A SELECTION OF supporters, loud enough that their cheering could be heard all around a depleted Croke Park, welcomed Kyle Hayes back into Limerick’s starting XV last month. It was his name alone that inspired this reaction as the team to play Dublin was read out over the loudspeaker.
Two months earlier, he had pleaded not guilty to two counts of violent disorder and one count of assault causing harm. A jury at the Limerick Circuit Criminal Court ultimately found Hayes not guilty of assault but guilty of both violent disorder offences.
Late on Wednesday morning, he received a fully suspended jail sentence and was ordered to pay the victim, Cillian McCarthy, a self-employed carpenter, €10,000 in compensation for injuries and loss of earnings due to these injuries.
According to Limerick GAA, an ankle injury prevented Hayes from partaking in games against Tipperary and Galway following on from that comfortable defeat of Dublin in Croke Park. It is presumed he will return to the Limerick team without much delay, his own injuries notwithstanding.
It is difficult to put a number on those who cheered Hayes’ first appearance for Limerick since last year’s All-Ireland final. They were expressing an affiliation with one of their own. Maybe with the feeling that a fifth All-Ireland win in succession might not happen without him, or with the belief that he simply remains a player and person deserving of cheers. They reacted with defiance, perhaps.
That the literal victim happened to be another Limerick man seemed of secondary importance, if of any importance at all.
Maybe one day Kyle Hayes will tell us how those cheers made him feel.
He had pleaded not guilty, after all, determined that his understanding of those events in October 2019 differed from Cillian McCarthy’s testimony.
When John Kiely stated this week that his decision to provide his player with a character reference in court did not condone Hayes’ actions, what was his understanding of the events that happened, given the not guilty plea?
It probably takes one who has experienced life as a brilliant, hugely successful county player to properly understand the impact it can have on an individual.
Fourteen months before the event in question, a 20-year-old Hayes was named man-of-the-match as the Limerick hurlers claimed a first All-Ireland win in 45 years. He would later be named Young Hurler of the Year (somehow missing out on an All-Star, although four have since followed) on the first step of what has already become one of the great inter-county careers.
He is a sensational hurler, the kind who had appeared fully formed in 2018 but has yet developed – tactically, technically and physically – into something greater. Limerick’s success cannot be understood without him.
And yet, what we learned of the night in question from what played out in a Limerick court had no apparent connection to how the world (insofar as we might regard the Limerick hurling community as a world of its own) had come to view Kyle Hayes.
“Do you know who the f*** I am,” he was alleged to have said to Cillian McCarthy, displaying a more pressing concern with how he viewed himself.
Hayes had emerged from a relatively small club and taken the chances afforded to him in a revamped Limerick hurling academy to ensure that his incredible talents would shine through regardless of where he had started out from.
He was emblematic of the meritocracy that sport at its very best will enable.
He was the kind of talented player that may well have once died on the vine, or laboured away in Junior and Intermediate hurling waiting too long for his chance at the county team to arrive.
From a certain perspective, he was the ultimate success story of Limerick hurling’s ability to disregard their old ways in favour of the new.
Which is not to say that this is how Hayes felt in that moment. The rhetorical ‘Do you know who I am’ is as likely stated by one who has no matter-of-fact answer to that question.
There is no excusing the crime that Hayes has been found guilty of committing.
And yet, if he ends up starting for Limerick in their Munster championship opener against Clare next month, one suspects that an even greater proportion of supporters will greet his presence with an enthusiasm that might seem improper.
Maybe it’s on account of his talent, maybe it’s based on the opinion that he’s been harshly treated, or maybe it’s just because those supporters feel that one of their own is being targeted and this is what you are supposed to do.
In the build-up to last year’s All-Ireland hurling final, the former Limerick hurler Niall Moran explained to Off The Ball that the county’s strength of feeling toward this hurling team had everything to do with “how they make us feel as a county”.
During Moran’s own time, Limerick city became a byword for violence; the feuding gangs operating there a source of immense frustration and sorrow for those who had to deal with the fallout. The idea then that the county hurling team could do anything to alter Limerick’s sense of self would have seemed fanciful, even as they reached an All-Ireland final in 2007.
Things have changed since, however, and though Kiely’s team can hardly be credited with solving all the problems that once plagued the county, they have cultivated an idea of what Limerick people can do.
Hayes is an intrinsic part of that story.
He will almost certainly be targeted for what he has been found guilty of doing, be it from the stands or on the pitch. Limerick supporters, and perhaps Hayes’ teammates, as well, will be as quick to defend him.
As an inter-county star he asked the question, ‘Do you know who the f*** I am.’ Ahead of what will surely be an incredibly challenging year, one wonders will Kyle Hayes be any closer to knowing the answer when it ends.
