Unlikely hero from wrong side of fence

Tom Humphriestalks to Palmerstown's Liam Rushe, one of the new breed of Dublin hurlers chasing Leinster glory for the capital

IT WAS early January, the weather offering a still, almost windless cold for the traditional start to the Dublin GAA year, the Blue Stars games. Gates marginally swollen as the county was presenting new managers in both hurling and football.

Anthony Daly and his hurlers were out first in Kilbarrack that morning. Pat Gilroy’s footballers on second. A two tribes sort of thing. Many of those who came for the hurling left before the football. More arrived for the football than had been at the hurling.

Daly, fresh in the job after just one meeting with the players where he professed to know just Daithí O’Callaghan, put out a side which reflected good advice being offered. Playing for Dublin that morning were Oisin Gough, Rory O’Carroll, Joey Boland, Liam Rushe and David Treacy. The first four names students at UCD and a familiar campus sight pucking around between lectures.

All five were off the conveyor belt of young talent that Dublin has placed its hope in for the last few years.

All of them made an impression. There was room for just one in the headlines. The next day. Liam Rushe, a tall, gangly forward who had started in the corner and moved to the wing, had scored four points from play and demonstrated a swashbuckling sense of adventure rare in Dublin hurling. He looked like a kid who believed he could do anything.

The performance was a succinct exhibition of the art of seizing the day. The previous month Damien Byrne, the full-time hurling officer in Parnell Park, had added Rushe, just out of minor grade, to an expanded list for a meeting of the senior panel. The young fella had never been to see a Dublin senior hurling game. Could do him no harm to sit in.

That day in Kilbarrack, Rushe imprinted himself as part of Dublin’s hurling future. He started every league game for Dublin during the spring and retained the berth for the two championship trips so far. The only time he has been hauled ashore was a minute into injury-time after his bravura performance against Galway in the league.

And that was just that he might be rewarded with a round of applause. It’s not all been gravy and Rushe is clearly a work in progress, but he is one of the works in progress in which Daly has placed his faith.

So there a couple of weeks back in Nowlan Park, Kilkenny when the final whistle sounded and all hell broke lose as the long suffering faithful celebrated the end of the obscure years and a return to the Leinster senior hurling final for the first time since 1991 when Liam Rushe was in nappies, the full forward was a bit taken aback by the fuss.

He has grown up as part of a different generation.

“I said it to Kevin Flynn (34 and well versed in the history of obscurity) that it was gas all these people on the pitch for us winning a semi-final. We’ve come up through a system where we’re the first generation of hurlers maybe that are used to getting to finals. We were expected to make Leinster finals anyway on the way up so all the people running on to the pitch in Nowlan Park it seemed strange. I suppose us younger fellas have been lucky. We haven’t experienced the whole history.”

They know a different world. Dublin’s current hurling decade has seen the county in seven under-21 provincial finals and four minor finals, three provincial colleges finals and an All-Ireland Colleges win in 2006. The graduates of those teams tend not to doff the cap.

Serendipitously their career paths cross now with that of Daly.

Both could be precisely what the other needed. Dublin’s bulging cohort of young talents required a hurling name who transcended them, impressed them and inspired them. Daly needed a vocation, some missionary work to absorb his genius and his energy. The chemistry is right.

“He is a serious influence. Massive,” says Rushe as Daly sits across the space of a large room in Parnell Park with the media. “I’d be killing myself sometimes to try and get a word of praise out of him. You’d do anything for him like that. He is seriously professional. All the lads who’ve been around say it. We turn up to play. Everything is looked after.”

They turn up and find a team ready and dedicated to their service. They turn up and find they are going for a training weekend to England. They turn up and find a manager more switched on, more demanding than they are themselves. Part of the journey so far has been learning to match Daly’s demands for better focus before and during matches. The monastic ways of the top hurling panels are still a wonder to Dublin.

“That’s a big thing with him,” says Rushe. “We’ve been workiing all year on this stuff, Total Mental Alertness and Mental Strength. You just have to think about Kilkenny when you wonder about it. Everyone of the top teams can stay with them for 60 minutes, then people get tired and worn down and they give it up. Kilkenny keep going to the 70th minute and the 71st and the 72nd and however long it goes on. So we have to toughen up mentally. We have to change. Some lads were in a habit of losing. It’s easier to accept if you get in the habit. He won’t accept it.”

And Rushe, the epitome of easy going, laid-back youth. How is the appliance of science affecting his thinking. “Sure I don’t think about the games really. I suppose I like to get out during the day and hit a ball as much as possible. I’m too relaxed! I sometimes worry do I not care enough! This could be my only ever Leinster final. People always talk about staying calm. I’m always calm. I need to go the other way!”

