Lured by Cork’s hurlers, Damien knows it will be worth it in the long run
HE COULD vaguely hear Luke O’Farrell shouting something at him and it certainly wasn’t ‘Run Forrest, Run!’
Bar stomping his way clean out of Páirc Uí Chaoimh, Tom Hanks-style, Cork full-back Damien Cahalane couldn’t have made a bigger impact in injury time of the Munster hurling final against Clare.
Whatever he does from now until his time in the No3 shirt ends, that lung-busting run half the length of the field is the sort of eye-catching cameo that could be used in a trailer about Cork hurling.
What was going through his head?
‘Where is the next man I can give the ball to!’ he laughs. ‘That was just about it. Luke [O’Farrell] pinned his ears back to get across me – he said he was roaring at me for about 30 seconds, I don’t know how true that is, but he ended up getting across me. He gave it to Hoggy [Patrick Horgan] and Hoggy did the finishing job.
‘Afterwards, people were saying to me that there was a huge roar from the crowd but you don’t really hear it. Especially, I was under a bit of pressure at the time, thinking “Where is the next man I can give the ball to?” So I wasn’t too worried about the crowd roaring or anything.
‘It’s great to be involved in games like that, have something to look back on. But look, it’s done now. It’s in the past. You’re only as good as your next game – or next run.’
Yet it didn’t just lift the siege, it framed Cork’s summer: bold, exhilarating and daring in equal measure. An act of defiance mentor and selector Diarmuid O’Sullivan would have been proud of. In terms of eye-catching moments fit for YouTube, it’s up there with that famous scene from the 2003 All-Ireland final when O’Sullivan ran through a series of Kilkenny forwards like a giant bowling ball, making sense of the nickname ‘The Rock’. Ball in hand but minus his hurley.
Cahalane is bright and breezy company, of proud stock. His father made the surname fashionable during the late 1980s, another warriortype in the Cork defence that won back-to-back All-Irelands. Football defence, that is.
Damien followed the same path until lured by the calling of the Cork hurlers. There were times when his touch was questioned, his good name undercut by tough days on the field and the steepest of learning curves. It reached a stage that his younger brother Conor saw fit to call out the keyboard warriors for abuse on social media after Cork’s 2015 Munster semi-final defeat by Waterford.
Damien said he let it wash over him. ‘I’d be naturally thick-skinned enough, a bit ignorant maybe! I don’t know if it was stupidity or ignorance that I wasn’t taking in the criticism. I was in it, I made my choice, I was hurling. Committed myself fully to it. Grounded myself in the process of working hard every time at training. Push the lads and if it’s good enough at the end of the day, fair enough. If it’s not, I’m already after getting criticised so it can’t get any worse.
‘I wouldn’t be huge into reading anything about myself on social media. You know it was probably tougher on my family than it was on me. That’s where maybe it started to affect me a small bit.
‘It didn’t bother me whatsoever. I was able to take it and, believe me, if you’d to sit in a conversation with my friends for an hour and listen to the abuse they give me you wouldn’t be long seeing where I’m coming from in terms of having a thick skin and everything else.’
He never really thought twice about packing it in and returning to football.
‘I was after making my choice and [decided] I am not going back now. I am not going back to be seen as a hurling failure. I wanted to prove it to myself. Rather than to anybody else.
‘I always believed if I kept working hard and stuck to the process, kept doing what I know best which is working hard, turning up to training, pushing guys in training, I thought I’d be able to turn it around.’
In the Munster quarter-final against Tipperary, he had a rollicking battle with Séamus Callanan. The way Waterford set-up, he could have anyone from Austin Gleeson to Shane Bennett to Maurice Shanahan in company at various stages today. He can’t afford to tune out, even for a second. It’s only last summer that Cork hurling was in crisis after a miserable defeat against Tipperary and first Championship defeat to Wexford since 1956. On Thursday, he turned 25. He recalls how his team were outsiders for Munster back in May.
‘To win a championship game was huge. To go on and win three of them and win the Munster championship was great as well. We enjoyed it but then it was back down to hard work straight away.
‘You’re only as good as your last game. If it all goes bellyup, the Munster championship will be completely forgotten about.’
It’s easy to stay grounded in the Cahalane house when his sister Maeve has a couple of All-Ireland camogie medals to her name, never mind what his father achieved.
This summer has been about standing on his own two feet.