Kieran Shannon: Sunday showed hurling's local heroes up there with best in the world

After he got out of his car, it wasn’t like he went around the place slapping fives with everyone. But he wasn’t wearing a peak cap either or avoiding eye contact with anyone who’d recognise him, which would be everyone in Drumquin-Ballyea where Carrig’s lies in the heart of.

Sometime later that evening after I’d filed that piece on him, I drove a few miles down the Kildysart Road to another garage shop. Luckily they still had a copy of the paper left. As the shop assistant kindly reopened the paper returns for me, I heard a friendly, familiar voice say hi. I turned around to find Paul Flanagan, about the biggest name in Ballyea other than Tony Kelly.

Through the years there are countless horror stories of players who mingled too liberally with the public in the leadup to All-Ireland finals. Sambo in ’89 getting stopped, even swarmed, and ultimately drained, while just trying to get his daily bread and milk. Ken McGrath in 2008 flat out manning the floor and till of his sports shop in the heart of Waterford city. Just last week John Mullane spoke about how naïve he was leading into that same final, allowing himself to be paraded in front of an entire primary school in Tramore two days out before he’d find Jackie Tyrrell chomping and glaring at him.

There’s a balance to be found somewhere though and meeting them at either their team press night or in downtown Ballyea, it's Clare were confident about, and comfortable in, striking it.

Either side of talking to Flanagan and Kelly at the Clare presser, I interviewed Ryan Taylor who spoke about how he intended to continue to man some hours behind the counter of his family bar in town. He enjoyed talking to people, including hurling, even about his injury and comeback. Sure weren’t the people of Clare who he was hurling for?

Kelly had a quick but polite salute for us and whoever else crossed his path in Carrig’s as he went about getting whatever it was he had to get. And Flanagan while going about his few messages was affability personified, shooting the breeze for a few minutes about our club’s U14 academy final win in the Bridge a few nights earlier and even a bit about the match in Dublin on Sunday.

On Monday morning, while Flanagan and Kelly were likely just a few hours back in bed after their All-Ireland celebrations in Dublin, myself and the 12-year-old son caught a flight to London. On Monday evening, while the Liam MacCarthy Cup was returning to Ennis, we watched in the flesh LeBron James and Stephen Curry in the 02 playing for Team USA in an Olympic warm-up game against world cup champions Germany.

Last week ESPN published a poll of the top 100 sportspeople of the 21st century. James was ranked fourth; Lionel Messi in third was the only team-sport athlete ahead of him, with only Michael Phelps and Serena Williams ranked above him. Curry was rated 14th.

With Curry and James now combining forces, along with at least nine other players destined for the NBA Hall of Fame, what we took in last night was probably the greatest collection of team-sport athletes London or Paris or this decade will know, reflected in the fact that they are undoubtedly its best paid.

And yet on the flight over we agreed: what we witnessed on Sunday in Croke Park had to be the greatest sport and occasion that team sport can provide.

We thought of Roy Keane several times either side of his expected appearance on the big screen on Sunday. Back in the early autumn of 2010 he raved to a group of hacks at an Ipswich Town press conference about the privilege and joy of witnessing his native county of Cork win something called the All-Ireland football championship.

More than once across their various platforms he’s told Gary Neville that there’s not a game in the world like hurling. Over the weekend Jimmy Barry-Murphy spoke about how when the two Cork icons met last summer, Keane confirmed: FA Cups, Champions Cups, occasions that he’d experienced as a player and a pundit, didn’t compare to any All-Ireland with Cork or a sliotar in it.

That Cork lost last Sunday’s wouldn’t have caused him to retract that conviction.

First there was the pure skill – technical, athletic, mental – of the players, exemplified by Kelly. As Ring’s goal in ’46 was never captured on film, Kelly’s goal now is to hurling what Maradona ’86 is to soccer and what Owen Mulligan 2005 is to Gaelic. His go-ahead turnaround whip shot was another moment of ingenuity; his one-two from a sideline ball underneath the Cusack Stand in extra time as crucial and impressive in its own way as his immortal equalising sideline cut in the 2022 Munster final.

