Lee Chin doesn’t get what the big deal is.
He laughs at the idea that Wexford Youths are going to miss him much on Friday night when he goes to the GAA All-Star awards and the club play their second leg promotion/relegation playoff in Drogheda.
They take a 2-0 lead to United Park thanks in part to a Lee Chin goal on Monday, and they have 90 more minutes to through to maintain their Premier Division status.
In truth though, scoring was probably the worst thing Chin could’ve done. Suddenly, he’s a valuable asset that the Wexford outfit simply can’t do without even if he doesn’t see that half-volleyed goal the same way everyone else did.
“I was in the right place at the right time. I swung my foot at it. I could’ve went and broken one of the windows in the club house knowing me.”
And this is where I sign out @WexfordYouthsFC it has been a pleasure #Youths pic.twitter.com/wBJJOPpssK
— Lee Chin (@LeeChin8) November 1, 2016
But that was Chin’s lot. He joined the team in September, he was there for seven games and now he’s off because the Youths’ last match is clashing with a GAA event. More importantly, it is not in his contract to say he’s obliged to stay on. If anything, he made it perfectly clear beforehand that soccer would not interrupt his GAA.
Besides, he can’t understand the valuation of him now. He’s a worker, a breaker, and that’s about it by his own admission. “I hadn’t played in four or five years so what sort of soccer player would I be? Well, you’ve just described me as one of those guys whose second touch would be a tackle.”
If you’re not from a hurling background though, you might not understand a decision to prioritise an All-Star event over a soccer match but it is a big deal. It’s an honour. In fact, it’s such an occasion that the Faythe Harriers club man cancelled a trip to Shanghai to go to this event on Friday night. He was supposed to be in China on Wednesday as an ambassador for the Asian Games but the All-Stars took precedence and, in his own words, “it would be a total farce altogether to then cancel the All-Star night to go play 90 minutes of football.”
But people have been criticising him, asking where his commitment is at and they’ve been accusing him of breaching a contract they haven’t seen. Lee Chin is having none of it.
“A lot of people have it wrong,” the Wexford legend spoke with SportsJOE. “These keyboard warriors and those guys, they think they know it all. They think they have their facts right too.
“My agreement with the club: Shane [Keegan] contacted me and I was still involved with the club [hurling] here in Wexford. I was going away to New York for a weekend to hurl over there with Ulster in the New York county final. Shane had rang me the day before I was leaving for New York and he needed me to sign a contract before I left for New York because by the time I got back from New York, the deadline was finished for anybody else to sign for the club.
“I had explained to Shane that I wasn’t really comfortable about signing a contract. I didn’t want to rush into anything because my previous experiences with contracts was that I was bound by one and I couldn’t play any other sport and this is not what I wanted happening again because I didn’t want anything interfering with my hurling or GAA when it came back around.
“I explained it to Shane and Shane simply notified me that it was not a professional contract, it is an amateur contract I would be signing and they just needed a signature to just say I am a member of the club. It didn’t say on the contract that the club had a hold over me or that they could control anything to do with me. It was totally off my own back so, basically, it was almost like a volunteering role. I was doing it off my own time and my own will to play for the club. That’s the type of contract I signed.
“It was basically as if I signed for a local Sunday league team.”
What's the big deal? https://t.co/aqqrCrQSfI
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) November 2, 2016
The irony of all this backlash is that Chin was only there in the first place to fill in numbers because seven of the club left for New Zealand.
No word of contract breaches or commitment issues there.
“To be honest, I know I could’ve contributed more by being there on Friday but I felt that I had contributed enough,” he said.
“At the end of the day, I did the club a favour. There were actually seven guys throughout the season that played for Wexford Youths – I actually didn’t get much time to get to know them because the reason I came in was because they were leaving for New Zealand.
“These guys could’ve been involved with the club for years or for just a year or whatever – they left the club to go off to New Zealand. And no disrespect to them, they went to New Zealand and got a life over there, they got offered jobs and that. But they made a decision and they went and this is the reason I was at the club in the first place because they were short of players.
“He [Shane Keegan] needed me to give him a dig out and I did that in my own spare time. It wasn’t that I approached him and asked could I get involved. If he never approached me at all, I would’ve been just doing my own thing. He asked me to give him a dig out and I was more than happy to do so.
“My agreement at the start when we first spoke was that I don’t want it to interfere with anything GAA related. And it just happens that this ended up clashing.”
And the clash is the only real issue. He had to choose and he stuck to his love, the GAA. It wasn’t that tough a decision for the hurler, considering what he had given to his first love to even just get an invite to an All-Stars night.
“I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s a no-brainer for me, I did have to put some thought into it. But given the facts that the lads are going into the game with a 2-0 lead and plus the fact that they have a strong bench there as well… like, I wouldn’t look at myself and say I’m the winning or losing of Wexford Youths on Friday night. I would not value myself that way whatsoever.
“And I’ve seen a lot of comments that came in my way after I decided to go to the All-Stars. For me, I worked very hard throughout the year – pretty much the whole year – I gave up my whole life to give Wexford hurling my time and my effort. Then I get an All-Star nomination and, for me, it means a lot. For my family, for my club, my county, it means everything and especially for me on a personal note too. I was honoured.
“To give up that night to go to a soccer game – something I’ve been involved with for the last five or six weeks – it didn’t really add up.”
All he was doing was lending a hand. That was it. His soccer ambitions are long behind him and it’s not a life he’ll continue to pursue – not even for the winters.
“It’s not something that I’d be interested in doing every year, it just happened to come up this year,” Chin explained.
“Shane Keegan gave me a call and he asked me to help out. If he was just asking me to step in and didn’t need a helping hand, I probably wouldn’t have went. The motivation for me was that I had a couple of mates there and they were under a bit of pressure because seven boys went to New Zealand – and mind you, not one thing was said about these guys for leaving or letting their club down.
“This is no disrespect to Wexford Youths or any soccer fan out there but soccer is not my love anymore. It’s not something that I’m very passionate about.
“Going to play for Wexford Youths, I sacrificed myself. I put myself out there to possibly get injured in a game that I’m not really used to anymore. I could’ve gotten injured and I could’ve missed out on the year with Wexford in 2017. Now, in saying that, I could be injured in the first training session with Wexford but at least I’m doing it for something I love.
“If I had gotten injured in any of those soccer games or any of those training sessions with Wexford Youths, I’d probably never have forgiven myself.”
Spoken like a true hurling man. That’s what Lee Chin is. That’s what he always was.
Colm O’Rourke and Pauric Mahony join Colm Parkinson on a packed GAA Hour that includes Dick Clerkin appreciation and Sean Cavanagh envy. Subscribe here on iTunes.
