“It’s the thing I miss about it… that sense of mischief. What we were like away from the field was good craic. If you ever went out with the Kerry boys you’d have some good fun.”
Paul Galvin had some truly memorable moments on the GAA field but it was the times away from it, surrounded by his Kerry teammates and revelling in it all, that he misses most.
Retiring from inter-county GAA leaves a gaping hole in players’ lives. How can it not?
For a decade or more, if you’re lucky, your team and your mission consumes you. It may start with a notion but the purpose permeates over time into it’s part of your marrow. The team becomes an extension of your being.
Morning, noon, night and the hours in between are consumed with the next match, training run, gym session or that long haul up and down motorways and back roads to get there and back again.
And then the time comes when it is all over; said and done. If you’re lucky enough or good enough, folks will notice that you’ve actually hung up your boots. The praise comes like a eulogy and you may even be tempted to release a retirement statement that ticks all the emotional boxes.
Dick Clerkin was fortunate enough to know when his time was up. He feels he spotted the end coming one game too late but you could never take that moment away from him.
Upon his retirement, at the beginning on the month, Clerkin spoke about how his son Cailean mimicked his warm-up runs in a Longford game he did not see a minute of.
“Before walking back to the stand,” he recalled, “I motioned to Cailean to go for one last length of the stand together. He won’t remember it, but I will. One last memory to treasure, from an already bulging collection.”
During his interview with Colm Parkinson on The GAA Hour, Clerkin revealed the moment his inter-county retirement finally felt, well, final.
“There’s sort of a protocol, I suppose, that you figure out for yourself. There’s no sort of template.
“You realise, ‘Yep, I shouldn’t be on that sort of WhatsApp group’. You’re not getting the texts as well and that sort of stuff gradually phases itself out. People refer to you as an ex-footballer too.
“It’s strange because you’re not, sort of, prepared for it having being used to it for so long.”
Clerkin insists he is looking forward to being a Monaghan fan but has been warned that the first year could be a bit of a wrench. He adds:
“November and December, you’re used to it being your down-time so it’s not that much of a change to the system. It’s only when the boys are back training and I’d be driving past them… I’ll drive past the training grounds every day now, coming home from work.
“I could be looking across and the guys would be coming across the field. It’s only when I see that that it will be tough enough but it is all part of retiring.”
January will be tough and February won’t be any easier.
Hopefully in time, though, Clerkin will sit easy in the stands with his two sons and take in the whole experience of being a fan of the Farney, knowing his time was up and he had one hell of a run.
Dick Clerkin makes his GAA Hour debut to talk about a wonderful career and argue passionately with Colm Parkinson over Sky Sports GAA. Subscribe here on iTunes.
