IF THE BEST sports programmes show you how high the highs are, and how low the lows might get, then the Laochra Gael programme on former Armagh player Ronan Clarke ranks among the best produced by Nemeton.
Clarke was a mere teenager when he came into the Armagh team, flung into the deep end by Joe Kernan in 2002 after an injury to Tony Kernan.
As he explained himself, he, ‘didn’t have time’ to get nervous. But soon he was roasting a full-back as experienced and hard-bitten as Tyrone’s Chris Lawn in front of a packed Clones.
And by the summer’s end, he had got the better of Paddy Christie and Seamus Moynihan on his way to Armagh’s first All-Ireland, while being voted the Young Footballer of the Year.
Further success followed. But when most think of Ronan Clarke’s career, inevitably the crushing disappointment of severe injuries come to mind. The snapped Achilles, the ruptured cruciates, the accident when he collided with the goalpost that left him in a coma.
But Clarke has always been an incredibly warm person. The love and connection he has with his father Adrian, his mother Anne, his wife Michelle, their children, her brother David, his numerous brothers and sisters and the people of his area around Armagh is so genuine as to be almost old-fashioned.
“He was gentle, loving and could stand up for himself as well,” says his mother, Anne.
"Thosaigh sé amach mar ghasúir óg, agus críochnaigh sé suas mar chinnire" 💪
Bí linn an Déardaoin seo do Laochra Gael Ronan Clarke ar @TG4TV 🏐
Asked why he did the programme, he said it was for his three children.
“It’s not all doom and gloom!” he laughs.
Clarke laughs easily, even though his career and the frustrations with it led him into a slough of depression.
“It was to show them I was capable of playing at the highest level and they are 7, 5 and 3 now.
“The boy at 7, he is asking questions already, he talks about boys who say, ‘Your dad used to play for Armagh.’ Which puts a smile on your face.
“He asked if I was a goalkeeper so I had to cut him off!”
An All-Ireland title, five Ulster titles, and a national league was his haul for Armagh. With Pearse Óg, they were the side to finally break Crossmaglen’s utter dominance in Armagh domestic football when they struck for a county title in 2009.
But injuries were never far away.
At the final whistle of the 2002 All-Ireland final. INPHO
INPHO
His two Achilles will always give him pain, even more acute in the winter months. His knee with the cruciate, his groins and his back, almost everything aches from time to time.
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“But would I go back and change it?” he asks.
“No.
“I wouldn’t be able to run there much, but people would probably say you couldn’t run too far anyway! It’s just by really hard joint pain, and I know it’s tough sometimes, like, you can’t do things that you normally would have done, when you’re a bit younger, but we just have to move on from that now.”
He meets his depression head on. He was struggling with yet another injury in 2007, his identity was being robbed from him and he felt a crushing loneliness. Eventually, he said it to his father, and they planned a way forward. He received a diagnosis.
“It just doesn’t go away, it’s a day-to-day thing, you just have to keep working on it, and you’ve got different coping mechanisms,” he says.
“Exercise is one of the things, so I do a lot of swimming, take the weight off the joints. It’s a day-to-day thing, and people will tell you it just doesn’t go away.
“I’m not on medication anymore for it, I just try and keep myself healthy. I try and keep myself, active as possible.
“There were dark days where I was lying up for three months, with a plaster of Paris on, where you couldn’t move, and you need to go somewhere. I’d be one of those persons not asking for help, or ringing someone, ‘will you go to the shop for me, will you do this here for me?’
“And that was mentally draining for me, and obviously the pain too, but I just learned from those days, and hopefully other people take it on board, and learn from it also.”
There’s a wider element to this too. For many years, his working life was adjacent to his sporting endeavours. He was a personal trainer operating out of the club gym at Pearse Óg.
On certain days of the week, he was working with clients of his old team mate Enda McNulty, with McNulty Performance.
But there had been an itch there to do something different. And so, he is studying to pivot into social work through the University of Magee in Derry.
The lessons he learned, how people treated him, he wants to put into practice.
“That stigma was there with mental health at that time, and I was talking to plenty of people at that time and they looked at it and more or less frowned upon it,” Clarke said.
“But now, it’s more or less out in the open and a lot of people have come out about it and it does exist among us all. Hopefully, it just carries some people through.
“At that time, I came out and said about it, and I just felt a whole weight off my shoulders. Especially for Dr. Frances O’Hagan, who helped me a lot through that time.
“She says ‘there’s medication here,’ and yes, I went on medication for a while but after I weaned myself off it, I noticed things like exercise and eating right and all that there would help me, so I’m very grateful for her.”
The following year, of 2008, he was back in the orange of Armagh, they won the Ulster title – their last provincial title – and he finished that season with his second All-Star.
