Pakie Ryan's line points the way for Upperchurch-Drombane

By John Harrington

Pakie Ryan has been in the thoughts of many people from Upperchurch-Drombane these past few weeks, me included.

He passed away nine years ago, but his natural charisma and passion for ‘The Church’ still burns brightly in the mind’s eye.

Were he still around today, just how exhilarated would he have been to watch his beloved club win the Tipperary and Munster Premier Intermediate hurling championships with his three grandsons Gavin, Keith, and Aaron playing starring roles?

And what sort of fever pitch would his anticipation be at right now ahead of Sunday’s AIB All-Ireland Intermediate semi-final against Danesfort with the prize of a final in Croke Park on offer?

No better people to ask than his own.

On a wet, blustery evening in the Slieve Felim hills the welcome is warm when my father PJ, a good friend of Pakie’s, and I sit down with two generations of Ryan men – Pakie’s sons Gerry and Michael and his grandsons Gavin, Keith, and Aaron.

The consensus is as expected. Were Pakie also able to join us his excitement about the weekend to come would likely power the national grid.

“He would be just uncontrollable at this point,” declares Gerry emphatically.

“I'd say he'd have to be sedated! That's a fact!

“What the boys have achieved and how Pakie felt about the club in the first instance and how he felt about these three boys in the second instance...he would be just uncontrollable.

“I can well imagine the pride he’d be feeling right now.”

Pakie was a very talented sportsman in his own day. He won a couple of cross-country All-Irelands with Moyne AC and was an athletic, skilful hurler who played in the middle of the pitch for Upperchurch-Drombane into his 40s.

When he hung up his hurley he immediately applied himself to coaching and mentoring teams and was especially passionate about nurturing the talent of the next generation.

Whether it was the club juveniles or Scoil Íosogáin National School teams, Pakie could be relied upon to bring at least half of the team in his car to the game.

It’s highly unlikely that any Upperchurch-Drombane man gave more dressing-room speeches than Pakie and it’s for definite that none gave better ones.

All available evidence might point to an imminent defeat, but by the time he was finished his oration he’d have you convinced the other crowd should be a lot more afraid of you than you of them.

He could do this because he believed it totally himself. In Pakie’s mind there was no such thing as an Upperchuch-Drombane team that couldn’t win.

And when you combined this unwavering faith he had in the players with the eloquence with which he spoke about the importance of representing the black and amber jersey with honour, you’d be fit to take the dressing-room door off its hinges on the way out.

There were simply none better than Pakie to help you understand you were representing a lot more than just yourself when you hurled for ‘The Church’.

“He'd often say, 'the black and amber means so much to me',” says his son Michael.

“I suppose when he was growing up himself in Upperchurch they didn't have an awful lot. As the old saying goes, it's the fella who gets everything for nothing who has regard for none of it.

“In Upperchurch they had to strive for everything and there was just a great sense of where they came from.

“And in Upperchurch too everyone is practically related to everyone else, there are all sorts of connections, and I think for Pakie the whole thing merged and became very meaningful to him.

“He saw the black and amber as representing what they all stood for. Their backgrounds, the people belonging to them, the community as a whole.”

Upperchurch-Drombane is a very rural parish of less than 1,500 inhabitants and for much of the club’s history it would have been less successful than most of its neighbours.

The merging of four small national schools into one in 1984 and the establishment of a parish league not long before that which ultimately led to much greater organisation at juvenile level were watershed moments that saw the club raise their standards.

The last 15 or so years have been the most successful in the club’s history thanks to a combination of hard work at underage level, significant development of the club’s facilities, and a nascent culture of ambition and self-belief in both codes at senior level.

For most of Pakie’s life though, Upperchurch-Drombane would traditionally have lost a good deal more than they won.

When that’s the history of your club it can be difficult to believe that things could or should be better, but even in the face of calamitous defeat Pakie had an extraordinary ability to remain optimistic. When others hung their heads, he would keep looking to the stars.

“The whole year could come thundering down around us and Pakie would be disgusted but, sure enough, by the time you were eating your egg the following morning he'd have figured out a positive,” says Gerry Ryan.

“That maybe it wasn't our time yet, but that next year would be the precise year to make an attack on it.

“He'd have figured out overnight that there was a silver lining to this. Whereas everyone else was still fit to jump in the river the following day.

“At the start of every year he was 100 per cent convinced we were going to be county champions. Now, we were never even able to win the Mid-Tipp championship, but that didn't stop him from aiming high.”

Pakie was a hurling man and a people person. You combine the two and you’re left with one of the most prodigious talkers of hurling in the county.

Every encounter was an opportunity to share or seek a nugget of information about this game or that hurler.

Even Sunday mass wasn’t off limits. Pakie would sit in the last pew on the right in church and when my father would walk around with the collection baskets he’d be grabbed by the sleeve and asked for a quick assessment of how he felt ‘the boys’ were hurling before he’d be let on his way again.

On match-days or even just training nights in Drombane his usual station was outside a dressing-room door where if he wasn’t already surrounded by a halo of smoke from his pipe he’d be thumbing the tobacco in place.

