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at, Aug 01, 1998
Tipperary's finest will no longer settle for second
Tom Humphries on how being a gifted footballer caught in a hurling
county inspires Declan Browne
You come to Declan Browne with handfuls of sympathy, identifying
tenderly with his plight: a footballer trapped in a hurlers' county, a
man living in constant fear of pogroms from the stickmen in the North
Riding. And you find him whistling dixie. Life is sweet when you are on
top of your game.
The statistics show the altitude he has attained in three of
Tipperary's truncated summers. A fresh-faced introduction to the big
time in the summer of 1996 yielded no joy, Kerry reaped them for the
threshing. Last summer they operated at their own level and Browne
began to find himself. Seven points from the first game with Limerick,
two the next day, and then 1-1 in the provincial semi-final with Kerry.
A goal and a point taken from Seamus Moynihan's pocket that is.
And this summer, what for Tipperary footballers is an epic sequence.
Beat Limerick and Browne scored 1-6. Beat Waterford and Browne scored 0-
9. Beat Clare and Browne scored 1-7. They face Kerry tomorrow and you
offer Browne sympathy. No time for it. Last summer's experience with
Kerry left him scalded. Eight points down early in the second half,
Browne scored a goal in the 44th minute which nudged them towards
heroics. The design of it was a precursor to inspiration. Derry Foley
lobbing a ball from the midfield chaos, the arc taking it over the head
of a frazzled Moynihan and into Browne's arms from whence it was
skidded to the far corner of the net. By the 60th minute Tipperary were
in front and laptops sizzled with news of the Titanic sinking.
"We died, though," says Browne, and his voice has no sediment of
resignation at the bottom. He's not born to subservience in football's
old order. Sympathy is for losers and old timers.
"But it showed people what we were up to. I was very disappointed after
last year. For years people in Tipp would have said it's great just to
run Kerry close. Those days are gone, but we have nothing to prove it
and that's what is sickening. Nobody remembers losers. Kerry are still
Munster and All-Ireland champions.
"After that, though, it was just heads down for us. Sickening to break
up like that for two or three months till we got back into it."
They trooped off with sagging hearts and buzzing heads, absorbed the
cool, tear-stained silence of their dressing-room and made quiet vows.
"We never sat and looked back at it. When we left the dressing-room it
was dead and buried. Over the 70 minutes maybe the fitness failed us in
the end. We busted ourselves coming back at them and we had nothing in
the tank at the end." So this week the memories of it have floated back
into his thoughts. There is a cruel circumstance being one of the
country's best young footballers, but being hemmed into the southern
precinct of a county obsessed with another game. It must be a
temptation to look at the broths in the green and gold and envy them
their ease with their people's affections.
"Ah, you'd notice alright that in Tipp the hurlers get great attention.
This week now we'd enjoy the bit of hype, having the spotlight on us
for a change. We play second fiddle, though, even if it is a Munster
final. There's plenty of support for the hurling. I play hurling myself
and I'd notice how it gets the attention. With the football team we'd
have two or three odd thousand at the match. The hurlers get a lot in
sponsorship and have everything provided. We're not too bad this year,
but it's all fundraising. A golf classic last Friday and selling
tickets and all that. It's a struggle to keep the footballers on the
road, but there's a great buzz this year and you'd enjoy it all the
more."
The hurling faith is a little arrogant in its expression. It nettles in
the south of the county that whenever the Tipperary footballers are in
action the hurling disciples of the north don't even bother with the
genuflection of postponing fixtures. Hurling continues unabated and if
the football team were to shave their heads and dance naked across the
field at some wintery league game it wouldn't alter the north's view of
their eccentricity.
In Moyle Rovers, where Declan Browne was moulded and made, there is
still the rankling memory of the time a few years ago when the club
were just breaking through and were scheduled to play one of the
north's two football teams in a county quarter-final.
