A leader of men ready for another tour of duty

GAELIC GAMES:A lieutenant in the Army and a captain with Waterford, Stephen Molumphy is prepared for another Munster battle, writes MALACHY CLERKIN

IT WAS only a couple of months ago at training one night that Shane Walsh threw a gentle mock in Stephen Molumphy’s direction, a small pebble into the pond to see could he get any bit of a ripple out of him. He informed his captain that although he’d only been around the panel for a few seasons, Molumphy was the third oldest player in the team now.

“I hadn’t thought of it at all,” says Molumphy, “and I actually had to do a head count then just to make sure because it’s no time at all since I would have been the third youngest. But he was right.”

As it happens, he wasn’t. He isn’t. Brick Walsh is older, John Mullane is older, Clinton Hennessy is older by about seven years. It goes without saying Methuselah Browne is nearly twice his age by now. Even Shane Walsh himself has him by a few months. That’s before you bring the likes of Eoin Kelly and Séamus Prendergast off the bench.

Thing is, the idea that he would be third oldest made sense enough for nobody to give it a second thought. You only have to talk to Molumphy for a short while to see why. He speaks only of the team until you crowbar him into turning the torch on himself, lays it on thick with the idea of sacrifice for the rest of the panel, never puts a word or a foot out of place. Perfect captain fodder, aged beyond his days.

True story. A request lodged with Davy Fitzgerald a couple of years back looking to set up an interview with a Dan or a Mullane was met with a laughing not-a-hope-boy. “Why don’t you interview young Molumphy?” quoth Davy Fitz. “He’s a great bit of stuff. He’s no trouble at all.”

Well, that’s just it, see. Great bits of stuff who stay out of trouble hardly make for the zingiest, spiciest copy. It’s far more fun – not to mention a far easier task – to plop a recorder down in front of someone like Mullane and let him fill it up for you. And yet, the reality is that away from hurling, Molumphy lives a far more varied and interesting life than just about anyone in the championship.

A lieutenant in the Irish Army, he isn’t long back from a five-month tour of duty in Chad. One of the world’s poorest countries, choked with corruption and sundered by civil war, and now having to deal with overspill from the conflict in Darfur right on its border with Sudan, Chad is the end of the world. One of those places it’s hard to credit exists just six hours’ flying time away.

In that environment, staying out of trouble was far more than just a euphemism for keeping on message in a newspaper interview.

“It was a very humbling experience,” he says. “All your drills meant something over there because you were genuinely in a situation where you could actually die. The guns were everywhere. As well as protecting people over there, you were protecting your own back. You could trust no one. That was just the scenario.

“It was great to put things into practice. The value of life over there is different to what you’re used to. You can’t interfere sometimes because to some of them, the value of life is nothing. If you see a family dispute, you have to be careful. If you think somebody’s life is in danger, then you can intervene. But you have to be careful.”

He was there along with 499 other Irish soldiers, split up into two companies. Everything was different. Chad’s society is male-dictated but female-driven. “The way it works, the women do everything. The guys just sit down and order people around. But the women do everything, absolutely everything. It’s a different world completely.

“I’d love to do more of it. That’s what you do the training for and it’s where you put all the drills into practice. Once you’re on patrol over there, you’re on your own. They completely outnumber you. You’re self-sufficient too. You’ve to have all your own gear, your own comms, everything. If anything happens to you, it’s circle-the-wagons time because you’re on your own.”

Molumphy is eight years in the Army now and has risen to the point where he’s training the new cadets. It didn’t always sit neatly with his hurling life but between him, his superiors and various managers, he’s managed to make it work. This past while, he’s been in charge of sports fitness training for his cadets and it will hardly amaze you to find he’s been tailoring those sessions as much to the needs of an intercounty hurler as anything else. It suits him, it suits the recruits. The Army even realises it suits them.

“There’s been a big change in the Army in the time that I’ve been there. When I started off, they mightn’t have been that happy about you taking time away to play hurling. But even just in my time, you’ve had Eoin Larkin, Andrew O’Shaughnessy, Dermot Earley in football and I think they’ve maybe changed their attitude to it. Now they’re very encouraging.

“Like, if you played minor and Under-21 for your county on the way up but you get to my age and you’re not making the senior panel, somebody in the Army will sit you down and ask you why not. Your boss will come in and go, ‘What’s the problem? Is someone stopping you from playing?’

“It’s changed big time. It’s good PR for the Army if you’re out there doing well, performing well, they want to see that.”

There’s a small but pleasing symmetry to be found in the way his day job overlaps with intercounty life. In the Army, he’s an OC with 30 cadets underneath him. With Waterford, he’s Davy Fitz’s captain with another 30 men to worry about. Different strokes, though.

“It’s a different type of leadership you need. You learn different models of leadership – transformational, transitional, all these different types. But the difference between here and in the Army is in the Army, you have orders. The cadets have a boss, I have a boss, my boss has a boss. You do what you’re told and if you’re in charge, they do what you tell them. You couldn’t have that kind of thing here with Waterford at all. You wouldn’t survive if you were ordering fellas around the whole time. You wouldn’t get anywhere.”

Hard to imagine you’d get far alright. Molumphy the hurler leads by doing all the dirty work. He grafts and hooks and blocks. He chases back and he chases forward. He breaks up play and he feeds the scorers. It’s grunt work, the stuff that chips away at the temper of the opposition and drives them demented.

And it works a treat. Now in his sixth full season, tomorrow he lines out for his fourth Munster final (fifth if you include last year’s replay).

Along the way, the team around him has had a thorough rinsing through – only five of his team-mates at throw-in tomorrow were there for his first Munster final in 2006. Half the others were schoolboys.

“These young lads coming from minor and Under-21, they expect to win Munster titles. They expect us to go far every year. That’s what they’re about. They come into the team and expect to stay there. They get a chance and they take it.

“Somebody like Pádraig Mahony taking man of the match the last day, that’s brilliant to see. It’s so difficult to hold your position on the team now. That can only be good for Waterford.”

And so they go down to the Páirc, not too many giving them a candle and not an awful lot they can do about that until throw-in. Four Munster finals in five years isn’t bad going for a team in transition but they’ll let everyone think they’re goosed all the same. It’s easier that way.

“We’ve always been underdogs. Even when I came on the panel in 2006, we were told that Waterford’s chance had gone and it would take a few years to rebuild. But we’ve come through to challenge nearly every year. It’s great to come in as underdogs. We’ll respect Tipp but we won’t fear them. We’re defending Munster champions. We’re not just going there to have a lash. We expect to win.”

Nobody believed in us but ourselves. The oldest battle cry in the book still takes all the beating.