Mickey burkes shinty diary part one

Longwood and Meath footballer and hurler Mickey Burke’s diary from Inverness, the capital of the Scottish Highlands and home of Scotland’s ancient game Shinty, provides an insight into the first weekend of the popular annual event. The annual hurling/shinty challenge is a compromise rules match between Ireland and Scotland where the rules are simple, the Irish team cannot kick or handle the ball and the game is played over 40 minutes for each half.

DIARY 

After three weeks of trial matches the squad was whittled down to 18 players. Competition for places was intense as five players are picked from the stronger counties.

Essentially, the rest of us are competing for 13 places and I was like a 'pig in Chardonnay’ when I got the news that I had made the cut.

It is a massive honour to wear the Irish Jersey and I had two other Meath lads with me this year, James Toher from Trim and my own club mate Damien Healy, which made it even more special.

We departed from Dublin on Thursday night, I am not a great flyer and the journey across to Scotland was very rough, but I survived, just about!

After breakfast on Friday we got the journey out of our legs with a 30-minute match against the Ireland u-21 selection.

Jack Fagan and Jack Regan were both on the u-21 squad, but this wasn’t like a captain’s run in rugby the day before a match, this was full on, lads knew starting places were up for grabs so there was plenty of timber flying!

After surviving that, we went to the pool for recovery, while that evening we had a civic reception in Inverness and we finished off the evening with some video analysis and dinner.

On Saturday morning we had an early start, I fuelled up on the usual pre-match foods, porridge, fruit, nuts and eggs along with some coffee, I prefer to get in all my food early then sip water.

We had a team meeting at 11am in the hotel when the starting team was announced. Damo and myself were in the half-back line while James was on the interchange bench.

We were presented with our jerseys as well which was a special moment and both my mother and father made the journey over this year, it was brilliant to have them there.

The venue for the game, Bught Park was packed and after a rousing rendition of “Flower of Scotland” the Scots flew out of the traps and clearly had their homework done on us.

We played against a gale in the first half and we were barely keeping our head above water, but due to incessant pressure the dam burst and the hosts got in for three first-half goals while Kevin Bartlett punished us from frees and sideline cuts with unbelievable accuracy.

The Scots are lethal from set pieces, so giving away a sideline cut is almost a crime!!

We went In at the break with a mountain to climb behind by 0-4 to 3-13.
After a stern lecture and plenty of changes we played much better in the second-half. I had to tag (man mark) Bartlett, but Bonner Maher’s pace and strong running caused havoc although Zane Keenan of Laois kept us in touch with frees, but it was too little too late.

We couldn’t hide our disappointment after the match. We had prepared professionally, but the Scottish lads deserved the win.

This was my sixth test match and without doubt the most physical.
The Scots were definitely pumped up playing on home soil and in front of a partisan crowd.

I got a bad gash on my shin and my big toe is completely black now from a wild pull.

Damo got a bad cut under his eye, it went through his helmet and he will have a shiner this week!

The shinty stick is much longer and heavier than a hurley.
James and Damo can be proud of their senior debuts and they definitely didn’t let the side down in anyway.

I am already looking forward to the second test in Croke Park which is on before the International Rules. I have no doubt we will turn the series around and put pride back into the green shirt again.

Finally, thanks to everyone for all the good luck messages over the last few weeks

All roads lead to Croker.......