DECLAN BOGUE ON HOW AN AMERICAN BAND LEADER DEVELOPED A PASSION FOR ANTRIM HURLING...
LONG after midnight on Sunday, the big jovial Italian-Norwegian figure stood in a bar in the Glens of Antrim, toasting the sunny day, hurling and the success of the locals, Ruairi Óg Cushendall.
John DeNovi first came across hurling in 2015 when — and I promise you, no kidding — he was brought over to demonstrate to the Artane Boys Band how to turn right.
Up until then, the band had always marched anti-clockwise. There was no requirement to turn right. But you know that impressive feat American marching bands do by threading lines of musicians through each other? That’s where John, with his experience as a senior director of Drum Corps International, comes in.
He was over a number of times throughout 2016 and one of his visits coincided with Ruairi Óg Cushendall’s appearance in the All-Ireland club final. They were beaten by Limerick’s Na Piarsaigh, but on another trip (DeNovi is the proprietor if DSM Sports Marketing, an international sports agency — he takes a lot of trips) to the Glens he meandered into the village and began discussing hurling. The locals took to him as well as he took to them.
Since then, he has formed the Tampa Bay Hurling Club. He sponsors the jerseys himself and plays goalkeeper.
His connections secured them a slot on WFLA News Channel, where the news anchors Jerry Penacoli and Cyndi Edwards explained what ‘hurling’ was with DeNovi sporting his Antrim goalkeeper’s jersey.
“I am Italian/Norwegian but I sort of adopted myself to county Antrim and I follow all the club scene and also the county. I would say I am a Cushendall fan,” he said.
He’s learning fast. When he came over for Sunday’s final, he brought a number of items to be donated for the Antrim county board’s ‘Saffron Aid’ which donates Christmas gifts to the more needy among us.
Exotic creatures will always be a study of fascination in rural communities. On Sunday night at Sambo McNaughton’s Lurig Bar, there were two that might as well have been half-man, half peacock in full plumage, with DeNovi battling for elbowing space at the counter with Buff Egan, the world’s very first GAA Snapchat sensation with a love of Antrim hurling deep enough to see him getting to the north coast from Kerry for this final.
In a way, Sunday’s final shows both how vast and how small hurling’s reach is. Here you had two teams 15 miles from each other acting out age-old battles.
As Neil McManus, Sunday’s man of the match noted in these pages on Saturday: “Years and years ago people were fighting over these lands for Clanns, and you represented your Clann in battle. This is the latest version of that.”
That theme was strong in Ballycastle on Sunday. For the first time ever I experienced a crowd that were voluntarily segregated at a GAA match, Loughgiel fans on our end with the old-school lorry container as press-box, Cushendall the far side framed underneath a glorious view of Fair Head on a clear, sunny day.
It made for a unique atmosphere. Fans on either side felt freer to offer, ahem, ‘judgements’ on opposing players, and when the Cushendall goals went in, there was a deathly silence at our end.
Afterwards, as the Ruairi Ógs hugged and whooped and beamed, you could pick out all the characters of that town and that club. There was John ‘Smoky’ McKillop who, while he managed the club to an All-Ireland final, never allowed his ego to play tricks on him.
The other John McKillop, the team’s mascot. Zippy the kitman and general fixer.
Sambo McNaughton himself. His son Shane, home from New York and his acting career, who told me before the game that he had been down to the gym that morning for a stretching session with Neil McManus and felt the loss of this way of life bite hard.
Sunday was one of those life-affirming days. County finals frequently are but if one thing struck home, it was to wonder how Antrim can have such a vibrant hurling championship, while other counties, especially in Ulster, have virtually no hurling identity whatsoever?
We’ve gone into the reasons before, but surely there is a future GAA president that might actually take a look at the state of hurling north of the Galway-Dublin line and decide to tackle it meaningfully.
There is a tendency to look down on Antrim, with the county hurlers struggling outside the top tier, the footballers marooned in Division Four, some city clubs struggling and Casement Park rotting away.
They have plenty going for them. An approachable, professional county board with a social conscious as displayed by the admirable ‘Saffron Shoebox’ appeal, along with plans and funding in place to rejuvenate GAA across the city of Belfast.
Probably most importantly, they have a rich identity as a truly dual county, with people making trans-Atlantic trips to see their showpiece day.
How many can boast that?