Stopping bullets all in the day's work

Munster SHC/Interview with Donal Óg Cusack:Donal Óg Cusack, steeped in hurling, is proud to take the hits, whether guarding his net or in fighting for players' rights. Keith Dugganreports

Donal Óg Cusack is explaining the handsome crest on the Cloyne hurling jersey. He has filched his brother Conor's jersey from the bedroom and stands in the family livingroom, his face animated as he brings each of the symbols to life. His other brother, Victor, sits in front of the television, watching the noonday preview of the FA Cup final.

There are a myriad images of Wembley, spanking-new and burnished. Donal's voice is more urgent than Gary Lineker's. He points out the emblem of the grey-bricked, 14th-century tower that looms over the famous GAA field. Both churches in Cloyne are represented. Fifteen sliotars embroider the crest to depict the given team. And at its epicentre is a golden star, a tribute to Christy Ring, Cloyne's most famous son. The star is brushed with a falling tear to acknowledge the sadness the town felt when Ring had to leave the club and play with Glen Rovers to fully express his brilliance. Finally, at the bottom, reads the motto: Come What May.

"We thought a lot about it and Come What May was what we liked; it meant we would be ready for anything. Although some people didn't really get it - they were thinking it meant we couldn't give a feck what happened either way," he says with a burst of laughter.

For all of Donal Cusack's intensity, he never passes up a chance to have a laugh against himself.

In the past five years, the tall, slender Cork goalkeeper has been acknowledged as arguably the pre-eminent exponent in that highly specialised field.

He is undoubtedly a key figure among a generation of Cork players who are unusually tight and farsighted in what they demand of themselves. After emerging as a cool and articulate negotiator during the players' strike that presaged Cork's brave and close tilt at three All-Ireland titles in a row, Cusack was a natural choice to become a prominent member of the Gaelic Players Association.

The popular image is that of the quintessentially modern GAA man, the sportsman-cum-agitator, groomed and happy to step into a room full of camera flashes for the latest negotiation. But as he sits at a table slugging a pint of tap water in The Alley - the bar he owns in Cloyne - it is obvious Cusack cherishes the simplicity and the familiarity of his local life.

His Saturday began with a solitary hour of ball work in the handball alley, a pleasure more than practice, with nothing but the crack of the ball against the wall and birdsong. He would probably watch some of the FA Cup final, train again in the early evening and pull pints for the early part of Saturday night, knocking off after the rush, because Cork have a nine o'clock Sunday-morning training session scheduled in the city.

"Funny, years ago people used to think of Cloyne as being away out in the sticks," he says. "When I started out with Cork, I was always mad to get back out here after games. Now, you can be at the gym at the Silver Springs hotel in 18 minutes and Cloyne is on the edge of the city. But there is still a feel to the place and it hasn't lost the good ways. It has a spirit."

Cusack, born in 1977, is just old enough to remember that slower, less-complicated, disappeared country. Ring passed away two years later - Donal Óg recites the date, March 2nd, 1979, as if it is burned onto his retinas. His grandmother, Frances Ring, was a first cousin of the hurler.

And as Cusack grew up, he became fascinated by the stories his father and other men would tell of Christy Ring, this departed Cloyne man of omnipotent hurling prowess. The hours he would put in down at the field. Games played in the field by men still in street clothes and one dish of water with two cups waiting for when they took a break. And after a dozen or more players had dipped the cups, the water would be turning red. Ring in the middle of them.

"Stuff like that sticks in your mind when you're a kid," Cusack says. "You were listening to men who knew him, saw him hurl and train with their own eyes. And I suppose you feel like you know his spirit.

"Even that photograph there," he says, pointing to a framed image of Ring as a selector, mature and grey-suited and hot-eyed, raising the Liam MacCarthy against a wintry backdrop in 1978, "you can see what the man was about.

"And his brother, Paddy Joe - he was 60 years older than me but when I was a child I considered him my friend. He kept goal for Cloyne and he would always say to me, 'Nothing surer than you will keep goal for Cork.' And the joy he got from 1999, you could see it in his eyes. Paddy Joe actually died later that year. But that is the stuff you remember."

