Cahir Healy: I am a Hurler

By Brian Murphy, GAA.ie

When Cahir Healy was a young lad growing up in Portlaoise, he was naturally drawn to a hurl and sliotar. When he played in his back garden he imagined himself winning the Liam MacCarthy Cup rather than Sam Maguire with Laois.

For a long time, Cahir Healy fought his instincts. In 2011 and 2012, when he lived and worked as a teacher in London and commuted home every weekend to play football with Laois and Portlaoise, he didn't have the time to give the back wall a hammering. The hurl and sliotar gathered dust in the shed.

Back in March, Cahir Healy had a decision to make on his future. After landing a job in Emo National School the previous September, the nightmare commutes home from London were over but another headache had replaced it. He had committed to playing inter-county football and hurling with Laois for the year, just as he had done in 2010, but after just a few months it was already taking its toll.

He struggled to manage both and it was his hurling that suffered the most. In March, after just three rounds of the Allianz League, he told Laois football manager Justin McNulty he was leaving the squad to devote his full attention to hurling.

Although his Wikipedia page still reads: 'Cahir Healy (Gaelic Footballer)', Cahir Healy is a hurler. The game he loves won out.

"My main thing was that I'm 26 now and I felt that in the first few rounds of the league in hurling and football I was going between the two of them and I was going nowhere with them," he tells GAA.ie.

"I wasn't happy with my form in either and it came to the point where if I could only be a good hurler or a good footballer I would prefer to be a good hurler. And that's as simple as it was.

"I did it (played both codes) in 2010 and I got on OK. I wasn't spectacular at the hurling and I wasn't spectacular at the football. But during the league with both teams this year I felt I was struggling with both.

"It was as much mentally as physically. The physical demands were fine, but the mental thing of thinking hurling one day and football the next day...I wasn't fully focused on one or the other.

"When I was growing up, hurling was always my game. If I went out in the sunshine I always brought the hurl and the sliothar; it was never the football I brought with me.

"That was my sole reason. I thought, 'I'm 26 now and I want to focus on hurling and see how good a hurler I can be'."

Lots of Laois people would love to see just how good a footballer he could be. Cahir Healy the footballer played in an All-Ireland quarter-final against Dublin in Croke Park last September. He did such a good job shadowing Bernard Brogan, Dublin's marquee forward was taken off eight minutes from the end, finally worn down by his tenacious marker.

Healy was arguably Laois's best player last season and many rated him as one of the best corner backs in the entire 2012 championship. Football has been good to him. He won an All-Ireland minor title with Laois in 2003 and Leinster U21 titles in 2006 and 2007. Throw in seven county and two Leinster titles with Portlaoise and that's quite a collection.

And yet he gave all of that up to rejoin a hurling team that had been beaten by Limerick by 25 points in the Qualifiers last summer and competed in Division IIA of the Allianz Hurling League in the spring.

As it happens, Laois won the Division IIA title, have since beaten Antrim and Carlow in the Leinster Championship and have a crack at Galway in the provincial semi-final on Sunday. Healy was in Croke Park on Monday to pick up the GAA/GPA Player of the month award for his outstanding form in those games. But none of that matters to the decision he made before any of it seemed possible.

"It was a personal decision. If we hadn't beaten Antrim I would have been disappointed but I would have got up the next morning the same as always," Healy continues. "I would have focused on the Qualifiers but luckily enough we got those wins and we're where we are so we are really excited about playing Galway.

"But I never felt pressure to win to justify the decision. My parents were a bit surprised more for the fact that I was actually not going to play with a Laois team because I always wanted to play with Laois at whatever age I was.

"I think everyone that knew me knew that I made the decision for the right reason - to reach my potential - and I think everyone understood that, and the lads on the football panel understood that."

Given what he's already put in to Laois football, few would deny him. For two years while living in London he travelled home to Portlaoise most weekends to play for the county. He trained on his own during the winter months and later linked up with the London footballers for group sessions during the week before flying home for games. It was a punishing routine.

"You'd leave work on a Friday, head straight to the airport and you might get home on Friday night at half 11 or 12 o'clock," he recalls. "Then after the match on the Sunday the lads would go for a few pints and I'd be racing off to the airport. You'd arrive back in London and get into bed at around 12 o'clock.

"It was tough, but I got used to it to be honest. I never really thought about packing it in. At the end of my first year there, I thought I might play with London, but I couldn't leave my club and county.

"I didn't regret going home or I never got bitter about it because I wanted to play with Laois so if I wanted to play with Laois I had to put in the hours and fly.

"But it started to wear on me. Two years of it started to wear on me and I made the decision to come home. I miss London because it's a great city but I have a great job now in Emo National School just outside Portlaoise. I'm very lucky to have it to be honest."

Healy's story is one of selfless dedication to his passion and to his county. He'd love to continue playing both codes for Laois but when he thinks about what Wexford's dual player Lee Chin did over the weekend, playing two championship games in less than 24 hours, it simply crystalises his belief that he could never have gone on like that.

"I have huge respect for him because he has such a positive attitude towards doing it. It's not easy playing Saturday night and then the next day at three o'clock. That's two games in a day," says Healy.

"I would imagine that most inter-county players who play a match on a Sunday would still be feeling the effects on Tuesday - that bit sore and tired in the legs. It's amazing.

"I did it in 2010. We lost to Carlow in the hurling on Saturday night and then lost to Tipperary in the football on a Sunday.

"I was fairly tired, but from the mental point of view I found it a bit tough. I look back now and think, 'Was I really fully focused on the hurling game on Saturday when I had a football game on the Sunday?'

"There's that mental strength that you need to have as well and he (Chin) looks like he has it. He had two good games and fair play to him.

"Physically, I was wrecked. You really are just drained. I don't think I did myself justice, though, and I don't think I played well in either of the games."

It's not something he has to worry about any more and it's probably time to update the Wikipedia page. Cahir Healy is a hurler.

Cahir Healy was speaking to GAA.ie at Croke Park on Monday where he was presented with his GAA/GPA Player of the Month Award, sponsored by Opel, for May.