I had a million to one chance... now they call me ‘Lazarus’ INTERVIEW
Through all his peaks and troughs, hurling has proven a constant for Richie Bennis
WHERE to start with the life story of Richie Bennis? How about the first hook in his new memoir a photograph where he has a big hand wrapped around his first son, Dickie. He was born in July 1973 and was gravely sick in the build-up to the All-Ireland hurling final, Bennis and his wife Mary heard a Chinese whisper that he had passed away as they travelled on the train to Dublin for the game. And still Limerick’s number eight found a way to hit 10 points that fateful Sunday in the triumph against Kilkenny, two from play, the latter a booming effort from half-way that was accompanied by a fist-pump.
From there to hosting the GAA Legends Tour of Croke Park in his honour on the eve of the 2018 final, when the torch was finally passed to a new generation of Limerick hurlers.
The county’s number one fan, 98year-old John Hunt, was there and stole the show as he had done on
when he got to hold the Liam MacCarthy Cup.
‘He was a character. Entertained us all the way around. He told me about watching Limerick beat Kilkenny in the 1936 final and asking his doctor was it alright to fly home for this one, he was told: “When you’re up there stay going until you see the shiny gates”.
Bennis cried tears of joy in the stand with Mary when the final whistle blew.
‘I threw two arms around my wife and someone roared back, “Tis a long time since you did that!” Ah, it was very emotional. It was a lifetime, for most supporters.’
Hope and history rhymed that summer, in so many different ways it felt uncanny. ‘There was an awful lot of coincidences there for the ’73 team. The president in ’73, De Valera, we accused him of being a Limerick man. The president in 2018 was Michael D Higgins, very much of Limerick extract.
‘My daughter bought a car that summer and the number plate read one nine seven three.
‘The majority of the ’73 team were 73 in 2018.
‘The last two figures of the semifinal attendance against Cork was 73 (71,073).’
Written in the stars?
‘Oh God it was.’
Then there’s all the ways the GAA and hurling intertwined with his life.
Like lining out in goal for his club Patrickswell the night before his wedding. ‘A tournament, the Duggan Cup. The equivalent of a city championship. I wouldn’t have made a goalie at all because it wasn’t the safest place to play at that time!’
Which seems surreal until you find out it interlocks with the couple’s engagement, which happened the night of the celebrations to mark Limerick beating Tipperary in the National League final in May of 1971.
The honeymoon to New York that summer – coinciding with Bennis featuring in an exhibition match in the Big Apple – it fell through due to the death of Cardinal Cushing, a patron of the GAA in New York, prompting all matches to be cancelled. So they undertook a tour of Ireland instead. He recalls leaving their car unattended during a visit to Coleraine in Derry and arriving back to find it surrounded by soldiers, who were taking no precautions with a southern registration during the start of the Troubles.
The book covers all of this, and everything in between. The lifelong care needed for Dickie who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and the part played by his wife that is summed up in the dedication: ‘To my rock, my wife Mary’.
The two sons and daughters that followed and the importance of family that is a running theme.
It outlines the influence of Patrickswell. He lined out as a senior for the first at 16, experienced the culture shock of his marker wearing a flat cap and a bottle of strong stuff being passed around during a break in play that would put hairs on any chest. He played full-back on the first team to win the senior championship in 1965 – the first of 10. His five brothers were all there to share in so much of that journey.
He went from club and county player to taking over as manager from Joe McKenna mid-season in 2006 and was part of a storied summer in 2007, involving a famous trilogy with Tipperary and the chance of a first title since 1973, with Croke Park shaking from the roar when his face went up on the big screen.
On Tuesday, he took a drive with Mary. St Patrick’s Day always carries a resonance for those attached to Patrickswell, the small village just 10 minutes from Limerick city, taking its name from the holy well said to have been visited in lore by St Patrick himself.
But the whole day, and the trip that crisscrossed the borders of Tipperary and Galway, took on a surreal edge against the eerie backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic that has the country in lockdown
‘We went all the way up to Borrisokane, to Portumna. It was so quiet, it was unreal.’
Born when the second world war held the global stage, does he remember a time like this?
‘Never in my lifetime and I’m 75 years of age. The foot-and-mouth was a different thing, confined to a certain element of society whereas this is a leveller. It goes to show there’s something there we’re not believing in.
‘Sodom and Gomorrah, you might remember that in the Bible!’
There is certainly a biblical feel to what is going on in the world right now.
The global pandemic means the GAA season is on hold like everything else. That includes the National League play-offs that Limerick had sauntered into, with doubts over whether the roundrobin provincial championships will have to revert to knock-out, or be played at all. ‘I can’t see the League finishing unless they start next year where they finished up,’ says Bennis. ‘The Championship may be a knock-out – they might need to do another draw. This thing could lead to some peculiar changes in life.
‘People don’t realise what sport means to people. Even now, you’ve nowhere to go of a Sunday, no matter what sport you follow. You turn on the television and there’s no sport either. Just rubbish.’
He couldn’t have been happier though to hand over the baton to the next generation, Limerick’s 2018 All-Ireland ending a drought that had lasted 45 years. ‘It’s great to see the youth being able to relate to
‘IT WAS VERY TOUCH-AND-GO, AT ONE STAGE MY FAMILY GOT A CALL TO SAY THAT I WAS LOSING THE BATTLE’
present-day players. They can’t relate to us only with what they read in books or see in clips on television. That’s not what they want. The youth wanted somebody real, somebody they could touch – so it was really a relief to the ’73 team. They’re certainly good enough to win the All-Ireland again.’
