Yanks getting to grips with beautiful game

LOCKER ROOM:It warms the heart to see the game of hurling being played by people who really love it, writes TOM HUMPHRIES

TIM NEYLON has the sort of roots most Irish Americans would be a little envious of. Sure he is missing the requisite grandmother who came from Cork (how fecund those Cork women were), but his grandfather John came from Ennis and another side of the family from the Blaskets. After a chat with Tim, it seems they were a cheerier group than the Peig Sayer’s gang, they were more about having a game of hurling on the beach on Christmas Day.

Tim grew up in Springfield, the town in Massachusetts which took the last outpouring of folk from the Blaskets in the 1950 and which had been a haven for many islanders for decades and decades before that.

“When Springfield money came. Slán. Slán is céad ón dtaobh seo uaim. Farewell!” He knows that John hurled in Ennis and there was some hurling done on the Blaskets. Now that he is nearly 48 years old he feels that connection, but growing up it left him largely untouched beyond a mild curiosity. That’s what youth is about. New stuff. Not old.

Tim was hurling last Sunday. The game reached out and snatched himself and his son, Galen, a few years ago. They were living in Colorado Springs at the time. Tim is a US army man. He saw signs up for the Denver Gaels and a few nights later himself and Galen were walking on to a field in Denver, Colorado, brandishing two sticks which Tim had purchased on a holiday in Tralee some years before.

“Ehm, and what will ye be doing with them?” the landlady had asked with suspicion.

What can you do with them? You hurl. The young lad picked the game up like a duck to water. Tim’s apprenticeship was longer but just as enjoyable.

Reached out and grabbed them the game did. The kid was 15 and adept at any sport which came his way. He picked hurling up and soon the Irish guys in the Denver Gaels were moaning about having to mark him. What Tim liked, apart from the feel of the game which is like nothing else, was that when they walked on to that field in the Denver jerseys they weren’t just a bunch of guys who did the same thing. It felt like family, like brothers. Like all those things you read about and hear about but don’t ever get to expect to experience.

In 2007 they went to Chicago and the Gaels won the North American hurling championship. The military is an itinerant calling, however, and you just keep moving on. His son moved to Cape Cod (for different reasons) and Tim found himself posted to RAF Lakenheath in England. Possibly the only US military man there to have played championship hurling. Certainly the only major. Tim is a major. A podiatrist. And an evangelist. For the first night’s hurling there were three players, including Doc Neylon. He had the faith, though. He knew that sheer curiosity would swell the numbers. He sold the game within the 48th Medical Surgical Operations Squadron on all its merits. Fitness. Tradition. Manliness. Hand-eye co-ordination.

Soon there were at least 18 guys turning up for training nights. Somebody started talking about fixtures and it immediately added another selling point. Travel! The team is drawn from squadrons all over Lakenheath and is in the process of crossing the Ts and dotting the Is for some funding from the army itself. The game’s difficulties are a great leveller and nobody who comes down needs to feel any embarrassment about not having wrists like those of Joe Canning. However, they did get their hands on a genuine Irishman, Pádraig Mulcahy, who breezed along out of curiosity. He can play the game, knows the finer points. Keeps them on track.

They took a jaunt down to Cambridge last weekend and played their first ever match. Against Parnell’s. By comparison Parnell’s are a positively venerable outfit; they were founded in the mists of 2006. Can there be anything more encouraging to discover a game like that going on last Sunday, people so in love with this beautiful thing that we take for granted?

The Americans that day lost but made a good fight of it in the second half. For them, all except Tim, it was a first immersion in a full-blooded match and, even playing in a side replete with so many doctors and surgeons, there must have been moments when they wondered if they would get back to their loved ones; little instants when they imagined an army jeep pulling up at their homestead in Virginia or Iowa or Texas and a grave-faced General saying, “I’m afraid your son did his cruciate while playing hurling. And his knuckles are badly grazed too.”

With very little experience, apart from indoor hurling, the Americans found the pace and the physicality a little alarming at first. Imagine going to golf lessons to get the stroke right and then being told that the other players in the fourball could rush you with their clubs to stop you getting the ball away.

Major Neylon hurled at full back, where he was found to be uncompromising in his approach. When you are 48 and three or four years into your hurling career, uncompromising is as good as it gets. Nobody is going to call you will-o’-the wisp.

Main thing was they enjoyed it and are determined to plough on. Parnell’s have been struggling to field a camogie side. The American women present were keen to start at the game and when they join forces they will have the numbers for games.

The American hurlers are going to Parnell’s Sunday training sessions for a while to fast-track their own skills and another fixture has been scheduled. In the Netherlands on March 13th. Sounded good until they realised the hosts, Den Haag, are European Champions.

Still, hurl hard. Hold them tight. Keep the ball moving. And don’t have all your surgeons on the pitch at once.

G’wan the Yanks.

My controllers in St Brigids of Blanchardstown have asked me to confirm that the programme for next weekend’s festivities now includes camogie. Dublin v Kilkenny at skirts hurlin’ at 5:45pm. Then Tipp v Dublin in an attractive hurling challenge at 7:30pm. All on Saturday, February 13th.