This was the perfect spot to greet everyone as they came and went and offer encouragement. You might have two left hands and feet of clay, but Pakie would only have good things to say about your hurling ability and any encounter with him made you feel better about yourself.

From the very first day any young lad walked into the pitch, Pakie knew exactly who they were and who they belonged to.

He had an uncanny ability to remember a person’s name and this extended far beyond the parish of Upperchurch-Drombane. Not only would he likely know who you were, he’d know your wife or husband’s name and he would most certainly know if you had a young lad who hurled.

“If you spoke about anyone to Daddy, it could be a complete stranger, the first question you'd be asked would be, 'does he hurl?’ says Michael.

“If you said, ‘he does’, then he’d reply, ‘I must meet that chap sometime so’. That was always the first question, ‘does he hurl?’, and if he did, he was never forgotten.

“If he didn't hurl then Gaelic football was a good second. That's where it ended!”

Pakie’s charisma made him a formidable operator in a committee room. At a time when Upperchurch-Drombane’s fortunes were at a particularly low ebb there was a call by some in the club that it would be better to drop down to Intermediate.

Their argument was that at least we might have an opportunity to rebuild badly eroded morale by winning a few games as an Intermediate club rather than endure what had become a steady diet of often chastening defeats in the senior championship.

At a club convention on the matter my father PJ presented the case for dropping down to Intermediate and by the time he was finished was quietly confident he’d won the room.

But then Pakie stood up and delivered the sort of passionate speech Daniel O’Connell himself would have been proud of as to why we must at all costs preserve the senior status that meant so much to him.

When the votes were tallied Pakie had 42 votes in his favour and my father had just two, one of which was his own.

The idea of voluntarily dropping down to Intermediate would have been anathema to Pakie because he believed to his core that Upperchurch-Drombane should always have the ambition to go toe to toe with the best in the county.

Most people in the parish still can’t quite believe we’ve won a Munster championship, but this would be precisely the sort of level of achievement Pakie would boldly say was well within reach.

He might not be around to see it, but he’s very much a part of it thanks to his grandsons Gavin, Keith, and Aaron who backbone the team.

Keith and Gavin are Gerry’s sons and lock down the centre of the defence with team captain Keith at full-back and Gavin at centre. They’re two very well-rounded hurlers who marry defensive tenacity with great awareness, skill, and superb striking.

Aaron is a dynamic midfielder who consistently drives the team forward with his surging runs and ability to take a score.

All of them have no doubt they wouldn’t be the hurlers they are today were it not for Pakie who encouraged, cajoled, and drilled them from as soon as they could swing a hurley.

“He was definitely a massive influence on all of our careers,” says Keith. “Some of the earliest memories I have of him are bringing myself and Aaron to matches.

“He'd travel the length and breadth of the country just to go an Upperchurch challenge match. It might be in Kilkenny but he'd bring us on and somehow he'd always end up pulling his car nearly onto the side of the field. He'd have the best view in the house no matter where we were.

“Then the whole way home he'd dissect every ball and what this or that lad did and what they should have done. Definitely one thing about him was that he just loved talking about hurling.

“Then when we started playing ourselves he wouldn’t miss a game. We'd come back here and he'd call in for a cup of tea and he'd give us a full postmortem of the whole thing. What you did good and what you did bad.

“I remember one day I was in secondary school and we had a match in the White Cup. I forgot to tell Pakie it was on and then he read about it in the paper or heard it off Dad the following week and he was blackening me for a few days!

“'Why didn't you tell me the match was on?!' He was absolutely raging with me! He'd want to know about every match that was on and who you were playing and who you were up against and what your chances were. I let him down that time and he wasn't too happy!”

Pakie was never shy about giving his grandsons some hurling advice, whether it was sought or not. And if they didn’t take it, he’d double the dose.

“I'd say it was about sixth class myself and Keith were on the U13 team and we were coming up to our very first game,” recalls Aaron. “I was playing midfield and Keith was actually an inside forward back then.

“Pakie used to bring me up to the bus and he'd be telling me that the very first ball I'd get I'd have to hit it straight in to Keith. I did it wrong then during the match, I hit it over Keith's head.

“So, the next three or four times we were down in Dooree hurling out the back of his house he was directing me to hit him in this sort of ball, hit him in that sort of ball.

“There wasn't a day that went by down in the homeplace in Dooree that we weren't hurling outside the back, the three of us playing matches up against the galvanised shed.

“He meant an awful lot to all of us and he drove on Upperchurch with the best of his ability for his whole life. All he ever wanted to do was see Upperchurch do well.

“He just lived and breathed it. There wasn't a day that went by where he wasn't talking about hurling and what he could do for the betterment of the club.

“Whether it was someone five of six years of age starting out or lads who were senior at the time, he just had a great way of interlinking with everyone whether you were a young lad or a well along in your career.”

Pakie never disguised his pride in how the Ryan family tree produced bright blossoms of hurlers.

He backed his sons Gerry and Michael to the hilt and did the same for his nephews John and (former Tipperary hurling manager) Michael.

He was most enthusiastic of all though about the three grandsons whose merits he was never shy about proclaiming.

