Gavan Casey

BACK TO WHERE it all began.

Gavin Duffy is on his way to his hometown of Ballina when he answers the phone on Wednesday, where he’ll take in the Connacht Schools Junior A and B Cup finals at the grounds of his boyhood club.

Things will come full circle for the former Connacht fullback and Mayo Gaelic footballer on Saturday, then, half an hour down the road in Castlebar.

Duffy is buzzing for Connacht to host Munster at MacHale Park, the home of Mayo GAA, in what will be an especially pivotal game for the western province’s URC play-off chances.

“Was Kevin McStay in with them, he was?” Duffy asks, having not yet read on Wednesday morning read the reports that the Mayo manager had met with Connacht’s players earlier in the week seeking to impress upon them the significance of MacHale Park to its more usual patrons.

“Ah, that’s cool, yeah,” Duffy says. “I like that. It’s not just another ground, y’know?”

When the concept of a Connacht game in Mayo was first broached months ago, Duffy found himself almost conflicted, a kind of trepidation interfering with his excitement.

His fear was that his sense of fans’ engagement with Connacht Rugby outside of Galway — in pubs, on the street, during his new day job in coaching and player development across the province — wouldn’t tally with reality.

He wondered would the people of his own county in particular rally behind the concept or would too many of them prove more casual observers.

In the end, all 26,000 tickets sold out within the space of about an hour in January.

Theoretically until he can breathe it in on Saturday, Duffy likens it to Connacht’s Pro 12 success over Leinster at Murrayfield in 2016, when in Edinburgh he bumped into people from home whom he’d never seen in Ballina for a game, not to mind at The Sportsground.

“But it was their team, it was their province, and there was almost an All-Ireland kind of feel about it,” Duffy says.

“And the one thing I’m really looking forward to this Saturday is just seeing a bunch of kids there, y’know? Kids who may not have been in Dexcom Stadium before, who may not have seen Connacht in person, who may not have seen Bundee Aki and Mack Hansen — two of Ireland’s brightest stars — in the flesh.

“And then they’ll see David Heffernan and Cathal Forde and Hugh Gavin; Jack Carty, Dennis Buckley, the Murray brothers; all the guys that are homegrown talent that have come up through minis rugby, club rugby, here in Connacht.

“And for kids now playing minis rugby in Ballyhaunis, in Westport, in Castlebar, Ballina, Headford — I just can’t wait for them to see those guys because I know what it was like when I went to see Connacht for the first time and the impact that had on me.”

Duffy’s first taste of Connacht came against the world-champion All Blacks in 1989. He was instantly hooked.

Just under 18 years later, Duffy was the only Connacht player named in Eddie O’Sullivan’s Ireland squad for the 2007 World Cup.

So, to what extent have things moved on for the western province since? Sure, Bundee Aki, Mack Hansen and Finlay Bealham have become important Test players for Ireland, and Connacht captain Cian Prendergast is among those on the fringes of Andy Farrell’s squad, but these are all players who played their early rugby in either New Zealand, Australia or Leinster.

“Yeah, but those guys, like… they were far from the finished article or even considered international standard when they came to Connacht,” Duffy retorts. “Connacht deserve credit for the careers they’ve gone on to have.”

It’s a perfectly fair point.

“Somebody like Caelan Doris…” Duffy adds. “Like, the only time I’ve ever met Caelan Doris was down in Ballina. He considers that his home club, and we’re so proud of him — just as the club is proud of Dave Heffernan.”

Duffy, who earned 10 Ireland caps of his own, stresses again that there are plenty of “currently relevant” homegrown players at Connacht that kids can look up to, but he acknowledges that “it would be nice to get more through” to the very top level.

And that will partly fall on him in the coming years.

After graduating from NUIG with a degree in Commerce during his rugby career, Duffy spent over a decade working in Connacht’s commercial department following his retirement.

He laughs, now, thinking back to when he told his father, ‘I don’t think I want to be wearing a tracksuit when I’m 40.’ Because he now dons one at 43, having pivoted entirely from the office to the grass where he assists coaches and young players around the five counties. “It still feels really weird putting one on midweek”, Duffy says.

“I’ve hugely enjoyed it,” Duffy says of his new role, which he took on six months ago. “It gives me even a better sense of the amount of work to be done by clubs and schools to try and foster the love of rugby.

“You have to give kids — and adults — the best opportunity just to play rugby, for starters,” he says.

“Y’know, some clubs in the province are struggling to put teams out — and you have huge respect for those clubs where they keep putting out a team. And other clubs, then, are thriving in terms of numbers; they’re almost closing their registrations because they feel that they’re bursting at the seams. And some of those clubs have huge ambitions to develop their facilities and further their communities on and off the field.

“Saturday in Castlebar kind of feels like a reward for a lot of those volunteers who would usually have to travel two hours down to Galway for a match,” Duffy adds.

“And as a province, I think we’re only scratching the surface, really, at times, as much as there’s been great work done and progress made. And Dexcom Stadium will be a very visible, tangible representation of that.

“But I still feel hugely excited about where the club could go as well.”

To Duffy’s mind, among the greatest staples of Connacht’s progress since his own playing days is that the province has become a more viable playing option for players who harbour Test ambitions.

Players like Aki, Hansen, Bealham and even the likes of Kieran Marmion before them were able to “fulfill their dreams and ambitions by playing and staying in Connacht”, he says.

“It’s not so much that Connacht can sign players who become internationals. It’s after they become internationals, when their next contract comes up and they stay at Connacht (as was the case with both Aki and Hansen recently): that’s where I think the whole thing has kicked on.”

Things were undeniably different during Duffy’s own playing career: he earned his first Ireland cap on the 2004 tour of South Africa having swapped Connacht for Harlequins the summer previous.