Cusack speaks with equal solemnity about venerating the past and safeguarding the future of hurling. He sees no conflict in his deep respect for the generations of teams that preceded his own and his role in the emergent GPA. He doesn't point this out, but if and when the GPA demands are met in full, Cusack will most probably be done with big-time hurling. In fact, that has become a running joke in the Cork dressingroom.

"I do tell the younger fellas, 'We'll be thumbing up to the games and you'll be driving past us in big cars and you won't even remember us.' Sure John Allen used to love telling me that in 20 years' time I'll be ringing him saying, 'Those feckin' players are asking for too much'," he laughs. "And maybe I will."

But there is serious conviction behind his involvement. It would surely be much easier to leave it to others, to concentrate on keeping goal with Cork, training the Cloyne senior team, working his day job and running the bar without the chasing off to meetings and fielding GPA phone calls.

"It does involve a bit of pain," he admits. "But it is something we believe in."

On the Tuesday night before the All-Ireland final last September, two strangers showed up at training in Páirc Uí Chaoimh. Cordons had been placed outside the dressingroom because of the number of supporters watching the sessions. But the two men looked official. They were there to conduct routine drugs tests. Cusack asked them to wait until Dr Con Murphy arrived but when he went into the dressingroom his heart went cold. For a long time he had been taking a protein drink that had been passed clear of banned substances. But when he had collected his latest batch in the chemist, the packaging had changed. He was fairly certain the product was the same, but correct procedure would have been to pass it to Seánie McGrath to get it tested.

"But we are all moving at 100 miles an hour," he shrugs now. "In the dressingroom we decided we would pull on a deck of cards and whoever drew the four kings would test.

"So I decided, anyway, I would go up to the toilets and let the rest pull away. I was just nervous. Like, I had done plenty of these tests before.

"Anyhow, when I came back down, one of the kings was still in there. I pulled a card and sure enough, the last feckin' king. Dr Con loved it - we had this joke about the UCC thing - like I would come from a more working background. And sure I wasn't thinking straight; statistically I would have stood a better chance if I had drawn the first card. He gave me hell about that," he laughs.

"The test was grand," he says, falling serious. "But the thing is, what would a GAA player do if he failed a test like that after an All-Ireland? Call a local solicitor. Then what? At least the GPA has a procedure to help a guy out in that situation.

"He is not on his own. And that is the kind of stuff that is needed. If that means going to a few meetings and taking a few bullets with fellas accusing you of things you know aren't true, well, big deal."

In the Cusack livingroom, Donal Óg's medal collection has been placed on green baize. It is not showy but it is rich, distinguished. As with any athlete, though, it is the losses that engage his mind more. Cloyne have lost successive Cork championship finals to Na Piarsaigh, Newtownshandrum and Erin's Own.

On the national stage, those finals came in the aftermath of two All-Ireland victories against Kilkenny and Galway and a defeat against Kilkenny last September. These were personal, ravaging losses, stored away in the soul: "Days when you would hardly be able to get out of the bed thinking about them," he says.

But this year, Cloyne will try just as hard. He reckons they would be regarded as the most disciplined club in Cork now. Cloyne had heritage and pedigree and names that seemed as permanent as the tower - Cahill, Ring, Cusack, O'Sullivan. Hurling went back. Donal Óg remembers games breaking out in the field between teenagers and older men and everyone wearing street clothes and belts flying; terrifically heated, out-of-the-blue games between neighbours. Some men were retired. Others were looking for work. That was the old country; it could not happen now. Time is too scarce and clothes too new-fangled.

Seán McMahon's Clare jersey - the last he wore in the Munster theatre - is framed and hanging on the wall in the bar. Cusack would often joke that if Seánie had hurled in that field in jeans and tee-shirt, he would have dominated. He said as much one evening to McMahon at a social engagement: "Don't think Seánie knew what I was on about."

But Cusack grew up certain of Cloyne's nascent greatness. When he started working, people told him he was mad when he bought a house a few doors up from his own. But he wanted that house because it overlooked the field and also because it stands next to the grotto that holds the stern, bronze cast of Ring. Recently, the club held a debate on whether to allow the sale of the field for development. The vote to sell was passed, narrowly.

"Something that splits this town down the middle," Cusack says, momentarily troubled. "It is a big issue. Like, what would Ring say? He would probably say to do whatever is best for the young people in the club. But I know for definite he would say don't let the fact that I feckin' hurled there hold the thing up."

