In conversation with a publican friend of mine in Co Longford over the weekend, maybe naturally, talk drifted to the multiple tragedies which had occurred during the past week.
Besides the unspeakable grief and heartache which those effected have been left to navigate forever more, the point was made that we Irish and rural Ireland in particular “Do death well”.
Allow me to explain. There seems to be an almost indescribable natural instinct that when a person, family or community is at their time of greatest need, everybody rallies around.
Having lost both my parents in the past five years, we as a family have been bequeathed this community spirit at its finest.
Whether that being chairs being delivered by the trailer load, literally, from the GAA club, one of the local pubs having relays of glasses on the go, the other ferrying in sacks of ice.
Other local businesses supplied sandwiches or Burko boilers. On the funeral day itself, one of the pubs which doesn’t even do food accommodated our local catering company taking over two parts of their lounge to look after the ‘afters’.
From Longford to Laois, from Kilcar to Kildare and Lord knows wherever else strife has enveloped people, communities have pulled and will continue to pull together to, as my friend put it, “Mind their own”.
However, it’s important to state that, one thing about such community togetherness and helpfulness is that it will be just as much in evidence for what to some might be mundane or an afterthought but to others has far more profound meaning.
Whether that be, in the case of this locality, the Paddy’s Day Parade or the Hatchet Inn’s annual tractor run in aid of the local Meals-On-Wheels operation or the Colour Run in support of the ABC Arch Club.
Now, all of the examples pinpointed at the very beginning of this piece revolve around happenings of the greatest upheaval, grief and sadness in the lives of those effected. But that very same level of support is equally there when what for some mightn’t even register as being a newsworthy event takes on exceptional importance, be that positively or negatively, for others.
For example, comparative to some of what has gone before, the fact that Meath currently have FOUR players laid up with Anterior Cruciate Ligament injuries mightn’t even register with the masses.
But for the players concerned, their clubs, the county team management and Meath supporters, the news is an absolutely shuddering blow before preparations for next season have even begun.
Naturally, personally speaking, greatest angst relates to my own club colleague and friend Jack Kinlough. Who, almost incredulously, has suffered a relapse of the ACL injury which has kept him out of action for the past 18 months.
It’s a cruel blow for the club, for Meath manager Robbie Brennan but most importantly for the lad himself and his family.
Especially as it happened on the lead in to the Meath-Mayo match at a stage when it appeared he might actually have made the matchday 26 for Castlebar.
However, though it might feel of scant consolation to Jack right now, it’s at least positive to report that the rehab process, thus the road back to grass is going as well as can be expected.
Spare a thought, though, for our neighbours down the road, Dunshaughlin/Royal Gaels, who currently have TWO of their county stars – Ruairi Kinsella and the particularly luckless Conor Gray – grounded with what is rapidly becoming a scourging plague among GAA players – men and women.
Our club has and will continue to rally around Jack in his journey back to the playing fields, as will the other black and ambers down the road with Ruairi and Conor as well.
But here’s thing – and essentially this is what set sporting woes apart from all the other tragic carnage going on in the world – there’s a strange, back handed comfort in knowing it’s not only Meath who are afflicted with the epidemic of ACL injuries.
You think of Monaghan’s Bobby McCaul who – like Jack Kinlough – is a recurrence case, Killian McGuinness of Dublin, Sean O’Brien from Kerry, Louth’s former All Star Craig Lennon and Mattie Taylor (Cork) and Cork hurler Ciaran Joyce and it makes you realise that it’s across several counties and several sports under the Association’s umbrella.
So the obvious question surely has to be how (or why) the injury which was once not only thought to be career ending and extremely rare seem to now occur ten-a-penny. Yes, recovery rates are nearly total, but at some point surely the question must be asked as to how or why it keeps happening.
For a start, at least the theory that it has to be something wrong within the Meath camp doesn’t hold water when you see it happening in other places. I have arrived at the conclusion that there must be a common thread running through all those teams with effected players. Either:
(a) Too much training
(b) The wrong type of training.
(c) Players wearing the wrong type of boots that don’t support body weight enough
(d) That which I feel is the most obvious and likely cause – the unnecessary folly of the truncated season exponentially increasing the workload on already stretched athletes who are, we are supposed to believe, amateur athletes.
That in itself might go a long way to explaining why a depressing number of the best male and female footballers in the GAA are turning their backs on their own and falling for the lure of the foreign $.
If the GAA and/or LGFA won’t look after their most prized assets, you can’t blame elite sports people for knowing their own commercial value.
It’s just frustrating and upsetting to those of us who long to see our county team achieve to their full potential that said eventuality isn’t likely to happen as long as the most talented men and women in the county continue leaving on jet planes.
Most annoying of all though is the fact that, for all their blathering and bleating about player welfare, supposedly, they’ve been very quiet about the embarrassing spate of ACL injuries or, more pointedly, the ever-increasing number of players being lured away from club and county.
The irony being that when Tom Parsons and his ilk like to try and dictate policy at administrative level, they’re very quiet about the increasing plethora of ACL injuries or, even more ironically, the most exciting talent Gaelic football has seen in a generation being lost in his own county. Go figure.
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