The morning after the night before.
The pain in his head on Monday morning was easily ignored when he thought about Sunday’s sweet victory, but Aaron Gillane was never going to be joining Limerick’s man-of-the-match Kyle Hayes in the City West swimming pool in the early hours for a recovery session.
The whole of Limerick partied like they haven’t for 45 long years after their victory over Galway and it’s fair to say that nobody would begrudge any of them a hungover lie-in on the Monday.
Gillane took advantage of that and while Hayes and a few of the other lads made it to the pool, it didn’t matter either way because these Treaty men had put in enough blood, sweat and tears into this cause since the start of this year to do whatever the hell they want over the next few days and weeks.
SportsJOE’s Colm Parkinson was out at the Limerick team hotel on Monday morning and he caught up with that man Gillane to talk about Limerick’s sweet triumph.
“I was too lazy to get out of the bed now but when you see the work Kyle got through yesterday – I think he needs it (the pool), the man-of-the-match, he definitely deserved that yesterday and we’re all delighted for him,” said the Patrickswell man.
As well as being delighted for his teammate Hayes, he was also delighted for the Limerick supporters and the sight of 20’000 of them going nuts in the Gaelic Grounds on the final whistle didn’t surprise him.
“That’s Limerick, they’re probably the best supporters in Ireland. They’ve been going to every match and they’ll ask for nothing, all they want is for Limerick to do well.
Limerick did to Galway on Sunday what few teams have done to them before, certainly this year. We saw Seamus Flanagan flattening both Daithí Burke and Gearóid McInerney, we saw Johnny Glynn getting cleaned out by a man 20 kgs lighter than him in Michael Casey.
Gillane also laid down a marker of his own. By the time two minutes had passed in the final he’d already caught two balls over Daithí Burke’s head in at full forward. You don’t see that often, but Gillane insists that he hadn’t thought too much about upsetting the Turloughmore titan.
“I wouldn’t really be thinking too much about who I’d be marking. In fairness, he is one of the best defenders in Ireland, I talked to him for a second after the match too – he’s an absolute gent and I only have good things to say about him.”
He was just going out to play his own game and even though he didn’t see too much of the ball from then on, he didn’t mind one bit.
“The two boys are fit as fiddles and I wait in there, the deepest man inside, and if it comes in it comes in – Yesterday now, Seamus and Graeme got on a load of ball outside and they did the damage, it’s all the one for us, it doesn’t matter who gets the points as long as Limerick win,” he said.
Wooly couldn’t let Gillane go without quizzing him about his kicking technique that didn’t serve him too well after he’d dropped his hurl in previous games. Where most hurlers point the toe the ground and boot it off the laces if the situation arises, Gillane appeared to be attempting the impossible by side-footing it on a couple of occasions.
This, he insists, was no tactic, though his Limerick teammates couldn’t let the opportunity pass without giving him a little slagging about his misses.
“I don’t know was I dropping the hurley, well I definitely wasn’t dropping it intentionally. There were a few pictures of your man Spillane pulling it out of my hands, I suppose when you’ve no hurley in your hand you’ve to kick it and yeah, Jesus I don’t know what I was doing trying to curl it…It was madness, it was a moment of madness…
“I used to play soccer when I was younger, but I don’t know where it came from, if there was a football in The Well it’d be burst. The boys would be slagging me, they gave me a big sliotar, a big Go games yoke that they use in the Cúl Camps to practice on,” he laughed.
That’s a softer, larger sliotar that the under-6s and 8s use in the famous summer camps.
Don’t be expecting him to kick too many balls wide next year.
You can listen to this full interview on The GAA Hour Hurling Show that will be out later today.