The point is that Cloyne is moving. Cusack may not have enrolled in UCC but he is prodigiously studious, always learning from people. He references people he admires, like Kieran McGeeney, whom he knows through the GPA, and Seán Óg. The other night, they were speaking on the phone and Ó hAilpín said, "Ogie, judgment day will always come."

The principle of full, honest effort has come to fascinate them both. Cusack loves the GAA legend about "the brother": "You always hear, 'Sure his brother could have been 10 times as good but for the drink' or whatever. I think the important thing is not to be the brother, not to sit at the bar wondering what you could have done."

So he asks people. One Friday night last winter he was in Thurles presenting medals and he had enquired if a visit with Mickey "The Rattler" Byrne might be on the cards. The great Tipperary defender sat Cusack in his home and they spoke for hours.

As he left, the younger man asked Rattler had he any advice. "You must have it in the belly," Byrne said fiercely. It is a phrase Cusack has since delighted in, the colour and the truth of it.

"It was nearly combat back then. But it was skilful too. It was different. That's why I think in a way the business of picking teams of the century doesn't really make sense. The game was just different then."

And it keeps evolving. We speak of playing Clare tomorrow and how strange it will be without Davy Fitzgerald in the opposite goal. Cusack's mind drifts back to the Tipp-Clare game of 1999, when he stood behind the goal in Thurles and was mesmerised by the assurance and bossiness, the coiled wrath and velvet hands of the diminutive Clareman.

"He saved and scored a penalty that day and made an exceptional save off Paul Shelley. People go on about the flashy saves and that but the safety element of his game is immense. I saw him catch balls under the crossbar at whatever height he is. I don't know the man well but he is a great goalkeeper. Now, I don't know what is after happening up there. But the same thing will happen me as well. There are two guys behind me now and they are going to deserve their chance when they get it. That is the way of it."

Everything pushes on. As Donal Óg hits 30, it seems things are moving at light speed. For instance, he believes sooner of later the GAA will cut a deal with a television company. And in his heart he reckons the players must have representatives sitting at that table. He believes that to be fair.

"Or else the players won't play ball with the television companies. The danger is the association sells something it doesn't own. We had this thing a few years ago in the Cork camp when RTÉ imagined that they were entitled to get certain things.

"But it doesn't have to go down that road. This thing should be owned equally by the Sligo hurler and the Cork hurler. If there is that equality, it can never cause harm. An elite crew will never take over. That is my GPA. But look, in a few years, we will be gone and it will be up to others to take this thing on. And good luck to them."

By then, Cusack reckons he will be "back here", meaning Cloyne.

"Chairman of the club or something," he grins at the prospect of the administrative, humdrum inevitability of middle age, when the roars of Croke Park are a fading memory. That is why he wants to squeeze every ounce out of these years. He has a devout respect for his place on the Cork team, for that brotherhood. He has more work to do with Cloyne. His uncle Pat kept goal when the club won the Intermediate in 1966; his father, Donal, was there when they won it in 1970; and Donal Óg was goalkeeper for the third triumph, in 1997.

A senior championship still eludes them. There are no guarantees, but Donal Óg Cusack, courteous and fiery and deeply serious about the old game, won't permit himself excuses. He leans against the brick wall that overlooks the field in Cloyne where a bunch of youngsters are striking a ball to one another. The Ring statue rises black and indomitable into the fresh sunny afternoon. Another championship beckons for Cork and for Cloyne and for Donal Cusack. This place made him. You must have it in the belly.

BORN: March 16th, 1967

CLUB: Cloyne

NICKNAME: Ogie

HONOURS: Harty Cup (1995), captain with Midleton CBS, All-Ireland minor championship (1995), All-Ireland Under-21 championship (1997, 1998), Cork Intermediate championship (Cloyne 1997), Cork senior championship (Imokilly 1997), All-Ireland senior championship 1999, 2004,2005. All Star goalkeeper 1999, 2006.

His brothers Victor and Conor both play in the forward lines for Cloyne. In the senior hurling championship against Douglas two weeks ago, Cusack assumed the free-taking duties and struck 0-7, finishing as top scorer.

For the 2003 and 2004 Cork championship seasons, Cusack was player, selector and coach of the Cloyne senior team. He was player only last season but has resumed all three roles this year.