Larry Tompkins opens up on brave battle with cancer

Cork Gaelic football legend, Larry Tompkins, was inducted into the Gaelic Writers Association Hall of Fame, proudly supported by Dalata Hotel Group, at an Awards Dinner at the Clayton Hotel in Ballsbridge last Friday night.

Before the night he sat down to reflect on his great career with the Rebels, and what's been a very tough last 12 months fighting a rare form of lung cancer.

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Larry, you’ve been inducted into the Gaelic Writers Association Hall of Fame. Do you still get a buzz when you get recognised with an award?

It's brilliant, you know what I mean. I suppose you can never replace playing, like it's always the greatest thrill of all like to put on the Cork jersey and wore it like in big days. That's something that you can't replace, but look, it's brilliant to be recognised.

I got into the Croke Park Hall of Fame (in 2019) and do you know what for years I was going up there with my kids and going into the museum and now to just think that I'm in there, it's nice.

You feel like that you're after doing something right anyway. These awards are special and definitely when you get a bit older they're more special.

You've had a tough year, is it nice to have something to celebrate?

Yeah, yeah like a tough year. It'll be nice, my family will be up there because we haven't had really a gathering or going out because I have been so sick there back in the last twelve months, but please God, you know, I'm getting a bit better now and able to get around a bit better.

You’ve been battling cancer for the last year…can you talk to us how that has gone?

I suppose it starts as little things, I suppose, and that's why people should always be wary of maybe a little bit of a niggle or a little bit of a pain somewhere, but you know, I got a little bit of a pain kind of in towards my ribs.

I remember maybe it's going on three years ago now, and it started off like a little annoying little pain and just developed then and maybe after, maybe not seeing anyone, maybe for the guts of nine or ten months then, I went to see a specialist.

Just took time for to realize what I had, because numerous, numerous examinations were done on me, like the camera down the throat and stuff like that, because they were afraid I had worked in asbestos over the years, that my lungs could have been infested with that disease. But luckily enough that wasn't the problem.

And then I was finally gave the all clear maybe there about a year and a half ago and then I wasn't happy with it.

Went back then to the specialist again and he hospitalised me to see could he get to the bottom of it and I suppose from last November when I went into hospital and they discovered then that I had a tumour on the wall of my lung and that my lung was leaking, had a slight leak in it and it was full of fluid.

I was a bit annoyed that it wasn't caught a bit sooner, I had to get another consultant then, I changed over to a thoracic person that he looked after me then, a Limerick man, a good GAA man.

So he had the bad news to tell me then that in January that I had this. I had previously been told that I was clear and then maybe a month later then to be told that I had cancer on the wall of the lung and it was a very rare cancer. Believe it or not, one in five million, I could be the only one in Ireland that might have it.

They had to go research then to London and send all my discs and all my reports then to London, the Brompton Hospital in London, and there was a stage where I thought I'd have to go there for an operation, but they advised for no operation, because it would have been touch and go where the tumour was and the way the lung was.

So I went on radiation treatment during the summer. I got 25 goes of radiation treatment. I'm on immunotherapy tablet now every day and some more tablets for pain relief. I take about eight or nine tablets a day.

But yeah, that's where I'm at the moment. The signs that are positive is that the tumour isn't growing, it's contained, also the positive sign is that the tumour hasn't spread and it's over three years now.

That's even now for the top people in London, I was talking to over on Zoom and they couldn't believe like that my tumour hadn't spread.

They couldn't believe that I've had it for so long and that it hasn't spread, it stayed in one area and hopefully, as I said, we can keep it contained, I'll have to live with it and hopefully I can get another 20 years anyway, please God.

So that's the nuts and bolts really. I'm feeling not too bad. I'm able to do a little bit around the house here. Up to last week I wasn't able to cut the lawn, but I was able to cut the lawn last week when the weather was fine, so that was my first time to cut it since I got sick.

So look, you know, hard times and I spent three months in hospital. There were stages when I just felt that I wasn't going to come through but look, the will and the fight, if you can just stay positive, you know, it's a good thing.

I was in CUH in Cork, I'm near there, I could walk up the road to it, which is great. Really, I suppose I come out in the end of March, beginning of April, so really I have been on this medication since and they have been monitoring me every three months just to see is everything okay.

Most important is that my tumour doesn't spread or doesn't grow. My lung, unfortunately my left lung is, even though it's there, it's dead like. They've tried to revitalise it by, you know, they've done three operations on it to drain the fluid and they tried to see could they reinflate it, but my lung is dead, like it won't reinflate, so my left lung is more or less gone and I'm just operating off my right lung.

So my breathing at times could be a little bit of a problem. I go walking, I do exercise every day, most days, and I have to kind of stay on a flat surface rather than climbing the hills, you know.

So yeah, you know, please God, we're going in the right direction and please God I can continue.

Look, when you get this and you never think you're going to get it, I think in my head I never thought I'd end up someone telling me that I had cancer, I don't know, just it was the way it was.

I suppose I really appreciate of each day then that you get through and you know you enjoy things more. When you see so many people that I was around so sick and so many young people like and even to get this award, it's brilliant.

I can remember back, the great days playing, that time the journalists were different like, the access to players was, you just rang up a player and you got talking to him or whatever. You went in and you might have talked to six or seven inside in training and you know the access was much easier than what it is now.