But more injuries arrived. He had an ankle operation in Sweden that prompted his mother to ask if his body had had enough, especially with the number of injections he was receiving and she was worrying about.
With Kieran Hughes after Pearse Óg won the county title in 2009. Presseye / Mark Pearce/INPHO
Presseye / Mark Pearce/INPHO / Mark Pearce/INPHO
But the evening in the Athletic Grounds finished everything. He was playing in the county quarter-final against Maghery when he went up for a ball between goalkeeper and full-back.
He collided with the goalpost. He played on, togged out and started on the walk home before he decided to call his brother Ross to lift him. By the time Ross got there, Ronan was getting sick. He was brought to hospital and spent four days in a coma.
When he came back round, Anne asked him to promise her he wouldn’t play again.
“So I just said, ‘right, when you promise your mother something, you have to do it.’”
What you recognise from the footage was that Clarke was the last of a dying breed of high-ball winning full-forwards. The era of football was, in hindsight, a picture of beauty. His scores were frequently the result of a long ball from an Aidan O’Rourke or a Kieran McGeeney, flighted diagonally.
Manager Joe Kernan used to tell the joke, somewhat in jest, that it was their Plan A; and Plan B.
Clarke’s great asset was his ability to field the ball and use his strength to get turned fast. Once he straightened up, he could lace the football over the bar with his left or right foot.
It was an era when athletic beauty married with the physical potential of Gaelic football and we didn’t know what we had.
Last summer, Clarke watched on as a new set of kings were crowned as Armagh All-Ireland champions.
He likes it that way. He’s been coaching Armagh ladies teams and various club teams around the place and he’s delighted that the younger generation now have some fresh heroes that they can watch in the flesh.
There is no room for bitterness.
“I said to myself a long time ago that, if you look back on what I’ve achieved in a short period of time, I’m happy with what I achieved,” he says.
“People play football for a lifetime and it’s not about individuals, or individual awards. I got an All-Ireland, I got Ulster titles, I got leagues, and people go searching for that and even at the start of their careers, in the hope that they get something like that done, even one Ulster or a National League or an All-Ireland.”
His footballing life is boxed off. Now he moves on with everything else.
“I applied for social work about 15 years ago and got a place in Belfast in Queens,” he reveals.
“But the way my life was going at that time, I was concentrating so much on football and coaching and whatever I was doing at that time I just put it to the back burner.
“Then with all these life lessons I’ve learned over the years, I decided I could give something back here. I applied to Magee College up in Derry and thankfully they accepted me. It’s been brilliant.
“At the minute I don’t know what sector I’m going to go into. I know I’m not going to change the world or anything like that. But if I can change two or three people’s outlook on life in a year, you’d be doing something.”
*****
Laochra Gael’s episode on Ronan Clarke screens on TG4 at 9.30pm tomorrow night, Thursday 13 February.
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'When you promise your mother something, you have to do it' - Armagh star Clarke on walking away
IF THE BEST sports programmes show you how high the highs are, and how low the lows might get, then the Laochra Gael programme on former Armagh player Ronan Clarke ranks among the best produced by Nemeton.
Clarke was a mere teenager when he came into the Armagh team, flung into the deep end by Joe Kernan in 2002 after an injury to Tony Kernan.
As he explained himself, he, ‘didn’t have time’ to get nervous. But soon he was roasting a full-back as experienced and hard-bitten as Tyrone’s Chris Lawn in front of a packed Clones.
And by the summer’s end, he had got the better of Paddy Christie and Seamus Moynihan on his way to Armagh’s first All-Ireland, while being voted the Young Footballer of the Year.
Further success followed. But when most think of Ronan Clarke’s career, inevitably the crushing disappointment of severe injuries come to mind. The snapped Achilles, the ruptured cruciates, the accident when he collided with the goalpost that left him in a coma.
But Clarke has always been an incredibly warm person. The love and connection he has with his father Adrian, his mother Anne, his wife Michelle, their children, her brother David, his numerous brothers and sisters and the people of his area around Armagh is so genuine as to be almost old-fashioned.
“He was gentle, loving and could stand up for himself as well,” says his mother, Anne.
Asked why he did the programme, he said it was for his three children.
“It’s not all doom and gloom!” he laughs.
Clarke laughs easily, even though his career and the frustrations with it led him into a slough of depression.
“It was to show them I was capable of playing at the highest level and they are 7, 5 and 3 now.
“The boy at 7, he is asking questions already, he talks about boys who say, ‘Your dad used to play for Armagh.’ Which puts a smile on your face.
“He asked if I was a goalkeeper so I had to cut him off!”
An All-Ireland title, five Ulster titles, and a national league was his haul for Armagh. With Pearse Óg, they were the side to finally break Crossmaglen’s utter dominance in Armagh domestic football when they struck for a county title in 2009.
