“IT’S STILL A game of hurling.”
That’s what Joey Holden will keep telling himself in the lead-up to Sunday’s All-Ireland club final against St Thomas’.
It helps, of course, that he hails from the most successful club in the most successful county in Ireland, with the game’s most decorated player as his manager.
“When I started at U11, they threw in a little white ball and they’ll throw in a little white ball on Paddy’s Day,” the Ballyhale Shamrocks defender says.
Ballyhale have been frequent visitors to this stage of the competition over the years, but return for their first appearance at Croke Park in four years with plenty of new faces. The club have churned out another talented crop of youngsters to follow their golden generation.
Evan Shefflin, Brian and Eoin Cody and Adrian Mullen look capable of making the set-up with Kilkenny over the coming years, while grizzled veterans like TJ Reid, Colin and Micheal Fennelly and Holden fill the spine of the team.
Unlike Reid and the Fennellys, Holden was never picked out as a future star at underage ranks. He failed to make the Kilkenny minors or U21s and is honest enough to admit there was no oversight on the county’s part.
“I would have been called in for a (minor) trial but I would have dropped fairly quick,” he says. “Listen, I wasn’t at that level, there’s no point in lying and saying I was.
I didn’t think I was at that level when I was brought into the Kilkenny panel but I developed and things started moving along quicker.
“So I wasn’t very good at minor, some people say I’m not that great now! But listen, that’s the way it goes, you just go out and try your best.
“Some days, things haven’t gone right for me, other days, they have.”
Things didn’t change much during his U21 days.
“Again, I would have been on trial but again, I didn’t make it. I was probably one of the stronger ones on the club team but we would have been a weak club team, we would have been struggling for numbers.
So it just didn’t work out for me. Some lads are slower than others and I was one of the slow ones.”
But Holden kept at it. Be assigned pick-up hurling aristocracy like Reid or Shefflin enough times at training and it’s going to go one of two ways. Thankfully for Holden, his game developed rapidly in his early 20s.
“I’d probably put it down to marking Henry and TJ in club training and learning so much off marking those lads. Things started clicking with you then, things start going right and you get confidence.”
Even as he became a consistent performer for Shamrocks, he never felt destined for the county panel.
“I didn’t really. I didn’t feel it, things were just going right for the club. I remember one game, I just couldn’t do no wrong, I went up to catch the ball and then I came down and the ball was in my hand – it was just one of them things.
“Things just started clicking, you probably train so hard that these things just become automatic. I suppose it’s when you’re not thinking sometimes, that’s when you’re at your best. You just go out and hurl and do your best.”
In 2013, a call came from Brian Cody to join the extended training panel
“We’re putting a training panel together and we’d like to see how you get on,” said Cody.
Holden was thrilled at the unexpected invitation.
“I’ll see you next week,” he replied.
“Then in training, you go out and train like everyone else and you try and put your best foot forward.
“I was surprised, I would have played well with the club but you don’t know what they’re thinking or what they’re looking at.
“You just go in and train, as I said earlier, it’s still a white ball thrown in in the middle of the pitch just like when you were young. Even in training, they don’t throw in two balls, they throw in one.
“So you just try get to that ball before your man, do what you’ve always done on the hurling field that’s got you there and hopefully it works out for you. If it does, it does, if it doesn’t, at least you tried your best.
You don’t really know if you’re good enough until you’re in there and training. I was in training and I still didn’t think I was up to it, but then lads were getting dropped and you’re still there.
“Next thing you’re wearing number five, then you’re like, right well I will try hold onto this until the next day. Then the next day you could be getting 17 – but you’ve learned so much up to there, don’t just throw it away. Keep doing what you’re doing and you might get another chance then.
“You’re just walking into the dressing room – loads of Kilkenny heroes around you,” he says.
“You’re marking these lads like Taggy Fogarty, you learn so much from them – who could roast you at training, but whenever you get a roasting, you learn more than you would have had going in and whenever they get the ball you’ve to learn to try and stop them.
“There will be good days and bad days but you just have to learn things on the way and try to improve.”
Holden won two All-Irelands, captaining Kilkenny to his second title in 2015. There were some difficult moments too, not least when Seamus Callanan took him for nine points from play in the 2016 decider.
Holden has since been shifted from full-back to wing-back with Kilkenny, the position many believe is his best. But he’ll occupy the edge of the square on Sunday afternoon as Ballyhale go in search of a seventh Tommy Moore Cup.
The 28-year-old has no preference for his position with club or county, once he gets a jersey.
“It’s not for me to decide. If you can get a number from 1 to 15, take it, enjoy it, hold onto it, cherish it and do the best that you can.
“It doesn’t really matter what number, if it’s below 15, you’re doing well, if it’s not, you drive on the lads that are on the 15 and try and make the panel, and that’s both with Kilkenny and Ballyhale.
“It’s all part of the team winning, it doesn’t matter who plays well as long as the team is winning, that’s what makes everyone happy and that’s what makes me happy as well.
“If you were lucky enough to get below number 15, take it, if not, drive on the rest of the lads. No team will win with no more than 15 players – you need a panel. Good, bad or indifferent – all of them lads that are down the field enjoy their hurling.
“Maybe their potential isn’t as high as other people – that’s fair enough – their potential in other areas might be higher than mine in other areas and the other way around.
“Everyone has to accept that, it shouldn’t hold you back, we’re all absolutely different
“Everyone is down there to enjoy it and as long as players are working hard and trying to get better, that’s what you want.
“It’s the players who are slacking off that you don’t want, thankfully we don’t have that in our training at the moment. Hopefully we can bring that work-rate to Paddy’s Day and go as well as we can.”
He’ll be hoping Sunday is one of the good days.
Bernard Jackman joins Murray Kinsella and Ryan Bailey on The42 Rugby Weekly as Ireland bid to spoil Wales’ Grand Slam party in Cardiff, and the U20s target their own piece of history.
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