But equally like you remember all those great friends and people that you played with, I suppose that comes thundering back to you. They were real special days and a special life and I was I was lucky to be part of a very successful team.

Have you gotten a lot of support from the GAA community over the last year?

Yeah, I felt sorry that people were wanting to come in and see me, but when you're so sick, the last thing you want is to try to be in good form when people come in. I wouldn't have been able for it anyway, I was too bad at that stage.

But I had loads of incredible amount of cards, incredible amount of masses said for me and all over the country. It's amazing like how people just come together and even outside of the country I spent time in New York and the people that rang me from New York and Boston and San Francisco, you know, they were just so concerned like. That was nice.

You’ve gone back doing some football coaching over last few years - Bishopstown underage sides and Presentation College school side - your son Jack plays for both.

I went into Pres, as you know it's all rugby. I just tried to go in there and just try to get the GAA going and try and see, get guys playing that might want to play.

We got to a Munster final last year and I know it was section three, but it was a massive step. We were in the Munster semi-final the year before against Kenmare, who had I think five county minors on the team.

Ronan Buckley was over the team there from Kerry and he was telling me they'd five Kerry minors. So look, there's progression made there.

Jack is in his last year in Pres this year, so please God they can keep it going. There's a good fella in there, Enda O'Regan, he's vice-principal, he's from West Cork and hopefully that he can drive it on.

We've had great runs there with the Bishopstown minor team. We won an U18 county there a couple of years ago. We got to two semi-finals at P1 level and beaten by a point like, last kick of the game on both occasions, believe it or not. When your buzz is in something like that, it's hard to get away from it and it's brilliant to go up there to those minors and those young lads and you know they want to be competitive.

They want to go out there and give it their all and they're honest and they want to train and it's brilliant to see the development.

We're just trying to get that culture into the like of Bishopstown and try and grow it, and that's why it was so important there this year, like Brian Cuthbert done a great job, he brought in a load of young fellas there into that senior A team and like you know it was a very progressive year. That'll carry them forward good and they’ll be strong for next year.

Have you enjoyed watching Castlehaven the last couple years winning two Cork titles and one Munster.

The club is everything, it's the heart and soul. Even though I didn't come from Castlehaven, and that's why even the club is more special, because they just accepted me so well and the warmth of people down there is just incredible like and I just fitted it in so well.

My playing days with them, I'll never forget like. Every day I just wore that jersey was such an honour and such a joy and to captain to their first county in '89 and I always believe like it's like anything, you can get a breakthrough and the young people behind it see it and see the emotions and what it can do for a place, they want to do it then.

They want to be part of it then and that's what's happening in the Haven. It's like a rollercoaster really to having no county, to win your first in '89

Now you have seven counties. You just can't imagine like that could have happened, but that's the type of club they are, they're just been amazing the last few years to just go and see them play. I'd be saying to my own young fella like they play with their heart and soul, they wear their heart on their sleeve, no day that they don't go out, they don't give it 100% and that's the way the Haven are. They're just a hell of a club.

Almost 40 years now since sliding doors moment in your football life that ended up with move to Cork

Yeah, it's amazing. I turned one corner and the next minute, my life is somewhere else.

I was very happy in New York, I was playing with Donegal.

I had great friends. I was a carpenter by trade, I had the world at my feet, being a tradesman over there, I was earning good money. There's no reason why I should be coming back to Ireland, the Collins' just have a way of twisting your arm. I got good and friendly with them.

Just decided out of the blue that I hadn't been home for nearly three years at this stage. So we decided one year when they asked me would I go back with them in the summer of '87 and play with Castlehaven and see would they win a county.

My whole life was in Kildare. It was all up in the air. I left on bad terms with them. So it just, it just kind of fitted the glove nicely to just say, look, Jesus, I'll go home for a few months and play with Castlehaven, I'll see my family and then back out to America.

There was never a mention of Cork or playing with Cork or being involved with Cork. I had known Billy Morgan in America and I played against him. He used to play with Leitrim and I played with Donegal, and I would have known him from going down to where he used to work there, himself and Lord of Mercy on him, Brian Mullins, I remember working there one summer behind the bar in Rose O'Grady's down in Manhattan.

So you know, a lot of Irish used to go down there, frequent the Irish pubs and I got to know him that way.

But, as I said, when I came home, it was just to play with Castlehaven. Then the whole thing just turned around fairly rapid, so from just being asked up to a training session with Cork then to be asked onto the panel and then to be playing with Cork. Believe it or not, I played with Cork before I played with Castlehaven. It's hard to believe.

It was a brilliant story because Cork, I admired, you know, some great legends of Cork. When you come to Cork, like, you're surrounded with incredible sportspeople from different sports. You had the great Sonia O'Sullivan like. I used to go down to the Mardyke of a Sunday and I'd see her running and often I jogged around with her on the track. She was like 13 or 14 at that stage, whatever, but little did I think I was running against a world champion and an Olympic champion because I always rated that she was so good. And then, you know, the likes of Roy Keane and Denis Irwin, like, you know, these guys and all the rugby players that have made it, so you're embracing Cork with incredible sportspeople and like coming to Cork to play, looking at the likes of Ray Cummins and Jimmy Barry Murphy and Denis Coughlan and these fellas that played in 1973.

They were legends and I felt really honoured to wear a jersey that they wore. I tried to do my best when I went out there and give it my all, so there were great moments, great memories, and I'll certainly never forget them.