Brothers in Sport by Donal Keenan

Author:Donal Keenan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mercier Press

James McHugh and Derry’s Johnny McGurk exchange pleasantries after the rain-soaked Ulster final of 1993. © Ray McManus/SPORTSFILE

The O’Connor Brothers

Gentle Giant: George O’Connor finished his illustrious career with Wexford by winning his only All-Ireland title in 1996. © Ray McManus/SPORTSFILE

George O’Connor’s eyes are ablaze in wonder. Those big, gnarled hands are gesticulating animatedly. The story he is telling is about hurling in Buenos Aires. He has just arrived back in Ireland after a ten-day trip to the Argentine capital where he conducted a coaching course for a few hundred schoolchildren. ‘I was invited by a guy, a man named Mendoza, to visit his children’s foundation while I was over there. He looks after disadvantaged kids. There was this one kid there from a deprived background. He hadn’t talked for two years. He watched me with the hurley. He didn’t understand a word of what I was saying. But when I gave him the hurley and ball he came alive. He took off, just belting the ball with the hurley into the back of a soccer goal with a big happy face on him. That’s the power of hurling.’

If hurling ever needs a super-salesman then George O’Connor is the perfect fit. Now in his late forties, he looks as lean as he did when he wore the Wexford jersey for seventeen eventful years. His passion for the game is palpable; he admits he can talk all day about the properties of the game, the advantages it brings to young people, the possibilities for development. He works as a full-time coach now. ‘I have the best job in the world,’ he declares happily.

He will talk about his long career as both a footballer and hurler with his club St Martin’s and with Wexford that ended shortly after George and his younger brother by three years, John, achieved their ultimate ambition of winning an All-Ireland senior hurling title on a memorable day in 1996. But every chapter leads to a diversion. His passion is evident; he cares for society and how the youth of today are being readied for the future. Any sport, but especially hurling, is the proper preparatory tool. Don’t get him started on PlayStation and Nintendo or the excesses of the Celtic Tiger years. ‘Bringing kids to their Holy Communion by helicopter,’ he says in exasperation. ‘Were we stone cracked? How stupid it was. We lost all sense of place.’ More of that later.

John jokes: ‘I don’t know what you were talking to him about hurling for, sure he knows nothing about it.’ And George doesn’t disagree. ‘John had far more skill than I had,’ he says readily. ‘I was an athlete or footballer playing hurling. I could run up and down the field all day. John had great technique.’ It was an invaluable combination of attributes, however, that contributed hugely to one of the most emotional Championship experiences of the modern era when Wexford bridged a twenty-eight-year gap to bring the Liam McCarthy Cup back to the county.

It had

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