Football career has completed full circle

Trim v St Paul’s in the first round of the Junior B on Sunday 12th April marked 20 years since I began my adult football career with St Paul’s.
For those of you who do not know, St Paul’s are a one team club. Our facilities? We had a field (always a good start) and a prefab unit with a curtain dividing it into two separate changing rooms. Things were cosy and most team talks were done out on the pitch!
As a “ band of brothers” we won the Junior Championship in 1999 and two leagues, Div 5 in 1995 and Div 3 in 2000, losing to Duleek in Div 4 in 1996. During those years I was privileged to have played with an absolutely great bunch of lads and made friends for life. It was undoubtedly my happiest time in football.
It was a team that I was very sad to leave, but after we were relegated back to Junior a lot of the players were moving on with their lives and could not commit to training twice a week.
I was starting out with the Meath seniors and needed for my own game to be testing myself against the best players and teams in the county. I knew that if I was to succeed with Meath I had to be training at least three or four times a week and that commitment levels had to be increased. It was with St Paul’s best wishes and support that I joined Blackhall Gaels and began a different football chapter.
Commitment levels seem to be in vogue at the moment. Sligo’s Charlie Harrison recently wrote a piece that outlined the sacrifices he makes in order to play at the highest level for his county.
His article may have shocked a lot of people as to how much is put in away from the general collective training and time he actually spends with the Sligo team.
Things such as leaving his two sister’s weddings early and not eating with his friends so as to ensure his diet is met, may seem a bit excessive for most but for me this is just what being an athlete at the top level is about.
Inter-county players can no longer treat themselves in the same way as the club player. There has to be an extra sacrifice, but this sacrifice has to be sensible.
You cannot be a hermit nor can you starve yourself of social interaction and enjoyment. Becoming and remaining an inter-county footballer or hurler is not just about skill, fitness or ability, it is just as much about mental strength and dedication, but as I learned, it sometimes is just about enjoying it.
I never played minor or u-21 for Meath. From the time that I really knuckled down I knew that there was an onus on me to do more than anyone else. I knew I had to do more than the rest of my club team mates, more than my new Meath team mates and hopefully more than any other inter -county player at that time.

Dedication
I dedicated myself to getting in the best physical shape I possibly could. I think I achieved this, but as soon as I climbed this mountain then my mental strength was tested.
At that time I felt I was good enough to be on the Meath team. I felt that I should be starting. I knew the work and sacrifice that I had put in (doing extra training on my own after training had finished in Fairyhouse for example), but I was not getting the reward.
So what happened was, I sulked. I got angry and frustrated and I started to over analyse everything. Each look that Sean Boylan or one of his selectors would give me was being interpreted as them questioning me.
Every bad ball I gave or point my man would kick was another reason for the management to drop me. My confidence suffered massively and with it my game got gradually worse.
This feeling of inferiority that I had took a while to get over. I constantly questioned my own ability and my performances. I needed a lot of reassurance and although outwardly I may have looked confident and sure of my game, I was far from it.
Family, friends, managers and team mates ensured I got over this. I remember walking around St Stephen’s Green in Dublin on a lunch break with a good friend of mine. We were chatting and I blurted out that I was thinking of leaving the Meath team.
I had never given into a challenge in my life, but here I was now contemplating packing in something that I had worked extremely hard for. I told him that I was putting in all this work and was getting nowhere.
He listened to me rant for about 20 minutes and then just told me something very simple.
He said that I should be feeling blessed and privileged to be doing what I was doing. He asked me “how many lads or ladies would give their right arm to be playing for their county?”. “How may would love to run out into Croke Park in front of 60,000 people?” He hit me right between the eyes and I woke up.
Around the same time I went and had a chat with Sean Boylan. He also spoke a lot of sense (of course) and I left the meeting in a massively positive frame of mind. He told me some very simple stories of players who had great belief from a young age and who always expected to be on teams and who generally were.
But for every one of those there were guys like me who probably never expected to make the Meath team and who, after finding themselves there, would have to work twice as hard to believe they belonged there.
Sean always said that no matter who you are or how many medals you have when you come into the Meath panel you were an equal. Sean believed that, but the fact was I didn’t.
I eventually realised it was not the game or team or my managers who owed me anything. It was they who gave me everything. I was massively privileged to be in the position I was in.
Amazingly the less pressure I put myself under the better I played. I played without fear for the first time ever with Meath. I went into games full of confidence both outwardly and more importantly inwardly.
I was playing with a smile on my face.
I became Meath captain in 2007 and represented Ireland in the International Rules series. I was still committing myself, making the sacrifices, pushing myself to new challenges constantly, but I was doing it with no expectation.
I was just trying to be the best I could and if that was not good enough then so be it. I was back getting togged out in the St Paul’s dressing room with the curtain in the middle for a division 5 league game and I was delighted.