But what made the occasion all the more magical was something Jarlath Burns spelt out for anyone watching on BBC2, maybe even LeBron and Steph holding a TV remote in a hotel in London. These players are amateur. Kelly is a school teacher in his alma mater. And the teams they play for are where they’re from. No draft, no trades, no free agency.

The moves Kelly pulled off last Sunday were not just first trialled in a local field when he was a kid; they’ve been honed in recent years and weeks and days in that same local field, less than a mile from Carrig’s.

Shortly after Kelly and Flanagan brought the first county title back to Ballyea in 2016, the pair of them and Kelly’s own father Donal reminisced with us about that field.

For one it wasn’t always there. “I played when we had nothing. Absolutely nothing,” Donal would recall. “When we won the junior B county final in ’76, we had three subs and 17 jerseys. We didn’t even have a field to train in. The one that we would use, we’d have to put down two stones at each end for goalposts.” In time the club would secure its own field and identify that it should be close to the local primary school. For Tony and Flanagan, it would become their playground, street corner, the centre of their universe.

“In the summer you’d cycle up to the field at 10[am] and you wouldn’t come home until half-five,” recalled Tony. “We mightn’t even be hurling. We’d play rugby, football. We’d make up a sport.” In the field they never seemed to tire, never seemed to get hungry. A water tap behind the dressing room – “how good or bad it was for you, I don’t know” – was all they needed to sustain them. At times alright if they called over to Jack Browne’s house beside the field, or Gearoid ‘Gudgie’ O’Connor’s on the other side, Jack or Gudgie’s mother would feed them all. Then they’d bolt out the door again.

Over a decade later, long after they’d won U21 All Irelands and a senior one to go with a couple of county titles, that lure remained. Covid tested it and only strengthened it, Flanagan would explain at the recent Clare press night.

“You’d get a WhatsApp message early in the day from Tony. ‘Going to do that session at 4.15.’ And he’d just leave it like that. But that would put the spark in you, ‘Yeah, I want to do that session.’ So you’d head down with him.

“You’d learn a lot from him that way. Just the way he thinks. His attitude is based around work. Getting the work done. You’re talking about hours in the gym and hours at the ball wall and hours on the field. And it’s no load on him. He loves what he’s doing.” At that same press night Kelly would elaborate on that love. A couple of times a week, outside of even collective training, he’ll drive down to that club field, sometimes even cycle to it like he used to as a kid. It remains a playground, his favourite.

“If it’s the week of a match it might only be for a puckaround. But say if it was a week like this [after the Kilkenny semi-final], I’d be going down with a focus of getting so many shots off, practising different frees or penalties and different scenarios. I love doing that.” 

Some of those scenarios possibly enfolded last Sunday. Some he could never have imagined. But by imagining others, he had creativity to find the right – unforeseen to everyone else – solution.

Last Sunday he answered every question, every doubt. In some quarters, particularly in Leinster, his subdued semi-final appearances in 2022 and 2023, to go with not yet having a senior inter-county Munster medal in his collection, was held against him. Somehow forgotten now is that monstrous free from another parish that he scored to clinch the 2016 league final replay against Waterford. Somehow downplayed were how he inspired Ballyea to an All-Ireland final, a Munster title and four counties. And now he has backed up 2013 with a final in 2024 that will be as synonymous with him as football’s 1997 decider is with Maurice Fitzgerald.

London was a blast. It will be something the young fella will always be to say: I saw Steph, LeBron and KD in the flesh.

But it will hardly top being able to say that, yes, he was at the 2024 All-Ireland hurling final. And that straight after getting back from London on a Tuesday night, he saw Tony Kelly bring the Liam MacCarthy cup back to their native Ballyea.

By the way, on the Wednesday he and all his friends will likely cycle to the field like they have almost every day this summer to hurl, kickaround, mess and hang about.

Just like Tony and Paul and the lads did back in the day – and sometimes still do.