Rushe is an unlikely hurler in some respects. Most of the new generation of Dublin talent has burst from the teeming southside clubs where honest, displaced hurling men and willing natives have struggled to create a culture of hurling in their clubs and in their local schools.

Rushe is from Palmerstown and plays his hurling with St Pat’s there on the windswept public park they call home. St Pat’s don’t produce many names to conjure with and it is a running joke that those names that somebody might conjure with end up playing up the road for Lucan Sarsfields.

His mother came from the football side of Clare and his dad, Ned Rushe, played a bit with Eoghan Ruadh till he was about 18. “I think he needed glasses and didn’t want to get contacts so he gave up,” says his son.

When Liam was ready to play with St Pat’s, though, Ned took the team and stayed with it. “He’s great but it could get a bit annoying. Especially for him looking at me! We had our spats. When I come off kicking my helmet in front of me. We always seemed to lack forwards. We’d be 15 backs trying to get a score.

“As a club over the years we produced the odd hurler. In the younger age groups now the kids are more interested in hurling than football. We have a few good teams coming through. My da does a lot of coaching still and the club has made it to Senior A, which is a big thing.”

It’s a remarkable thing given the constant struggle for numbers. “It’s one of those clubs where you are always playing for the year or two ahead of you. I was lucky with the year ahead of me . . . won D and C championships. My age group we kept losing always in the B. We lost a semi-final to Na Fianna after extra-time. They won the final by 11 points. In the Minor B l championship last year we only had 15 players and a fella broke his nose and had to go off. Down to 14!”

So Rushe played in the Dublin Under-21 B championship against Raheny when he was still 14 and playing under-15 hurling.

“My ma was going mental. I did what I was told. I kept running away! I was picked at corner forward and that was the first taste I ever had of a corner back holding you and bullying you.”

Generally he was never a forward. His idol from childhood was Seánie McMahon of Clare (he glances across the room at the wing back who played beside McMahon. He doesn’t remember too much about him at that stage). In his first year as a Dublin minor he played midfield and expected to be centre back in his second year but the side lacked a full forward and being tall and brave he got handed the number 14.

“That was thanks to Shay Boland last year. He made me a forward. I had Shay all the way through. I was on Dublin football teams from about 12 upwards but at under-14 somebody (from Lucan) I have to say forgot to ring the Pat’s lads for the trials and we all missed out! So I ended up on a Dublin west hurling development team under Frank Bennett, Michael Connolly and Shay. Never looked back.

“I was a typical Dublin lad. I would go to the football and stand on the Hill, up till two years ago. I loved playing the hurling but wouldn’t think to go watch them! It was Clare we’d go and see hurling. I’d always watch Seánie McMahon. I remember Daly in 1998, I think. The Colin Lynch game against Waterford.”

Rushe was educated through Irish Gaelscoil Naomh Pádraig and then Coláiste Cois Life. Since hitting UCD to study history and law and hurl virtually full-time, he has gone a year without speaking the language which he regrets but he retains enough fluency to get plucked from the Dublin dressingroom for Radio na Gaeltachta and TG4 interviews when needed.

Against Wexford there was one cameo which showcased his great trademark skill, as he soared unbelievably over a couple of Wexford defenders and brought the ball down in his palm. His catching has been a feature of his underage career and an adornment to his senior play. Naively you ask if he doesn’t worry about getting his fingers broken. He unfolds two huge and mangled hands! The hands of a 43-year-old junior hurler.

“There ya go! Except for this one thumb, I’ve broken every one of them at least once. I’ll deal with the arthritis when I get old! These four on my left hand and that cut there was against Parnells in the PJ Troy tournament. The next year I went out in the same tournament and got sliced here, six stitches. Hated that tournament. I ruined that one against Wexford. Needed an operation. Those two broke against Erin’s Isle.

“Can’t remember when I broke that one but as you can see, it’s broke. Plenty of Arnica all the time. This knuckle here though (points to what looks like a golf ball under his skin) it looks massive. Won’t go down at all.”

So Liam Rushe. Young Dub on the cusp of a hurling decade which he and his team-mates could claim for their own or which they could become an interesting footnote to. Nervous?

“Nah. Sure nerves are for people who haven’t the work done. I would take it as any other match. Take it in the stride. We know what we have to do.”

The group heads into serious battle tomorrow. Fresh-faced and hopeful behind their leader. Interesting times to be young, talented and Dublin.