Still a big fish, even out of the pool

Six years out of management, Ger Loughnane's still the centre of attention. Keith Duggan talks to the Clare man

'I would never see any league hurling now," smiles Ger Loughnane as he drinks a mug of tea behind his desk in the principal's office. "The only games I saw of Clare last year were the league final and the championship matches. I saw none of the league so far this season and probably won't either. I'd be away hunting of a Sunday.

"To tell you the truth, if I wasn't working for RTÉ and doing the column for the Star, I would go to very few games at all. I love the golf and I would probably go off fishing in the summer rather than go to the hurling. Because that is what happens when you are out of the game - you would fall away from it like that."

And the great Houdini of modern day hurling snaps his fingers and the famously pale eyes, piercing as strobe lights, crease into laughter. The Clare hurling controversialist is serious about what he says. But it is hard to imagine Loughnane could ever be content baiting trout on some mossy riverbank while the saffron and blues were thundering away against Tipperary or Cork in Thurles. This is the man who, legend has it, thrives on chaos. How could he possibly find happiness by staring into water? "Easily," he says as if marvelling at the idea of not missing hurling.

The public image of Ger Loughnane is of such a barnstorming firebrand that it is a surprise to find him doing something as normal - and peaceful - as leaning over a veteran lawnmower and chatting with the school caretaker in the garden at St Aidan's.

It is that drowsy period immediately after lunch. Loughnane has been principal of the school in Shannon since 1982 and it is a pleasant school, bright and modern. The secretary's phone directions were peculiar, but superbly accurate - take a right at Tom Hogan Motors, drive up the road and then take a left after the Statue of the Frog. Sure enough, there is a stone carving dedicated to an amphibian on the green. Its reason confounds Loughnane. "Just appeared one day," he says cheerfully. "It's all this modern art."

It is often forgotten that while Ger Loughnane spent the evening times constructing one of the most memorable GAA teams in the history of the association through methods of inspiration and madness, he spent his working days dealing with children.

Like all teachers, Loughnane has been shaped to some degree by his environment and can speak long and passionately about the education system. "It is definitely a better feeling coming to school now than when I was starting out in the early 1970s. The big difference is that children enjoy school. It is not the chore it once was. The fear is gone.

"Shannon in the early 1970s was a hectic place. We had emigrants returning from England and people coming in from Northern Ireland, refugees from Chile. And there were a lot of children with learning difficulties and family difficulties.

"The one thing we had was good schools in Shannon and I think that is true today. You know you are getting old when the children you taught are coming back to you as parents. But that old gap where the teacher was the authority and then you had the parents and children is not so great now. Kids may be over-indulged a little. But by and large, I would think that Irish schools are happier places."

He remembers his own schooling in Feakle as "the last of the old-style educating". The two-room classroom, the chalk dust and long days dedicated to maths, English and Irish.

"Our teacher, Seán Harrington, was brilliant for his time. Our school would have been renowned for scholarships. But looking back, there was no room for anything outside the three Rs. Children who had talent in art or music had that creativity suffocated or ignored. That was the system. And, of course, there was no recognition of any symptoms, like ADD, or whatever. You were either bright or you were stupid.

"'Twas very harsh really. The cruelty that a lot of children had to go through, emotionally and mentally, would make you wonder how they survived it. And I know a lot of people have a huge difficulty and a chip on their shoulders to this day because of their experiences in school. They suffered enormously."

Brian Cody? We're all in trouble now

The correlation between teaching and GAA is nothing new. When Loughnane was at training college in St Patrick's of Drumcondra, Brian Cody's room was across the corridor. They remain firm friends today. Cody's reputation as a stickman preceded him and the Clare man remembers the tall, laconic Marble City man as "having this feckin' aura about him even then".

"Oh, Cody struck me straight away," he remembers. "The things he could do with a ball, now. And he had this real presence, he was confident and aloof, I suppose really. I'll never forget him saying, 'there will always be good hurlers around Kilkenny'. He believes that to this day. Cody stood out all right. And I remember the day a newspaper reporter rang me when he was appointed manager, I said, 'we are all in trouble now'."

