FOR A SPELL last winter it looked as if Clare might represent the end of James Ryan’s Limerick hurling journey.
He posted a brace of points in Thurles last July but wound up on the losing side as their season ended when they clattered into a qualifier hurdle.
Tomorrow Ryan will renew acquaintances with Clare, with the added title of captain after that was bestowed upon him by John Kiely at the outset of 2017.
Yet the 30-year-old is clear in his mind that he could easily be sitting in the stands watching on.
He wondered in the off-season whether he had the passion and drive to throw himself into another season of inter-county hurling and all the accompanying pressures and demands.
Taking some time away from the grind last November and December transpired to be a wise choice.
“In the last couple of years in Limerick anyway since 2011 on, the training has been so intense and there’s been so many nights consistently every week that it’s tough going.
“I didn’t know was it a break I needed just to refresh or whether I just had enough or whether I was good enough to come back really.
“I just said I was considering taking a break. John (Kiely) just asked me why and I said mentally I needed a break, I was burned out.
“I wasn’t really performing well either. He said maybe we’d have a word around Christmas and see how I was feeling.
“There was a couple of years there where we were just finished club whether it be hurling or football and two weeks later we were back with county.
“I was just burned out out from the whole thing mentally rather than physically.”
Would he still be involved if he hadn’t taken that step back?
“Personally no I don’t think so at all. If you just keep going and going and on the treadmill, you’ll eventually fall off it.
“After the eight or 10 week break, I just decided I’d like to go back at it refreshed. It was the best thing I ever did take the break. If I never took the break, I think I’d be in a way different mindset now.
“It was my own decision but I think the break did me the world of good.”
He rejoined the panel, determined to keep his head down and make his case to the new management. The offer of captaincy then was a jolt to the senses.
“I came back in and I didn’t even realise the captain hadn’t been named. It was gas, when you come back from a break like that, no matter how many years you’re playing with a team, you feel like a bit of an outcast coming in.
“I just kept my head down for a couple of weeks and chatted away and got into the routine of it. Then they approached me and asked me would I like to be captain?
“I was never captain before and it was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down really.
“I was delighted to be asked. It’s a great honour for me, my family, my club but it definitely took me by surprise.”
Ryan was far from unfamiliar with the new man appointed to the Limerick managerial hotseat last winter.
He is in the curious position of having been a club-mate of the last Limerick manager and the current one.
When Garryspillane made that seismic breakthrough in 2005 to win their first, and only to date, Limerick senior hurling title, Ryan was midfield and had for company in the starting fifteen, TJ Ryan at wing-forward and John Kiely at corner-back.
“John is actually a Galbally man but we’re the one club now. Galbally is the football part. I would have played both with John. I was doing the running for him!
“I would have hurled with him in 2005, we won the county. He was playing corner back, you’d earn your score off him!
“He’d have played against a few of the boys still playing, Gavin O’Mahony was playing in that county final.”
Hurling was always Ryan’s first love but he was committed to a dual mandate for a while. When Mickey Ned O’Sullivan had Limerick challenging the Kerry-Cork duopoly in Munster, Ryan was chasing football glory.
“I nearly half broke onto the hurling team the year before, then in 2008 I was on both teams from the start.
“I was playing league in the football and then between league and championship I was on the hurling panel. I was training, training and I ended up being sub on both teams because of it.
“I was out on the field more than anyone and I was sub. I was very young but I said I’d prefer to be playing on one than a sub on both. It’s just time consuming.
“2010 I went back to the football with the whole strike. You couldn’t do both. I don’t think your energy system would allow you do it or my energy system wouldn’t allow me do it anyway.
“I’d love to but I don’t think you can. Any player that has tried it over the last few years, I can’t answer for them but I think their form would have been better if they’d picked one and I’d say they’d agree with that as well.”
He’s pointed his focus now solely on hurling. It’s a different dressing-room he walks into these days. Players like Donal O’Grady, Wayne McNamara and David Breen that he soldiered with for so long, have now moved on.
Stepping into the void is a collection of talented youngsters, eager to translate their schools and U21 glories to the senior stage.
“I think every player that is near retirement knows you go through that process. Within the space of a year the whole dressing room can change.
“Fellas leave, such is the nature of inter-county that’s going to happen. You still have great friendships with all these lads.
“Time is eventually going to move me on and everyone on. A lot of U21′s are after coming in, that’s just part of transition.”
Five of them have been handed their Munster senior debuts against Clare tomorrow. For Ryan other provincial battles hit closer to home yet he’s doesn’t require a history lesson on the significance of this game.
“Limerick-Tipp was bigger for me growing up. My mother’s a Lattin woman and we’re on the Tipp border.
“The Limerick Clare rivalry is a bit bigger because the city is on the border and the Árdscoil Rís thing.
“I’d say at a rough guess nearly 60% of our team went to Árdscoil Rís with the Clare lads or would know them from colleges.
“A lot of the players now that are younger on both teams, Clare and Limerick, would definitely know each other very very well.
“There is that extra bit of knowledge of each other and that extra bit of rivalry which can bring its own dynamics.
“It’s nice to know if you’re going to win a match, you’re in a Munster final. Traditionally Limerick’s best route is going by the Munster final road.
“When we get a win behind us, we seem to get a bit of momentum behind us and we seem to improve our play. That’s the way we’d be hoping to go.”
The42 is on Instagram! Tap the button below on your phone to follow us!
