IT’S MARCH OF 1999 and as Britney Spears is topping the charts with ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’, a young lad from Ballacolla is taking the first few hits of his senior hurling career.
“That’s 22 years ago!”, Michael McEvoy says, astonished. “That can’t be right?”
McEvoy’s maths hasn’t let him down, though he recounts his debut as if it were last week.
“I remember it so well. I was thrown in corner forward against Clonaslee over in Colt on a wet Saturday evening.
“They had the great Declan Rooney hurling centre back for them. He was a legend in my eyes at that time and I just tried to steer clear of him.
“I was only 16 but that’s how it was back then. There were no rules saying you had to have passed out of minor before you could play senior.
“I was a far cry from Leinster finals at that stage.”
More than two decades later and that’s exactly where he’s found himself as Clough/Ballacolla head for Croke Park to take on the three-in-a-row chasing Ballyhale Shamrocks in the Leinster club final.
“We’ve never experienced anything like this before. Organising yourself to go up to Croke Park to play a match with your club, it’s incredible.
“You hear people sometimes say in interview that they’re ‘living the dream’, but we genuinely are right now.”
Success was far from instant for McEvoy at senior level. Ten years had passed before he eventually tasted glory, captaining his side to their first county title in 91 years in 2009.
“We had been coming and coming for a few years and finally made that breakthrough in ’09.
“It was an unbelievable thing to be involved in at the time. After waiting so long, the place went completely mad.
“I would compare this week to ’09 in terms of that sense of giddiness around the area.”
Two more titles followed over the next six years, but McEvoy is not quite sure if that justified them having fulfilled their potential.
“We won it again then in ’11 and ’15 but a lot of people would feel that we didn’t win enough during that period, which might be true.”
Back then McEvoy was a roving centre forward but these days he finds himself back in more familiar surroundings, playing at number six.
“At underage level I was always centre back and with the county I think I hurled in every position across the backs.
“But at club level we had a lot of brilliant backs, so I was sort of shoehorned into the centre forward role and I suppose it worked out reasonably well for us.
“Once I got past 30 it wasn’t working out anymore though! I didn’t have the energy to be running around up there any longer.”
McEvoy believes that taking a leap of faith at 28 and undergoing a career change has been a big help to his hurling longevity.
“I was working as a quantity surveyor up in Dublin and I was commuting up and down a good few times a week to make training sessions.
“I mean, would you have stayed doing that up to the age of 38, with a young family? Not a hope in hell.”
He decided to pursue teaching, heading over to Scotland for a year as part of his studies.
“I was chained to a desk and I just wasn’t enjoying it,” he says of his former career.
“I wanted to get home and I just thought I might be suited to teaching. I felt if I didn’t give it a go, I’d regret it and it turned out to be the best move I ever made.
“After I qualified, I relocated to Laois and managed to get a job locally in the school in Timahoe. I’m happy out over there, really love it.”
“This morning I drove in and as I was coming into the village there was a sign up saying ‘Best of luck in the Leinster final to Mr McEvoy from Timahoe GAA Club’. That was a really lovely touch.”
McEvoy has had two kids, Sarah (5) and Eoin (3), since the 2015 win and says having them around to enjoy the recent success has made things even more satisfying.
“They’re really loving it and it’s really made the year for me. To be able to go into Sarah’s school with the cup was magic.
“The night of the Rapparees match Trish (McEvoy’s wife) didn’t go to the game because it was just too cold for the kids but thankfully it was on telly.
“It was the day after the toy show. Sarah was watching it, saying to Trish, ‘this is even better than watching the Toy Show, Mam.’ I mean, if that’s not the ultimate compliment.
“She told me the boys commentating were kind to me too, saying I was 36. We won’t tell the Ballyhale lads that I’m really 38.”
His children’s enthusiasm has led to a few arguments at home, though.
“Trish came and said recently that they were going to put up a few signs outside the house.
“I would never really have been on for that leading up to a big game. I always preferred to keep it low key.
“I said, ‘Ah I don’t know Trish, that wouldn’t really be my thing’, but she just said, ‘sorry Mike, this one is not about you, it’s for the kids’. So I’ve just had to grin and bear it.”
With back-to-back county titles in a calendar year and a Leinster final still to come, it’s been some year for a man who thought he was done with senior hurling a year previous.
“I was regraded to hurl Intermediate at the start of the 2020 season,” he says.
“But when Covid kicked in, myself and Pat, a cousin of mine, started running a lot to get out of the house and I got reasonably fit again.
“Before I knew it, I was back on the senior team, and everything has rolled on from there. But it’s not lost on me that I could so easily have missed out on all this. A lot of the lads have said to me lately, ‘and imagine, you wanted to retire.’”
McEvoy is one of those rare breeds, the club player who is liked by all.
In neighbouring parishes, where rivalry can often border on hatred, exceptions are made for ‘Mac’.
Eagle-eyed viewers of RTE’s semi-final coverage on Saturday evening may have a caught a glimpse at final whistle of why he’s so highly regarded.
As the camera panned across the exuberant Clough/Ballacolla celebrations, McEvoy could be seen walking among the Kilmacud Crokes players, shaking hands with each to offer his commiserations.
A mark of the man.
As we chatted on Tuesday evening I enquired as to how his match-week build-up was going.
“We have an early intervention autism unit for children aged 3 to 5 as part of the school in Timahoe. It’s brilliant for the local kids.
“I’m the only fella in the school so I spent this morning dressed up as Santa Claus for them. So that’s how my preparations are going.”
It strikes me as an effective distraction to Sunday’s challenge and a possible match-up that’s unlikely to be one of the easier he’s encountered in his career.
“Marking TJ Reid in Croke Park. On paper, that one is probably going Ballyhale’s way isn’t it,” he jokes.
But hurling isn’t played on paper and McEvoy is cute enough to know that.
The glint in his eye betrays his self-deprecating comments and you just know that he’s relishing this one.
“Ah look, I’m very, very lucky to have hung on. To think I’m having the highlight of my career at 38 years of age.
“It’s more than I could ever have wished for.”
Nobody will begrudge him it.