The north being lunatic hurling people who only turn their attentions
to football when they have to, Moyle didn't want to risk the potential
humiliation of being beaten by a team of super-fit hurlers, so they
kept Derry Foley home from a family holiday.
The club from the north didn't bother to turn up.
Moyle Rovers grew to some greatness regardless, winning the county
title in 1995 and 1996, beating old rivals Clonmel Commercials both
times. Browne played in goal the first year, pushing Tipperary's
reserve goalkeeper tomorrow, Seamus Delahunty, into an outfield role.
The forging of that piece of club history ensured Browne's undying
loyalty to the club and everyone concerned speaks of his exemplary
devotion to the colours.
In the club they remember him banging a sliotar against the gable wall
as often as he would have kicked a football. He won a minor hurling All-
Ireland with the county in 1996 and is hurling with the under-21s this
summer. He keeps word of his preference writ large, however, just in
case the hurlers come to kidnap him, but there is a quiet hope around
the place that one of these days the senior hurling selectors are going
to elevate him from the county intermediate side. And maybe they'll be
coming looking for the use of a footballer some Sunday.
"It'd be half a joke around the place, but fellas would say to you,
`would you not give up the football, concentrate on the hurling'. You'd
get a bit of slagging about transferring to a hurling club altogether
and getting your priorities right. I'm a footballer, though. I've been
with Moyle Rovers since I saw nine years old and growing up we'd have
gone to see the Tipp footballers play as much as we'd see the hurlers.
Fellas like John Owens and Peter Lambert would have been my heroes.
I've always preferred the football, that's what I was reared to."
Beneath the foliage of hurling hopefuls, there exist a little subworld
of footballers. Browne played on the Tipperary minor team which caused
small ripples in the Munster pond when they won the provincial title in
1995.
They came on stream at under-21 level this summer and reached the
Munster final, giving up some sucker punches to Kerry early on in the
game and never quite recovering. Still the players are percolating
through slowly.
"This Sunday is vital for us," says Browne. "It's a long time since
Tipperary played football in August. There is potential there."
The funnelling of his attentions and abilities to this point in time
has provided a welcome narrowing of focus. He began the year eligible
for 14 teams between club, county and college (Waterford Institute of
Technology, where he studies Recreation and Leisure management).
"During the winter I'd make the trip up from college in Waterford once
a week, maybe a bit more, but I wouldn't do that much with the team. It
was just to be there."
When Colm Browne, the Laoisman who teaches PE in the Garda College in
Templemore, arrived in the Tipperary football job last summer to
succeed Paddy Morrissey he set out the tasks he expected the team to
complete.
League promotion and a Munster final. Over 150 training sessions later
and . . . "We're nearly there. We might have said at the start of the
year, like Clare, that we could reach the Munster final. Now we are
there we think we can win it. We know what we are up against. Everyone
knows that Kerry will put you away, our aim is to stick with them for
15 or 20 minutes.
"In under-21 we were three goals down after 15 minutes and it's a
losing battle. We'll give it a good shot if we are there or thereabouts
at half-time.
"We are fitter this year, we are playing the ball better, finding men
easier, good camaraderie. Limerick, Waterford and Clare have been three
tough championship games for Tipp. As long as we have progressed we
have felt we could get better."
Through it all Browne does those same things, progressing and getting
better.
In Moyle Rovers, they expected it to be so. He comes from sound
footballing stock on both sides of the family, the Lonergans and the
Brownes all played well. Since he came to the club as a kid he has been
under the wing of Mick McCarthy, who spotted the talent and kept it
simmering when others were boiling over and wasting away.
This week the flags are out in south Tipperary. Moyle Rovers are
looking forward to tomorrow and then Sunday week when they play the
south Tipperary semi-final. And in every summer camp and every coaching
course, meanwhile, Declan Browne is the idol, the poster boy.
A genuine star. One of the things Tipperary football has needed. They
go in search of the other tomorrow.