After five years boarding in St Flannan's, of which he "detested every minute, it was like a jail", Loughnane was bedazzled by the sudden freedom he had in St Patrick's. "We all came from the same environment. And it was like letting calves out in spring. We went pure mad for two years. Dublin was a brilliant, brilliant place to be in the 1970s. And I was sorry to leave it."

It was the opportunity of a teaching post in Clare and his ambition to further his inter-county career that settled the issue. Family, teaching and hurling became the governing forces in his life. Loughnane's 1990s incarnation as manager/gospel man was so colourful and important it is easy to forget he was bouncing about inside Clare for the previous 20 years, as a hurler of distinction in the nearly-years of the late 1970s and as a teacher. He was, he insists, a relatively sanguine fellow then.

"I was rarely booked as a player. I was sent off once ever by a referee and he was drunk at the time. He admitted it to me afterwards. I just got on with playing and knocked a great old time of it."

He admits his period as Clare manager and his subsequent return as a hurling analyst illuminated the public perception that he is a compulsive maverick - maybe even a troublemaker. Every so often, spectacular rows erupt in the Clare hurling firmament and Loughnane's name inevitably features somewhere in the skyline.

Last month was no different, a particularly surreal episode involving the county chairman and an overheard phone call where Loughnane jokingly cast himself as a hunter tracking down an old hurling foe. He throws his eyes to the ceiling as he recalls it.

"That controversy was just plucked out of the sky. The chairman lit a fuse and didn't know what was at the end of it. Mary and myself were away when it happened so it was going on for at least 24 hours before I knew. Barry, our oldest fella, rang to say that it was on the Matt fucking Cooper show. I was astounded. When the like of that goes on, you wonder. But it will be forgotten."

In fact, it already has been. Although the idea of Loughnane as some kind of soapbox provocateur may have taken hold across the country, the truth in Clare is different. In St Aidan's, his public profile is irrelevant - he is just the principal.

"Children pass no remarks. You could bring a movie star to meet children and after 10 minutes, they are judging him by who he is. Look, it is six years since I managed Clare and it will soon be 10 years since the last All-Ireland. For most people in this county, that I ever managed Clare is something at the back of their minds.

"And then there is a few for whom it never leaves their minds! And the amazing thing is that for all the controversies, I got very few abusive letters. And rarely do you get anything said. Rarely. See, people get nostalgic for those times. Peoplemiss them."

Children may pass no remarks. It is different with old players. Loughnane's media criticism of hurlers that once would have died for him on the field has been so typically loquacious and unsparing and uncomfortable that he has, unquestionably, created a distance that may never be bridged.

For that, he is unapologetic. If it seems contrary, like a man driving a bulldozer at his own house, so be it. He accepts the view that plenty of former county managers now operate as media pundits without ever saying anything remotely controversial about their native place.

Just paper cuts, or something deeper?

"And I can't understand how they can talk about their own county like it is Antrim or Donegal," he counters hotly. "I had to make a decision - am I going to plámás my way through this or be true to myself. And I made a conscious decision to call it as I see it. I knew there might be ructions. Of course, people forget when you praise the team. But the more people resented the criticism, the more dug in I became. And I know the lads, those Clare players, and yeah, some will resent it.

"But they would know if I was just playing to the gallery. You can resent something and still respect it. And I believe in a few years down the road when they are gone from the game a small bit, they will realise what I said was right."

Maybe, like so many old managers, he cannot fully let go - maybe, through his oratories on the Sunday Game and in the newspaper, he is still trying to be the dressingroom prophet.

"Perhaps. Subconsciously. The most disappointing day I ever had with Clare was last summer against Cork. That was Clare of old. When Jerry O'Connor got that point, Jesus, I was distraught. Ask Michael Lyster. I was above in the TV box and was worse than I ever was on the sideline. I was covered in sweat. Clare were great that day. But I was disgusted earlier in the summer against Tipperary in Limerick. That was an awful Tipp team. It wouldn't win a club championship. And the way Clare lost should not have happened. No way!

"And I cut loose that day all right. I know Anthony Daly's powers of motivation, believe me, but when your team plays like that, you have to be held responsible. It was like the pre-Len Gaynor Clare. No passion. No drive. Nothing. If that is allowed creep back in, we are finished. And if it happens this year, I will be saying the same thing."

