric Seals of the Detroit Free Press. This is the kind of stuff I’d like to think we’ll be producing in the years to come.

Courtney Hawkins comes home to make a difference from Eric Seals on Vimeo.

Making the cut with Canning

April 28, 2010 in Columns, Hurling, Sport | View Comments

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AT THIS time of year, American football teams are tasting the white heat of intense pre-season training. Gridiron giants take part in a violent annual ballet as a hulking, heaving mass of athletic hardware crashes into each other in a frantic bid to forge a team ready for the NFL season.

Amongst this chaotic scene however, one, particular, man is an island. While the team of coaches on the sideline watch these full-blooded practice sessions unfold on days when the season’s playbook is inked, there, invariably, wearing a brightly coloured cap, is the author of so much of it: the quarter back.

This orange hat, which crowns the QB, offers his enthusiastic and often much bigger team mates a very clear message: “Take it easy on this guy; he’s the franchise”. Neither Galway, nor county champions Portumna, make Joe Canning wear a luminous cap – but everyone knows this guy is worth a few Superbowl rings to the Tribesmen.

It’s fair to say, the 21-year-old is the key to at last unlocking All-Ireland success. But not his year. The westerners, as we know, were dumped out of the championship, after an encouraging run, which began in the Leinster SHC, by Waterford who picked the victory from Canning and co’s pocket in an All-Ireland quarter-final in Semple Stadium. Another year wasted.

But, despite his box-office name and his face now plastered on Dublin buses, the Portumna man is not one to swaddle himself in a burgeoning reputation it seems. As he beats a familiar path – from his club’s dressing room to the centre of the well-worn pitch – he is half feeling his left shoulder while he inspects the balding surface underfoot.

The day before Canning is to teach me some broad-brush strokes in the art of the sideline cut – an art in which he is a master – his club side take on Tipperary ahead of Sunday’s All-Ireland decider with Kilkenny.

Essentially, it’s a chance for both sides (Portumna are at the business end of the county championship) to click through the gears in preparation for the real battles ahead. Not so for the LIT student who roars full throttle into a shoulder challenge with Premier county man-mountain Michael Webster. “I saw him coming and I thought ‘hang on now’. He’s a great player obviously. And a really big guy.” Canning comes off the worse in the crisp exchange. But he’s ready for a few sideline cuts nonetheless. Read the rest of this entry »

Ice, ice baby

January 9, 2010 in Athletics, Features, Football, GAA, Golf, Hurling, Rugby, Sport, Swimming | View Comments

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The news broadcasts are creaking under the weight of cliches like ‘blankets of snow’, ‘big freezes’ while footpaths are engaging in treachery.

As the country has slowed ground to a halt, the sporting world has been the same.

Meanwhile, in today’s Irish Examiner, despite the present icy inertia, about two dozen of our staff writers and columnists have looked ahead to the events that will define the Irish sporting year. I can’t link to the website as it’s a graphic but check it out in the hard copy if you’re in Ireland. There’s some surprising calls.

In the meantime, here’s my effort: Read the rest of this entry »

The wild west

November 12, 2009 in Hurling, Sport | View Comments

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Portumna and Loughrea will meet on Sunday in the county senior hurling championship final. Much delayed by the controversy surrounding the alleged assault of a referee after one of the semi-finals, there may yet be another few dirty strokes pulled in anger.

These two wildly successful clubs are the Stadler and Waldorf of Galway sport – but the last time they met in county final the neighbourly rivalry boiled over into a graphically violent affair with Portumna’s young star – the game’s brightest talent – sufferring appalling injuries.

Last summer, After I asked Canning about his WWE “you-can’t-see-me” celebration, we spoke about that ordeal. Shrugging his shoulders, he admitted a reunion was on the cards but insisted any revenge would be earned with the sliotar.

And then he fired a few penalties at my head.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that…

October 19, 2009 in GAA, Hurling | View Comments


Fair play to Cork goalkeeper Donal Óg Cusack who yesterday confirmed in a newspaper interview that he’s gay.

This is no real shock, it has to be said, to anyone with an interest in hurling but for a guy who is still playing – and a goalkeeper – in the ultra-conservative world of GAA this takes some balls.

When Ringy met Bobby

June 10, 2009 in GAA, Hurling, New York, Sport | View Comments

Robert Kennedy is 31 years dead this week.

Here the Senator – campaigning in New York – meets Cork hurling legend Christy Ring in the famous Gaelic Park.

There was many a home on Cork city’s northside, where I’m from, with a picture of Ring and a Kennedy – more likely Bobby’s brother, of course – above the mantlepiece. A portrait of the Pope may have made up a familiar triumvirate.

RFK, was shot dead on June 4, 1968, just hours after he won a huge step towards the White House with victory in the Democratic primary in California.

He addressed some supporters and media in the early morning of the next day at LA’s Ambassador Hotel.

Leaving the large ballroom, through the busy kitchen, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian, opened fire and shot the candidate. Kennedy died soon after.

Ring lived just under a decade after this point; he passed in March 1979. Ring’s graveside oration in Cloyne was delivered by a former Rebel and Glen Rovers teammate and the then Taoiseach, Jack Lynch – who had met Bobby’s brother John in Cork City Hall in 1963, incidentally.

Many have guessed, through the years, what Mackey said to Ring in that famous GAA photograph depicting two old enemies captured in conversation on the sideline. I’d like to know what Bobby said to his new friend on the Gaelic Park turf.

G-Mac departs

March 11, 2009 in Hurling, Sport | View Comments

Cork hurling manager Gerald McCarthy stepped down last night, going out with all guns blazing with a very hard hitting and close to the bone statement.

Cork fans’ march

March 6, 2009 in Hurling, Sport | View Comments

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There’s a march in support of the Cork 08 hurlers; meeting at Kennedy Park @ 1.30pm this Sunday, for anyone in that camp.