Good sense of perspective is key to Wylie’s winning ways INTERVIEW
Monaghan’s star defender welcomes distraction of career beyond football
RYAN Wylie lives on Clonliffe Road, a stone’s throw from Croke Park. Close enough, in fact, that watching a big Championship game on television can be a nightmare. A few years ago, he had cleared a Sunday afternoon to watch Dublin’s All-Ireland semifinal with Kerry from the comfort of his couch. However, during the minor game, it was clear that the roars from the crowd were reaching his sitting room a good 30 seconds before the action unfolded on screen.
He popped outside his front door and scored a ticket. ‘I just went out and bought a ticket. I couldn’t be watching a game when I knew there was going to be a score before it happened,’ he explains.
There are advantages. Wylie points out that he and his housemates can sit in the back garden on the evening of concerts in Croker and listen to the music waft in. They have heard U2, Coldplay, Taylor Swift even. There were headaches last summer though, when he returned from a Monaghan training session to be informed that he couldn’t go down his own street.
‘I was just coming back from training when people were streaming out from the Rolling Stones. I got caught at the bottom of the road and didn’t get home for ages. I had a pass but had to wait until everyone cleared. It took a wee while,’ he recounts with a smile.
And it’s hardly convenient when Monaghan play at headquarters. Protocol means he must travel north to meet the squad before coming back down. ‘It’s actually longer for me when we play in Croke Park, because I have to travel up and meet the lads and come back down. It would be handy if I could just grab my gear-bag and walk over, but I don’t think I would get away with that.’ He made himself scarce for last year’s All-Ireland final. Ballybay had organised a charity event that weekend, so it was a good excuse to scamper home. There was no point immersing himself in the atmosphere of the big day, watching Dublin and Tyrone supporters stream past his window, when Monaghan could, or should, have been there themselves. They play Dublin in their Division 1 opener in Clones this afternoon. The All-Ireland final that might have been. Who knows what course the summer of 2018 would have taken had referee Anthony Nolan played the right amount of injury-time during their narrow semi-final defeat to Tyrone? Wylie doesn’t allow himself to think like that. There’s no regret when he reflects on 2018. ‘No sense of regret, no,’ Wylie says, shaking his head. ‘We took so long to get to that semifinal stage, the county hadn’t been there since 1988, that was a big thing for the team to do. Disappointing to get so close, but Tyrone were the better team on the day and deserved to win.
‘But I wouldn’t say there is any regret. Overall, it was a great season but there’s no regret over not making the All-Ireland final. It’s more disappointment. Naturally when you lose any game, you are disappointed. And the bigger the game, the more disappointed you are going to be.’ As Wylie thinks of a season when he further burnished his reputation as one of the best man-markers in the game, there are more good memories than bad. He recalls how thousands of Monaghan supporters travelled the length of the country to Dungarvan for their qualifier against Waterford, only days after they were stung by Fermanagh’s last-minute goal in the Ulster Championship.
And there was also the famous night in Salthill when Malachy O’Rourke’s side finally reached the All-Ireland semi-final after so many near misses.
‘The amount of Monaghan people in Salthill that evening was incredible. I think they must have been down for the races and just popped in for the match,’ he grins. ‘No, in fairness to our support, they go everywhere with us. Everyone knows we’re a small county, but it doesn’t feel like that when you hear them roaring during games.
‘What really hit home for me was the support against Waterford. After the way we lost to Fermanagh, they could have just turned their back and not bothered with the long journey. But the amount of them that made the trip was unreal.’
It was a season when Wylie stepped from the shadow of big brother, Drew. His older sibling has long been considered one of the country’s best defenders but Ryan proved he picked up a thing or two
‘FOOTBALL IS JUST A GOOD RELEASE, BUT THAT’S ALL IT REALLY IS’
‘YOU ARE SO WRAPPED UP THAT IT CAN BE GOOD TO SWITCH OFF’
from him, holding both Kerry’s Paul Geaney and Tyrone’s Lee Brennan scoreless while Galway’s electric Ian Burke just managed to snaffle a point off him in Salthill.
Wylie gets a little uncomfortable when it’s suggested that last season was his best yet in a Monaghan shirt. ‘Ach, I don’t really know,’ he sighs. ‘I suppose I done alright. Some games I didn’t feel I had done alright. To be honest, I don’t really like talking about myself. It was a good year, I suppose when you get to the semi-final. You must be doing something right, starting in a team that got to the semi-final.’
As a radiographer in the Mater Hospital, the 24-year-old doesn’t have to look too far for a reminder that Gaelic football is just a game.
‘To be honest, I try my best not to think about football any time that I am away from it,’ explains Wylie, who reckons his interest in radiology came from breaking a lot of bones growing up.
‘It is such a big part of your life, you are at it so much, there is no point in bogging yourself down in it all the time. And you do see a lot of worse cases in a hospital, even if you visit, never mind working in one. If I have to come to work after losing a game, even a big game, you don’t be long realising that there’s a lot more to life than football.
‘But I’m not the only one that is in a tough job. There are players in every county in tough jobs, and everyone knows someone that’s not in the best of health. Little things like that should make everyone realise that football is just a release, a good release but that’s all it is.’
Like anyone who works in a hospital, night shifts are part and parcel of his life. ‘It can be tough, but it is only as tough as you want it to be. When you get the rota, you know what’s ahead of you and base your training around that. I think there are other county players with tougher jobs.
‘There will be times when I am not able to make training but Malachy’s very good about that. He understands and knows everything that is going on. He knows that I am not lying at home when I miss training. He’s very accommodating.’
And while the hopes and dreams of the Farney County are confined to Clones and Croke Park every year, Wylie is aware that there’s a wider world out there. In the winter of 2017, he travelled around Colombia and parts of South America with Paul Mannion, an old friend from UCD. He spent part of this past winter in the Philippines and Vietnam with another friend.
‘Yeah, myself and Paul went to Colombia with some mates. We both had time off work and decided to go away for a while. It was a good time to go away and you have to let your hair down now and again. You are so wrapped up in football for the summer, it’s good to switch completely off from it.
‘That’s why I went to Vietnam and the Philippines. Myself and another lad went. That was a deadly trip. I will go back. The food is lovely and the Vietnamese and Filipino people are so friendly, they’d do anything for you.’
When he’s on home soil, Wylie often finds the best way to forget about football is to head out on the farm in Ballybay. His family have a herd of around 30 suckler cows. ‘Whenever I get home, I still help out on the farm. Maybe not quite enough for Drew’s liking. He would be at the farm most evenings and weekends. But it is another way to clear the head, forget about football for a while.’
O’Rourke drafted a teenage Wylie into the squad after the National League campaign in 2013. He was on the bench as an unheralded Monaghan side beat the then-defending All-Ireland champions Donegal in the Ulster final. From that springboard, the Farney County has become established at the top table.
The narrative around the side is that they are maximising the absolute most of what they have, with consistent reference to the county having the fourth smallest population in the country. But Wylie says that the players themselves never even think of their size.
‘Things have fallen nicely into place. We have a great management set-up with Malachy and his backroom. I’ve been lucky enough in that I have only worked with Malachy at inter-county level. Don’t know anyone else. And of course, our size is remarked upon. Everyone loves working off the narrative that we are so small, but we have been there or thereabouts for so long now, we should just be known as just another team.’
Monaghan were the only team to beat Dublin last year, although Wylie plays that down by saying they had already qualified for the League final. Still, if they repeat the trick in Clones today, it will mark the Farney men out as a team for Jim Gavin to be wary of in this season of all seasons.