The grass must seem greener on GAA pitches in the likes of the United States or Australia.
Many a GAA player has decamped for a few weeks, or months, for a club stint abroad after their county’s chances of All-Ireland success head south.
While Tipperary footballer Peter Acheson delayed his work and travel plans over a magical championship summer, last year, Waterford hurler Tom Devine is ploughing ahead with his summer travel itinerary.
The subject of heading abroad was covered in the most recent episode of The GAA Hour Hurling Show, with former Dublin dual star Conal Keaney telling host Colm Parkinson [from 7:10 below] about his attempts to go to the United States during a championship campaign.
Keaney was 21 and not long into the senior Dublin football and hurling panels when he was red-carded in a Leinster SHC clash. He recalls:
“In 2004, I got sent off in the hurling against Westmeath and I was involved with the football at the time, and Tommy Lyons was the manager.
“I said, ‘Look, I’m suspended. I’m going to go America for the summer’.
“Tommy was like, ‘No. Absolutely not. I don’t care if you’re suspended. I don’t care’.
“I was only a young lad at the time and I was talking to lads in the team – Colly Moran and Ray Cosgrove – and I thought there was no point in me training away here. At that time, Dublin were in the back door [qualifiers] and were playing all the L’s – Longford, London, everything like that.
“I said, ‘Look, I’m not going to be playing and there’s a good chance I won’t even if we get into the quarters, semis and final’. It took all my courage to go up and say it to Tommy at the dinner. I said, Look, I’m gone. I have to go as it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.
“He told me I wasn’t going. So I turned around, walked out and went home to my mam and dad. I had it all organised behind the scenes. An uncle in America had sorted me with a team to play for but I had to ring them and tell them Tommy had said ‘No’.
“That was the bottom line.”
Keaney explains that he really wanted to stay in with the Dublin footballers so he sucked it up, served his suspension. Eight weeks later, he lined out for the footballers in the final round of the qualifiers where they beat Roscommon.
Kerry did for them in the quarter finals and Lyons was axed soon after. Keaney would have to prove himself to a new manager, all over again.
