IT WAS THREE WEEKS.
That’s all Joe Baldwin would allow himself. He had a stroke in mid-January. Everything had to stop.
But then came 10 February. The phone had been ringing for a week; tentative enquiries that got firmer as the days wore on.
Baldwin wouldn’t be into dressing this into any tale of Lazarus or anything. But he was the Fermanagh hurling manager and he was still feeling sore over the 2023 season.
It was the opening day of the league, away to Leitrim. He just had to go. So he opened negotiations.
His partner Fran is a nurse. He promised her that he would go and sit in the stands, passively watching the game.
He didn’t deliver on the promise. Before long he was on the Ballinamore sideline. As it happens, Fermanagh won by 21 points.
No stress. Not much.
The following week, Baldwin was back at Lissan, the Fermanagh training complex. He presided over a flawless league campaign before a tighter time in the Lory Meagher Cup. But here they are, in a national final against Longford, played in Croke Park.
How has he done it?
“(My health) is as well as it can be. It was a big shock,” he says.
“It’s not an escapism as such because health comes first. But hurling is a way of life, hurling people need hurling in their lives and it is my escape from all the reality of everything going on.
“The health is pretty good at the minute but there will be a realisation that come two o’clock on Sunday, there will need to be a sit-down and figure out a way of stopping this from happening again.”
As he says, hurling is his escape. It’s also the thread that keeps him tethered to Conal.
Conal was his 12-year-old son and constant companion that came everywhere with Joe and the teams he managed. Although to Conal, they came as a management team.
In December 2012, he was attacked by a rare virus. He was brought to hospital by Joe and his mother, Joanne. He started to fit. There was panic and lights and doctors everywhere, shouting. Joe went down on his knees and started praying, right there in the operating theatre.
Conal passed away.
Then the doctors resuscitated him. He opened his eyes and was alert.
For a couple of minutes, his parents told him how much he was loved and treasured.
Then he let out a long sigh and passed away.
It was Christmas Eve.
Joe has talked about Conal in previous interviews. He and Joanne didn’t make it out of the maze of grief together.
They still share Darragh. One time, Joe was down in Kilmoyley, Co Kerry playing for his club An Ríocht in an Irish language festival tournament.
Spotting his jersey, the former Kerry football captain Dara Ó Cinnéide came up and struck up conversation with Joe and Joanne, who was pregnant at the time. Such was the impression he left, that they named their second son Darragh.
“Darragh doesn’t play Gaelic Games at all. He is a showjumper and very successful in his own right,” says Joe.
“He competes at Showjumping Ireland level. He got a promotion at work this year and took a step back.
“So I am obviously very proud of Darragh and what he does. But in terms of what I do and hurling, yes, the connection is there with Conal.
“Why do you do it? You do it to take part and you do it to win. You do feel that Conal was so engrossed in the game and he loved it so much. I do this because it makes me feel connected to him.”
Think of the purity of that motivation.
And then think of the Central Competitions Control Committee’s (CCCC) proposal at the tail-end of last year that flew a kite around excluding Fermanagh, Cavan, Longford, Louth and Leitrim from the National Hurling Leagues.
The push-back was fierce, co-ordinated and eagerly supported by the Gaelic Players Association and the established, strong hurling counties.
Chairperson of the CCCC, Derek Kent, said on local Wexford radio after the discourse had ran for a week, that, “I fully respect the decisions of the counties, that they came back and said, ‘No, we don’t want to remove our teams from the leagues’ but the cry to stay in the leagues came from players outside of those counties travelling, expensed travel. It came from some of the managers well looked after, well imbursed for their services.”
Incorrect. Crass.
Does Baldwin sound like money motivates him?
“It’s never about money. This, at this level, has always been about the love of the game,” he says.
“From our point of view, it was us that was going to suffer. There is a conversation needed about growing the game of hurling, a wider conversation.
“At our level, there is a blueprint that was published a few years ago in Fermanagh about the development of the game. We have the eight juvenile clubs now. If you wanted to look at how to do it, Fermanagh was probably a brilliant template.”
As much as the finger is pointed at smaller counties, he believes the GAA have a case to answer themselves in their treatment.
“We are facing into a Lory Meagher final, there is also the Nickey Rackard and the Christy Ring finals. We haven’t even had an official launch of these championships,” he stated.
“There was a launch of the Tailteann Cup. So what does it say to our sponsors, to BelterTech there, when we are going in to play a national final and there hasn’t been an official launch by the GAA?”
Despite all that, they hurl on.
The hurling that Fermanagh, and for that a dozen other counties play now, is entirely different than previous generations. The standards across all levels has been elevated beyond measure.
But Fermanagh hurling is a small village.
At half-time of their recent game in Brewster Park against Lancashire, the team of 1994 was paraded in front of a meagre crowd.
Back then, they won the Junior All-Ireland, beating London in the final on a sweltering day in Ruislip.
It’s noteworthy how many of that group now have sons playing in the present team. Midfield stylist Sean Duffy later co-managed the county (alongside 1994 full-back Seamus McCusker) to the 2015 Lory Meagher title. He has sons John, Caolan and Ciaran on the team.
Kevin McKeogh moved to Belfast as a young man and his son Danann McKeogh hurls for St John’s, but is proud to play for his father’s county.
Corner-back John McCusker’s son Luca not only played for Ireland this year in the Shinty international, but was University of Ulster Jordanstown’s Hurler of the Year; an accolade previously unthought of among the cream of young Antrim, Derry and Down talent.
Ollie McShea is a current selector and has his son Adam in the squad. Barry McPhillips is a son of Aidy.
The pool could be a little deeper. But that will come in time.
“You always aspire to be the best you can be. But the best we can be is ‘Fermanagh,’” Baldwin says.
As a group, they are aware of their responsibilities. At the recent press event and fan’s evening at Lissan, the senior players came up with the idea of paying for sliotars out of their own pocket to hand to the children there.
“We are never going to be a Kilkenny or a Limerick. But you can look at that game on Sunday; Waterford and Limerick and you can look at the ferociousness in the tackle, the workrate of the players, and you are dealing with absolute athletes here.
“We try to be as professional as we can. Like this year, the introduction of Anne-Marie Higgins the sports psychologist, the dieticians, the planning, the logistics inside. Even it can be something as simple as us all wearing the correct gear… That forms that bond, that togetherness. We are all one.
“We have a saying, ‘It doesn’t matter the number on your back, it is the crest on your chest.’
“It’s to get across; ‘We are Fermanagh.’”
An endangered species. But still they hurl.