But injuries were never far away.
His two Achilles will always give him pain, even more acute in the winter months. His knee with the cruciate, his groins and his back, almost everything aches from time to time.
“But would I go back and change it?” he asks.
“No.
“I wouldn’t be able to run there much, but people would probably say you couldn’t run too far anyway! It’s just by really hard joint pain, and I know it’s tough sometimes, like, you can’t do things that you normally would have done, when you’re a bit younger, but we just have to move on from that now.”
He meets his depression head on. He was struggling with yet another injury in 2007, his identity was being robbed from him and he felt a crushing loneliness. Eventually, he said it to his father, and they planned a way forward. He received a diagnosis.
“It just doesn’t go away, it’s a day-to-day thing, you just have to keep working on it, and you’ve got different coping mechanisms,” he says.
“Exercise is one of the things, so I do a lot of swimming, take the weight off the joints. It’s a day-to-day thing, and people will tell you it just doesn’t go away.
“I’m not on medication anymore for it, I just try and keep myself healthy. I try and keep myself, active as possible.
“There were dark days where I was lying up for three months, with a plaster of Paris on, where you couldn’t move, and you need to go somewhere. I’d be one of those persons not asking for help, or ringing someone, ‘will you go to the shop for me, will you do this here for me?’
“And that was mentally draining for me, and obviously the pain too, but I just learned from those days, and hopefully other people take it on board, and learn from it also.”
There’s a wider element to this too. For many years, his working life was adjacent to his sporting endeavours. He was a personal trainer operating out of the club gym at Pearse Óg.
On certain days of the week, he was working with clients of his old team mate Enda McNulty, with McNulty Performance.
But there had been an itch there to do something different. And so, he is studying to pivot into social work through the University of Magee in Derry.
The lessons he learned, how people treated him, he wants to put into practice.
“But now, it’s more or less out in the open and a lot of people have come out about it and it does exist among us all. Hopefully, it just carries some people through.
“At that time, I came out and said about it, and I just felt a whole weight off my shoulders. Especially for Dr. Frances O’Hagan, who helped me a lot through that time.
“She says ‘there’s medication here,’ and yes, I went on medication for a while but after I weaned myself off it, I noticed things like exercise and eating right and all that there would help me, so I’m very grateful for her.”
The following year, of 2008, he was back in the orange of Armagh, they won the Ulster title – their last provincial title – and he finished that season with his second All-Star.
But more injuries arrived. He had an ankle operation in Sweden that prompted his mother to ask if his body had had enough, especially with the number of injections he was receiving and she was worrying about.
But the evening in the Athletic Grounds finished everything. He was playing in the county quarter-final against Maghery when he went up for a ball between goalkeeper and full-back.
He collided with the goalpost. He played on, togged out and started on the walk home before he decided to call his brother Ross to lift him. By the time Ross got there, Ronan was getting sick. He was brought to hospital and spent four days in a coma.
When he came back round, Anne asked him to promise her he wouldn’t play again.
“So I just said, ‘right, when you promise your mother something, you have to do it.’”
What you recognise from the footage was that Clarke was the last of a dying breed of high-ball winning full-forwards. The era of football was, in hindsight, a picture of beauty. His scores were frequently the result of a long ball from an Aidan O’Rourke or a Kieran McGeeney, flighted diagonally.
Manager Joe Kernan used to tell the joke, somewhat in jest, that it was their Plan A; and Plan B.
Clarke’s great asset was his ability to field the ball and use his strength to get turned fast. Once he straightened up, he could lace the football over the bar with his left or right foot.
It was an era when athletic beauty married with the physical potential of Gaelic football and we didn’t know what we had.
Last summer, Clarke watched on as a new set of kings were crowned as Armagh All-Ireland champions.
He likes it that way. He’s been coaching Armagh ladies teams and various club teams around the place and he’s delighted that the younger generation now have some fresh heroes that they can watch in the flesh.
There is no room for bitterness.
“I said to myself a long time ago that, if you look back on what I’ve achieved in a short period of time, I’m happy with what I achieved,” he says.
His footballing life is boxed off. Now he moves on with everything else.
“I applied for social work about 15 years ago and got a place in Belfast in Queens,” he reveals.
“But the way my life was going at that time, I was concentrating so much on football and coaching and whatever I was doing at that time I just put it to the back burner.
“Then with all these life lessons I’ve learned over the years, I decided I could give something back here. I applied to Magee College up in Derry and thankfully they accepted me. It’s been brilliant.
“At the minute I don’t know what sector I’m going to go into. I know I’m not going to change the world or anything like that. But if I can change two or three people’s outlook on life in a year, you’d be doing something.”
*****
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GAA Gaelic Football Laochra Gael Ronan Clarke