In the middle of that defence, a little girl comes into the office to ask for the first-aid box.

"Did you injure yourself on the nature walk, Naoise?" asks the Master.

The girl throws a don't-be-silly look in his direction.

"No," she says. "Paper cut."

He shrugs, as though his own criticisms are no more than paper cuts. When he talks of the giants of that hurling era - Jamesie, Baker, the Lohans, Daly, McMahon and Lynch, it is with evident fondness. More than once he emphasises: "I will always have massive, massive regard for those lads."

He cannot know for sure how some of them feel about him now, nor can he worry about it. When he was manager, he says, "it was never a buddy-buddy thing". There was always the necessary distance, the bit of fear and unpredictability - the touch of old-school educating.

"What people don't realise is that successful teams are full of tension. Sport is like politics. Things are kept smoothed over for a while, but eventually those tensions surface. The only exception to that, as far as I can see, is in Kevin Heffernan's great Dublin team. They seem to have a terrific bond still. But they were an exceptional bunch, very successful and brilliant in their personal lives. Most teams, most dressingrooms are full of players with varying ranges of abilities and what not and naturally, it leads to tension."

Hurling was the common bond. Hurling and winning. Loughnane candidly admits that a part of his soul will remain restless until Clare win another All-Ireland.

"It is like a man who has built up a thriving business and hands it on to his children. That's the best analogy I can give. You want to see it go on, expand. If we could win another, I would definitely ease off the throttle."

In the meantime, he fills the hours not hurling, by avoiding the league like the plague and by hunting up in the lonesome fields of his childhood. He loves the remote, stark landscape around Feakle, Tulla and Spancil Hill and has been fox hunting with beagles since he was eight years old. In typical Loughnane fashion, he embarks on a long diatribe about how disgusting and bloody and pointless the hunting form of "lamping" is, arguing that hunting with dogs rarely leads to a kill.

"It is hard to explain the thrill. It is just to do with hearing the fox call and being out there in the field. Sure the fox is an amazing animal. A few of us would be out there for hours and hours in good company. And the day would fly."

When he remembers growing up, it is in a house where the "cuairt" was an almost nightly occurrence. His father, John James, was, like his uncle Liam, a fine middle-distance runner, but was first and foremost a traditional musician. Hurling was not a major issue - Loughnane first saw Clare play live in 1972, just two years before he was on the team. From his father's musicianship and a veritable céilí house, he inherited "an absolute detestation of Irish music and dancing".

"I was made dance. Probably did my hurling no harm. But it makes me feel ill now, like being on one those bloody chairoplanes in the amusements." He plays no instrument and does not sing. "Never. Except when I have a lot of drink in me."

Cinema is another strong interest and upon a recent visit to the omniplex he was absolutely wowed by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon in Walk the Line. "The pair of them was unbelievable."

Perhaps his all time favourite though, is A River Runs Through It, the film based on the great novella. "Not a lot of people seem to have seen it. It might be Robert Redford's best film. This Presbyterian family with a very strict minister father - one brother conforms and the other is kind of a rebel. Brad Pitt plays him. But fishing is what the three of them have in common. And those scenes on the water are just magical. It is a film with a bit of soul, I think anyway."

He insists that he is not restless. He has no political ambitions, either within the GAA or in the real fun house, although he is a Fianna Fail man and is fascinated by the scene. Nor are the meditative evenings of fishing and hunting just a prelude to Loughnane, Act Two. He is adamant that he will never manage again. Except for St Aidan's.

"There is not a hope in hell. Because the energy it took for me to get that Clare team going from snail's pace in Formula One, I do not have anymore. You could only do that with your own. You have to have ambition and I suppose love for your native county."

He says he does not miss what has passed. It was enough. As he immortally said of James O'Connor's 1997 All-Ireland-winning point, "as long as I am on this earth I will see that ball coming".

Now that was one hell of a spot of time.

These days, though, Loughnane has gone fishing.

Trout, be warned.

'Poets talk about "spots of time", but it is really fishermen who experience eternity compressed into a moment. No one can tell what a spot of time is until suddenly the whole world is a fish and the fish is gone. I shall remember that son of a bitch forever.'

- Norman McLean, A River Runs Through It