Latecomer Breen is on glory trail
HERE’S one you haven’t heard before. It’s about a Kerry footballer getting ready to run out in an All-Ireland final at Croke Park who hails from Wales. He grew up playing rugby until he was 13 while golf was amongst his other sporting interests. His Welsh mother went to school with celebrated Liverpool forward Ian Rush, the player hailing from the same town of Flint in the north corner of Wales.
He went from kicking a Gaelic football around with his Kerry cousins to taking up the sport properly in his teens after his parents relocated to his father’s native Beaufort in mid-Kerry. He discovered he had the raw athletic ability and love of the game to captain the Kerry Under 21s in 2014 under the watchful eye of Darragh Ó Sé while also enjoying a spell with the Kingdom’s juniors.
Now he prepares to lead out the Beaufort team that takes on Easkey of Sligo in the All-Ireland Club JFC final at GAA headquarters tomorrow afternoon.
It’s not just the Welsh lilt in his voice that tells you Nathan Breen’s story is a unique one.
He’s asked if playing rugby as a kid helped in his transition to Gaelic football after relocating in Ireland. ‘No. None whatsoever,’ he laughs. ‘I remember my first game. I was 13, with the Under 14s. Below in Killorglin. They put me wing-forward. Let me off. It was like a cow being introduced to a field for the first time. I was just running around, not doing anything. I was looking back at my dad, trying to get direction off him every now and again and he would be pointing up and down the field. Sure it was wasted on me for the first few weeks.
‘As soon as I came over I fell in love with the game straight away. If I wasn’t over the field with the U14s — my cousins were playing senior at that stage — I’d be over there standing around, kicking ball. So I was up at the field five or six times a week when I first came over. I’d say after a year I started getting a feel for it. It was a quick transition.’
The Rush connection is another part of a quirky story. ‘My mother went to school with him actually. I had a class photo with him. The closest I got to him was a photo inside in the church.
‘Looking from my room, I was looking across Merseyside, The Wirral. I was just a stone’s throw away. I actually supported Man United. Any time I’d come over on holidays for a few weeks I’d play Gaelic with the cousins. Just around the garden, around my nan’s.’
It was inevitable, he says, that he would line out for the local club, even if he was a latecomer to the game. ‘Anyone named Breen living in Beaufort is expected to represent the club. I lived in Wales until I was 13. Me and my family moved back in 2006. That’s when I started playing football then.
‘I’d seen Kerry games and stuff like that. My dad had me up at the park above at the house in Wales, teaching me how to kick a ball with my hands. It was only that summer I got the full exposure to the game.’
And so here he is, captain of the club on such a milestone day, having found his natural home in the middle of the field. ‘I started, let’s say that first game, I was a wing-forward. I think they soon realised that was beyond me. I was playing corner-back/full-back from 13 up until the last one or two years maybe. Then I was kind of more centre and then this year now is my first year I’ve been playing midfield, it’s been my position all year.
‘I like it now in fairness. When you’re in the full-back line, you’ve one job — just mark your man, that’s it. Whereas when you’re further out the field you can have a bit more of an influence on the game and you can be involved a bit more.’
This is one road to Croke Park less travelled.