The Patrickswell parallel remains a source of pride too, just another of those signposts that history was on their side. Diarmaid Byrnes wore number five or seven all season, the same number Richie’s brother Phil and Seán Foley filled on the 1973 team. Frankie Nolan wore 13, just like Aaron Gillane. And Bennis himself wore eight, before Cian Lynch became the Hurler of the Year in the same jersey.
He laughs at the idea that he might ever have tried the chop pick-up between his legs that Lynch went viral with recently. ‘No, no, no. If you did your leg would be above in the Hogan Stand!
‘The ball is different. Sure the old ridges were as thick as your finger. You’d to place the ball so that the ridges wouldn’t cross your hurley when you rose it, all that kind of thing. You wouldn’t be driving the ball 90 yards. The odd person could do it, Ollie Walsh of Kilkenny for one. Driving a 70 over the bar would be a rarity. Whereas now, it’s like a tennis ball. It’s better for it, though.
‘The only thing is we’d want to curtail it a bit. I think the sliotar is gone too light. That’s why they’re able to do these flicks.’
When Patrickswell won that first county title in 1965, the team came from just seven households, Bennis himself being one of 13 children.
Different days.
‘The big families are gone. Television has ruined all that!’ he says with that familiar rolling laugh.
Hurling always had a hold. He remembers the aura of Christy Ring drawing him to travel to see the great man in action.
‘To see him play in a county final down in Cork. Myself and a friend David Moran we used to go to all of these matches. We drove down. Played St Finbarr’s, there’d be 30,000 at it, just to see Ring.’
That aura lasted until the end.
‘Oh yeah, and he was in his 40s. He was always in his prime because he looked after himself so well. He was a class act.’
When Bennis emulated Ring by walking up the steps of the Hogan
Stand to lift the Liam MacCarthy Cup, it was everything he dreamed it would be.
‘Everything. I remember going to Croke Park on a school tour. I was in awe of it at that stage, I’d say I was only 12 years of age. And to think I could play on the same pitch as Eddie Keher and the players I idolised – it was unreal.’
Eamonn Cregan’s line on Richie Bennis as a Limerick team-mate cut to the heart of the man and his character. Blunt. Straight-talking. Salt of the earth.
‘Well, he didn’t hold back. If he thought you were an eejit he would call you an eejit, and if you were a fool he would call you a fool. But it was all in good form,’ said Cregan.
So similar to Babs Keating as the two old school legends sparked off each other in the Munster hurling box-set that was the 2007 semi-final trilogy.
And yet the unexpected nature of his appointment as manager – when Joe McKenna was suddenly gone – was captured in the conversation with the county chairman offering him the position.
‘If you really are stuck… then I’ll do it,’ said Bennis.
‘We are!’ came the reply.
‘It was always an ambition of mine to be manager of Limerick,’ he says. ‘I went for it once or twice and was defeated by a very narrow margin. I said to myself that I wasn’t destined for it.
‘As it worked out, it was just a coincidence that I became manager. I was after recovering from a serious illness.
‘The least of my worries was managing – getting my life back on track was the thing. My doctor wouldn’t allow me to go back to work. This was an opportunity to do something I always dreamt of.’
Turns out it was a ‘million-to-one shot’ that he was still alive. What seemed like an innocuous bump off a wall while up on scaffolding on a job in 2003 led to septicaemia, when a bacterial infection enters the bloodstream.
‘It was very touch-and-go. At one stage they were considering taking my leg off because the poison was travelling so fast throughout my body and they were struggling to get it under control.
‘About two weeks into my stay in ICU, the family were off at a wedding and got a call to say that I was losing the battle.
‘Doctors later told me that it was a million-to-one chance that I survived. The consultant was a brilliant man. He used to laugh and call me “Lazarus”.’
A name associated with Bennis’ Limerick during the madcap trilogy of a semi-final that needed two replays and a second bout of extratime, the bear-hug with Babs in the post-match interview as an emotional Bennis was caught up in the moment endeared him to everyone watching.
‘The first match we were down a man; the second match we were down 10 points; the third match we came good.’
Limerick’s story just lacked the feelgood finish of a Munster SHC title (Waterford won well) or the All-Ireland (Kilkenny’s fast start and early goal blitz defined the day).
But the Limerick job helped him recover, body and mind.
‘It stopped me feeling sorry for myself. Changed my whole outlook. It was a contributory factor to my recovery.’
It didn’t take the St Patrick’s Day spin to understand the importance of the GAA and sport in his life.
‘Any time I was in trouble, the amount of connection I’d have with other teams was unreal.
‘My wife got a serious illness, she’s only slowly recovering. She was in hospital for 12 months, all last year. That’s what the GAA does, it keeps you going.’
Before the curtains came down on all sporting activity, the official book launch took place a couple of weeks ago at the Woodlands Hotel, giving him a chance to catch up with so many old friends.
They had a ball.
‘I’d say about five or six hundred people showed. Twelve of the ’73 team were there. We’re all alive, believe it or not. Bar two subs. We did fierce reminiscing and bulls ****** g!’
And he signs off with that familiar laugh that hasn’t changed, no matter life’s ups and downs.