Richie Hogan has seven All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship medals.
He’s clinched national glory with his club as well at junior grade and he’s won an intermediate county title on top of it. But it’s the little things.
All over Ireland, all over the world, you see it: the effect of the GAA. You see it, what it means to people. How it stirs them. How it drives them.
It could be the most inconsequential game that really doesn’t mean anything in the grand scheme of things but, to clubs and families and proud GAA folk, those games are their whole lives and that is the beauty of it all.
That’s what makes it so hard for people when they go away, leaving all that behind. It gets under your skin, this GAA thing. It’s part of who we are.
The hardest part of being a GAA exile isn't leaving home, it's leaving a way of life http://t.co/wAOZ3nNz4G pic.twitter.com/zTlxjku3S6
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) May 5, 2015
So you don’t have to look too far to see just how passionately people feel about Gaelic Games.
A father’s final breath.
Just last year, Mervis Gallagher from Wexford described this utterly heartbreaking but beautiful account of her father’s last moments on this earth. Watching Wexford beat Clare in the All-Ireland hurling championship.
“He gave me one last smile and he passed away,” was the stunningly poignant closing to this powerful story of a daughter and her daddy getting one last game together.
Exiled in Bulgaria.
Look what it meant to Niall Kennedy listening in to the Wexford county final.
From the root of a grass to the Hogan Stand steps.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vko6OZVVhq4
And Richie Hogan doesn’t forget where he came from.
It doesn’t matter how many times the Kilkenny legend gets Liam McCarthy in his hands or how many times he takes the plaudits of the country, it’s all about club. It’s all about Danesfort.
Of all the trophies and accolades that the 28-year-old has lifted and will lift, his happiest memory is with his club. His happiest memory is from a relegation match.
In a brilliant questions and answers interview with Sportstalk.ie, Hogan was asked what was his happiest GAA memory and it is beautifully simple.
“2012 senior club relegation final, scoring a penalty on David Herity, we won by a point.”
It doesn’t matter how far he goes and how wide his name travels, Richie Hogan is just like the rest of us. A club man. A GAA man.
The new GAA Hour hurling podcast is here with Brian Cody, Conal Keaney and Damien Hayes. Subscribe here on iTunes.