“I remember I was 17 and I was trying to make a (Tipperary) minor panel,” recalls Gavin. “Pakie used have the job of dropping me in after school and every time he'd pull up he'd nearly pull up right outside the dressing-room.

“Before I'd even get in he'd have spoken to all the selectors about me. I think he might have had a hand in me making that panel. They weren't getting past without getting an earful off him anyway!

“As a teenager you're thinking, 'would you please just drop me at the gate and let me in'! But when you look back at it now you see the funny side of it.

“He was always very encouraging. I'd have good friends like Niall and Ger Grant and Paul Shanahan and they'd tell me back memories about how Pakie had a word for them when they were playing and how much it meant to them.

“He was obviously close to the three of us here but he had a big effect on a lot of young lads that came up through the club. He always had a word for everyone and tried to steer them in the right direction.”

The sight of Pakie making a beeline for one of his grandchildren shortly after a final whistle had blown was a common one. There was no time to waste when it came to unpacking the 60 minutes just passed.

“You'd know in the first few seconds after meeting him whether you played well or you didn't,” smiles Keith. “But he'd always find the positives eventually.

“I remember a few car journeys home when I'd be on the wrong side of it and his assessment wasn't as hectic as you'd like it to be. You'd be replaying the match over with him and he'd be asking you why didn't you do X or Y. But after half an hour he'd find a positive out of somewhere and you'd be all rosy then for another day.

“But you always knew he was fair proud of you. I remember winning a 'B' football championship once and he was the first man onto the field and he'd be celebrating and shaking hands with all the players.

“Even when you didn't win anything he'd always be proud coming onto the field as an Upperchurch man shaking hands with the players and either celebrating with us or commiserating. He was just proud to be there and be involved.

“Even to see the three of us playing together now he'd be absolutely beaming. It wasn't until senior level that the three of us got to play together and, unfortunately, he never got to see that but I've no doubt he was smiling down on us the last day and throughout the whole year.

“There's not a day you go out in an Upperchurch jersey that you don't think of Pakie and you don't think about how he and our fathers got us involved in this. I know he would have been immensely proud of what we've achieved this year and would be immensely proud no matter how the year now ends.”

Michael and Gerry know exactly how proud Pakie would be of his grandsons because they feel the same pride themselves.

The players are taking it game by game and living in the moment, but for the older generations in the parish there’s a keen sense of living through what’s undoubtedly the most significant chapter yet in the history of Upperchurch-Drombane GAA club.

“If you think about it, we're all only ordinary people,” says Gerry. “What will we achieve special in our lives? We'll get married and have kids and all the family stuff will be very special.

“Outside of that, you don't get many chances in your life to do something that's going to be mentioned, read about, or spoken about in 50/60 years’ time. The normal person just doesn't get that chance too often in life.

“Here is one of those times through the medium of hurling for your club that you can actually lay down a mark that someone is going to talk about way into the future.

“That's something fantastic. The boys don't realise it yet and fair enough they can't because they have more important things to worry about right this minute. Their nutrition, their fitness, their mindset. All of that type of stuff is still in the moment at the minute.

“But down the road they'll get married, they'll have kids. And some day they'll all have grandkids. And it's then when they're way down the road and they're looking back on their lives that they'll say, 'Christ almighty, we achieved something unbelievable back then, didn't we?’

“And with the other lads on the panel, there's now a bond between all of those 30 guys forever more. They might be 70 years of age and they'll bump into each other in a pub some night and they might not have seen each other in 10 years and what will they talk about? 2025. Jesus, remember that year!”

If you drive through Upperchurch-Drombane this week you’ll find black and amber flags fluttering everywhere and crossroads emblazoned with messages congratulating the team or exhorting them on to further glories.

It’s always been a tight-knit place but those bonds have been glued closer still by the adventure this team has brought everyone on with them.

“There's a feel-good factor throughout the parish and in the meeting of people,” says Gerry. “I see it over the course of the two weekends that we were celebrating, the county and the Munster.

“I've had conversations with people around the parish I normally wouldn't be talking to at all because I'm just not in their circle. And then suddenly over the course of the two weekends we're buddies now.

“There seems to be a closeness after happening around the parish. People even coming out of Mass will give you a kind of a nod in a different way to ever before.

“Please God, touch wood, on Sunday we can take another step. As a club we have often said wouldn't it be great to see an Upperchurch man with a Tipp jersey on him run onto Croke Park, wouldn't it be some pride.

“Today it just struck me that we’re one more win away from 15 Upperchurch men running on Croke Park with our own jerseies on our backs. Mother of God!”

It’s the sort of unreal prospect that perhaps only Pakie Ryan himself could have confidently predicted could be a possibility for Upperchurch-Drombane.

If he were around today, what would it mean to him?

“When Leitrim won the Connacht football final in 1994 Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh said that there's old Leitrim footballers in heaven today leaning over the bannisters of heaven with tears in their eyes as they look down upon this team,” says Gerry.

“Well, I can assure you that Pakie will be leaning over the bannisters of heaven with big tears of his own if the boys can make the next step.”