The End

The weekend on which, barring a draw, the 2023 All-Ireland hurling championship concludes, also marks the end of Neil McManus’s final intercounty season.

He transitions into the world of the retired player and has moved seamlessly into punditry, his obsessive curiosity about the game put to new use. When once he pored over video to get an edge over opponents, he now does so to help the viewer or listener appreciate what’s going on, how a team is set up, how it’s working.

His previews on the BBC NI website show the enthusiasm and expertise and he is delighted that there is such an outlet for a lifetime habit, the animated discussion of hurling.

McManus sees Sunday’s match between Limerick and a Kilkenny side that he believes has closed the gap this year, as headed for extra time before the champions prevail.

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The “two best-conditioned teams in the country” underline that for all the skills of Gaelic games, physical capacity has become of equal importance.

He completed the departure formalities last month in an extensive round of interviews, confirming that Antrim’s last match of the Leinster round-robin campaign, a comprehensive defeat of Westmeath in an effective relegation play-off, would be the last time he’d appear for the county.

A momentous call for someone in the 17th year of hurling for Antrim through a career of infinite adaptability but more strikingly, unrelenting hard work and commitment.

It was no spur-of-the-moment impulse. At 35, he had even contemplated it 12 months previously, but kept his counsel and was eventually guided by his wife, Aileen, herself an intercounty player – they captained the Antrim hurling and camogie teams in the same year.

She is also from Dunloy, which if it doesn’t quite mean Montagues and Capulets, is certainly a big rival of his club Cushendall. Her advice was logical and twinned with the interests of the team.

“My wife was encouraging me to go back, you know that I’d regret it if I didn’t, and secondly Conor McCann and Ciarán Clarke, our two main inside forwards for the last couple of seasons did their cruciates.

“They weren’t going to be available so I knew it was a year I’d be needed and we had a bit of momentum built up as a group and it was important we didn’t regress in league or championship. They’re so capable of stepping up another level.

“I’m really glad I did it now. The sadness was knowing you were going to your last training session, your last game.”

The beginning

As he tells it, the bug bit when he was brought to matches as a child by his father, Hugh, and uncle Charlie Hamill. Cushendall in the Glens of Antrim is an almost ethereal place, within sight of Scotland and feeling more remote than it actually is.

Hurling is a big presence. Neil McManus played for the club in the 2016 All-Ireland club final, losing to Limerick champions Na Piarsaigh.

He became a county minor in the mid-2000s and played for two years on a really good team with names that became commonplace with the county in the years ahead, such as Arron Graffin, Eddie McCloskey, and Paul Shiels.

They were competitive against top counties and their youthful thoughts turned towards a future of possibilities.

“We had two consecutive, very strong minor teams,” he says. “I thought we would be contending for All-Irelands but when you mature you realise that strong counties have minor teams like that every third and fourth year.

“They have a strong crop that often whereas that one crop for us had to sustain a decade. The next crop were the lads who are 23 and 24 now.”

The dawning of that reality is sobering – that you don’t come from the right place if winning All-Irelands is your absolute ambition. McManus absorbed that quickly and concentrated on what he believes is the most important thing in the GAA: representing your home place.

“Unfortunately, that’s the way it is, here in Antrim and we have to address that. The pride that I got from representing Antrim. My father and my uncle Charlie took to me to every league and championship game but I still single out the ones going to Casement Park and when I grew up and got to play senior for Antrim there, it was magic for me.”

Reflection

Was it not demoralising to know that because of the history and geography of hurling, he couldn’t plausibly aspire to the same dreams as kids in Tipperary or Kilkenny take for granted?

“There’s no two ways about it. You were jealous of the teams in All-Ireland finals, of the players involved every year. I’ve no problem saying that. I’d have loved to have played in a game like we’re going to see on Sunday. That’s where you could test yourself as a hurler.

“I know I’ve done as much work in my intercounty career as any hurler. I’d be sure of that. But you had to find your rewards elsewhere because as it turned out I was never going to be able to play in an All-Ireland final.”

Those rewards included McDonagh Cup medals, Ulster medals for county and club and an All-Ireland club final. Did the evident respect in which he is held by so many top players – Henry Shefflin for instance called him on retirement – bring a certain contentment?

“I wasn’t the most gifted hurler that ever walked into a Cushendall changing room – that’s for sure. Mentality and effort bring you a long way.

“I am conscious that I was very lucky with injuries for most of my career and could train hard to get the best out of myself. That’s where contentment comes from but being respected as a hurler by great hurlers is not something I take lightly either. It’s very much appreciated not just for me but for my club.

“Even when I’m on the TV talking about matches, people in the Glens are proud of that.”

Well they should be.