LONG BEFORE BALLYGUNNER became the birthplace of Waterford hurling hopes, it was known as the city’s “dead centre”. So little was there of note about the area, it was nicknamed after the fact it housed the largest graveyard in Waterford.
The parish didn’t have a club of its own until 1954 and the club didn’t have a pitch of its own until 1994 but they had a vision to be the best.
Shane O’Sullivan’s late father Pat, a founding member of the club, was considered a lunatic for his talk of winning All-Ireland titles for years when Ballygunner weren’t even the best in Waterford.
Last February, Shane and his brother, Darragh, who manages the team, proved their old man right. Now, they’re trying to do it all over again.
Hurling prodigies are nothing new in the family. Shane and Darragh are uncles to the Mahonys, Philip, Pauric, Mikey, and Kevin, who make up much of the spine of the team. Now, they have another potential superstar nephew.
Patrick Fitzgerald, in his debut senior year, has netted in all three of his Munster championship appearances for a total of 3-9 and won two man of the match awards.
Fresh out of minor, Fitzgerald wasn’t eligible for their All-Ireland success last February but he’s making up for lost time on the road back to Croke Park, where they meet Ballyhale Shamrocks on Sunday in a semi-final repeat of last year’s final.
Key to his instant impact is a personality Shane O’Sullivan describes as “calm, cool, and collected”.
“Patrick has incredible talent, he’s not fazed, and he does have a bigger-picture perspective on everything too,” says uncle Shane.
“We’re lucky enough in the sense that we’ve eight or nine forwards that all can perform on the day, which means there’s not that expectation.
“If Patrick was coming into our club team and we’d no other marquee forward you might be expecting him to do this, that, and the other thing but there’s no expectations on him because you have these other players around that can come up trumps on any given day.”
Did O’Sullivan always know his nephew was going to burst onto the scene the way he has?
“100%. I suppose to do it so quickly… He’s going to have ups and downs in his career. There’s going to be days when it might not be as good as it is now. He’s very cognisant of that. It’s not always going to be rosy but you definitely would have seen him in matches over the years performing to such a level, so 100%.”
Not that O’Sullivan is taking any credit for his emergence. “He’s his own man, Patrick. I’ll always be there for him as an uncle whenever he needs it, he knows that too.”
When O’Sullivan is asked if new manager Davy Fitzgerald can lead Waterford to ultimate glory, no doubt Patrick Fitzgerald is part of the equation in a reply referencing the new generation: “Waterford are knocking on the door now with four, five, six years and there’s an abundance of talent coming that if it’s managed right, definitely we can win an All-Ireland with Waterford.”
Fitzgerald may not have been there last year but there is enough sulphur hanging in the air from the other combatants involved in last year’s All-Ireland final, “robbed” by Ballygunner with Harry Ruddle’s stoppage-time goal.
Colin Fennelly said the speech by then Ballygunner joint-captain Barry Coughlan “isn’t something you want to hear”, adding “you want that little bit of respect”.
Coughlan said: “And to Ballyhale, I’m not going to be patronising with ye, you’re going to go down as the best club team ever. Like, literally we robbed it today. I suppose ye have done that to other teams so I suppose it goes around, it comes around. But I mean that with most respect. You’re on the road a long time and hopefully we’ll see ye again next year if ye do get out again.”
Whether Ballyhale were disrespected or are overreaching in search of motivation, O’Sullivan says full respect is always given.
“I didn’t read the comments. No disrespect to the media but they can take things out of context too. I’m not sure what Colin meant or what he said but I do know what Barry said in the context of last year’s speech.
“He was extremely complimentary to Ballyhale. I think he spoke about them as one of the greatest club teams of all time but people tend to misconstrue or take elements out of it.
“We have massive respect for every opponent we play, we have the utmost respect for all teams left in the competition. One thing that has served us really well in the past nine years is the humility we have as a group to disrespect nobody. Every day we go to play we go to turn up, we never disrespect anybody, and we never will. I think that is our line.
“I don’t know the quotes but obviously if you’re on the field after losing an All-Ireland final it is hard to listen to anything – the context of that. You have to empathise with how his experience was too at the time and moment he was experiencing it.”
O’Sullivan isn’t bothered either by the prospect of missing the World Cup final, which clashes with Sunday’s double-header at Croke Park: “There’ll be a lot of people from all four communities that will be there really preferring to be there rather than to watch the World Cup final.”
O’Sullivan works as a performance coach and it was through his contacts that Gerry Hussey and Tony Óg Regan came on board for the last two years.
“Gerry and Tony Óg would be personal friends of mine. I was grateful, I would have been calling them two years ago to ask them to come on board. It’s just really good from the context of we never really approached that area as much, obviously myself dealing with individual players helping them out, but I’m a player; I need to be very cognisant of my role as a player.
“They would have brought that little bit of extra belief and then they would have obviously brought that professionalism that they would have experienced in their own careers and also from Gerry’s point of view, at elite level. That definitely added to the group.”
No doubt, they now know how best to channel their emotion and shared identity.
The Ballygunner wing-back references the dying letters sent from founder Jimmy McGinn to his dad, which were read out to him as a young man: “I would nearly get emotional speaking about it, talking about the vision of the club and what it meant.
“It’s about an identity and a sense of place. When Mr McGinn came in and founded the club, it wasn’t about All-Ireland clubs at the time. It was about just giving people identity and hope.
“There was no team in our area. They used to call it the dead centre of Waterford because we had the biggest graveyard. He just wanted to give people an identity and that’s where the club came from. Then they started to build on that and build on that.
“Then, over time, the vision transformed into: ‘We want to be the best’.”
On Sunday, they will give their all to defend that honour.