How Peter Duggan has got the better of Dyslexia
SAYS PETER DUGGAN
‘You put your head down and work that bit harder, you just go through the hardship’
AS much as Peter Duggan got a buzz out of winning an All-Star last year, the homecoming left an even bigger impression.
After a summer when he charmed the hurling nation (the stand-out moment that ridiculous solo point against Kilkenny in the All-Ireland semi-final), he was left humbled when he was received by his own.
A reception at his old primary school in Clooney and an invite to speak at Ennis National School’s reading unit, served as a reminder that the first battle he fought occurred away from the hurling field.
When he was in third class in Clooney, teacher Fiona de Buitléir saw that he was struggling to stay the educational pace and set out the tests which would reveal the problem.
From there, he left the school next to his house to travel into Ennis National School where a special reading unit exists to assist children with dyslexia.
It was a pivotal moment in his life and it is one that he was happy to revisit last winter when, AllStar in hand, he gave a talk to the kids in that same unit.
As it turned out, he left it with something even more precious than the gong in his hand.
‘I went into the reading class and I was telling them that I didn’t care too much about school back in the day but I regret it now because school is everything,’ says Duggan
‘I was over in London a few weeks after that when I got a text message from my old teacher Fiona telling me that a child in the class, who wouldn’t have been great in school, had improved so much over the three weeks I had been in.
‘She just said “if you’d seen the difference in him now”, and when you hear something like that it is very humbling.
‘Actually, it’d make you want to drive on and do it again and want to get the All-Star again, so you can be brought back into the schools and have a different story for them next year,’ explains Duggan.
The truth, though, is that the original story will stand the test of time. It’s a life lesson, one where the great instruction is that if you commit to something then you will eventually get there.
He has done that on and off the field. By his own reckoning, there have been years when he has given up 50 hours a week to hurling and not had anything to show for it.
That’s why he took such pleasure in winning an All-Star last year, coming half a decade after being part of Davy Fitzgerald’s All-Ireland winning panel.
Off the field, his battle with dyslexia has meant that he also had to dig deep to make ground.
‘I just found that I’d have to concentrate a little bit harder on everything I do,’ he admits.
‘I’ve been in college a long time now; this is my sixth year in LIT swapping and changing courses and I just found with dyslexia that you just have to put your head down a little more and make more of an effort than other people.
‘It takes you a little bit longer to read a sentence and you can get confused when it comes to maths but if you put your mind to it, you’ll still get it, there’s no fear of that.
‘There’s nothing stopping you, it’s literally just about going through the hardship.
‘If I want to win another All-Star this year I have to work as hard as I can to get to that point.
‘It is the exact same as you want to get a Masters and you’re dyslexic, you just have to work like an
absolute dog and you’ll get there.’
His only regret is that while he was always willing to apply himself in hurling, the realisation that he had to put in the hard work in the classroom came slower.
‘The only thing with me was the whole way through school I didn’t care too much and it was only now over the last three years that I’m realising that school is a lot more important that I had thought it was,’ he admits.
‘I’d love to have known that when I was in fourth and fifth year in school and put in a little bit more hard work and realised what I really wanted to do.
‘It’s only now that I’m figuring out what I want to do and I want to be an entrepreneur and start up my own landscaping company but if I’d put my mind into things back then, who knows what I would have done.
‘But that’s the joy of it, you just have to change your mind and see where it goes.’
However, he is certain that dyslexia should not limit an individual’s ambition.
‘Back in the day there would have been talk that “you can’t, sure you’re dyslexic,” but that’s the biggest load of rubbish you will ever hear.
‘There’s nothing that a dyslexic person can’t do that a normal person can do. There’s no real hindrance, it just takes a little bit more time.’