Prior to his move to the Premiership, the still-uncapped Duffy, 22, had opportunities to join either Munster or Leinster, but he couldn’t bring himself to the thought.

“Well, in fairness, I suppose when you hear Munster are bringing in Christian Cullen”, Duffy laughs, “you kind of go, ‘Oh Jesus, do I wanna go there and sit on the bench?’

“But like, I would have found it very hard to join another province at the time.

“And I think all because of the whole…” Duffy stops short of recalling the IRFU’s proposition to disband Connacht that same year, 2003. But he adds: “Maybe we had a chip on our shoulder — and a chip on the shoulder as well about the perception that I had to go to another province to get picked by Ireland. There might have been one or two comments: ‘You’ve gotta get out of Galway.’

“I wanted to go, ‘Well, I’m gonna prove you wrong.’ I always thought, ‘If Eric Elwood can do it, I can do it.’

“Even when I came back from Harlequins as well, I suppose my thought process was that if I was ever going to achieve something, be it individually or collectively, it would be sweeter if I achieved it at Connacht.

“I suppose there was always a parochial kind of stubbornness to my upbringing and where I’m from,” Duffy says.

In May 2014, Duffy was brought as a travelling reserve for Connacht’s final game of the season, away to the Ospreys. It was also his final weekend as a professional rugby player.

“I don’t know was Pat [Lam] thinking he was doing me a favor by bringing me away for one last game,” Duffy laughs.

While moseying around Swansea, Duffy noticed he had a missed call from Mayo Gaelic football manager James Horan, whose side had been beaten in the last two All-Ireland finals and were gearing up for another championship campaign.

Duffy, who had made an All-Ireland minor final with Mayo in 1999, got a ripple of excitement but decided to put off phoning Horan back until the following day, when his Connacht teammates’ season would also be over.

“And when I rang him, James said, ‘Listen, if you want to come in and have a look…’

“And whether it’s my ego or not, I said, ‘What do you mean “have a look?” Do you want me to train?’

“Like, in my head”, Duffy says, “I was thinking I could pull this off; that I could pick up from where I left off 13 or 14 years before that, playing minor football, thinking that the game hadn’t changed and I could still get up and down the pitch no problem.”

So, the Tuesday after his rugby career ended, the clubless former corner-back resumed his Gaelic football career, training with the Mayo seniors in Castlebar.

“Jeez, I had my eyes opened anyway, for sure, about fitness levels and the way the game had moved on,” Duffy laughs.

“But I loved the environment and everything that they were striving for as a collective unit.

“Mayo are so professional in everything they do but they are amateur, and to see the level of commitment that those guys gave… Like, I know I was going from Galway to Castlebar for training but the odd time we’d have to go to Longford because the boys working in Dublin were giving it so much of their time, spending so much time in minibuses.

“I just had such a huge respect for what those guys were doing. I really, really thoroughly enjoyed it.”

Duffy didn’t get a game for Horan’s side that summer and he scoffs at his delusions of grandeur at the time as he thought, ‘I’ll go back playing with Mayo, it’ll be grand’.

“I had played one senior match for Ballina Stephenites, a championship match, about 14 years earlier,” he says.

“I got to play with Liam McHale and David Brady, which was again a little highlight, a little mark that I wanted to tick off.

“We drew the match out in Knockmore and I missed the replay because I was going off with the Irish Schools to Australia that summer. (Duffy captained that touring side).

“So that had been my last game of Gaelic football: the summer of 2000.”

Duffy had been given the chance, however, to sit on the Mayo bench for a challenge match with Donegal in Ballinrobe the previous winter of ’99/00.

“I was still in school in Roscrea and I was training with the U21s at the time,” he recalls.

“That morning, we finished training and John Maughan asked myself and James Gill, I think, to sit on the bench for the seniors.”

Maughan broached it with Duffy’s father who, after a conversation with the Mayo manager in the carpark, then relayed to his son: “‘No, no, I’ve told him your mother is expecting you home for dinner and then you’re heading back to Roscrea.’”

“I said, ‘What?’” Duffy recalls.

“‘What?! Sure, like, I might never get a chance again!’

“And my dad says, ‘Well, if you’re good enough now, you’ll be good enough in six months’ time or a year’s time. But no, you’re going home for dinner and then you’re going back down to school.”

“He was right,” Duffy adds. “He was probably protecting me as well in fairness: lining out against intercounty players at that stage might have been a disaster for me.”

Duffy would eventually line out for Mayo alongside fellas his own size 15 years later, partnering Barry Moran in midfield in a 2015 FBD League game against Sligo.

He went on to play for a decade with Salthill-Knockacarra near his adopted Galway home, enjoying the opportunity to meet people and “make friends to go for a pint with” after mostly cocooning himself during his rugby years.

“I love the fact, now, that my kids are playing for the club as well,” Duffy says.

His two daughters, aged 13 and 10, and his eight-year-old son, play so many different sports that Duffy is at a point where he wonders if they need to cut back. GAA, soccer, basketball, rugby: you name it.

“But I ask them constantly, ‘Are you enjoying it?’ And the answer is, ‘Yep.’ And that’s all that matters,” he says.

The kids will accompany Duffy to Connacht’s meeting with Munster on Saturday. MacHale Park will be more familiar terrain to them than it is for plenty of fans in attendance.

“Although our last trip was a Mayo-Galway match and it was that day that they pinned their colors to the mast and said that they were supporting Galway,” Duffy laments.

“Even though my young lad had a Mayo jersey on him on the way up, he was he was supporting Galway on the way home.

“It’ll be nice that we’re all supporting the same team on Saturday, at least!”