JAMIE MOORE STILL GETTING ABUSE FOR LAST YEAR’S FESTIVAL
Ex-Clare hurler Griffin dipped into the well of his own struggles when writing a book to resonate with teens
HURLING… it’s like a past life, to be honest.’ Tony Griffin’s life and times have taken in the road less travelled. The AllStar Clare hurler set off on a 7,000 kilometre charity cycle across Canada in 2007 following his father Jerome’s passing and raised in the region of a million euro along the way. He documented much of his personal journey in the memoir ‘Screaming at the Sky’.
Griffin is also the co-founder of the Soar Foundation whose focus on youth empowerment was inspired by the work of Jim Stynes in Australia. After a chunk of his adult life dedicated to helping teenagers, he is now a full-time writer whose new book – ‘The Teenager’s Book of Life’ – is a personal passion project.
With all the issues presented by lockdown, particularly for teenagers who have seen social contact, education and sport – and what passes as normal life – restricted in so many ways, it feels timely. It’s written from the heart, from someone who knows what it is like to look bullet proof on the outside while struggling on the inside.
On the recent Love and Courage podcast with Ruairí McKiernan, whose questioning lends itself to deeper, revealing conversations, Griffin revealed his own hidden struggles. The dark period that followed his father’s death and the panic attack at training the week before Clare played Waterford in the 2008 Munster SHC were laid bare. He talked, too, of the capacity to still go out and perform in front of 40,000 any given Championship Sunday.
Here, he chats about sport and life and plenty in between. When an author finishes a book, the cliché is to kick back and pour a drink in celebration. Griffin ended up in hospital in critical condition last September, less than four months after his wife Keira had given birth to their second child.
‘I submitted it one day. That evening I did a bit of training. The following morning I woke up with a pain in my chest. I didn’t think anything of it. We went on holidays and the whole week I was saying to Keira, “something’s not right here”. By the end of the week, I got back up to Tallaght, drove myself in – they were opening me up 10 minutes later. My lung had completely collapsed. The pressure was beginning to start to build on my heart, the whole chest cavity. So I was very fortunate.’ The timing? ‘It was just coincidental. It happened me when I was 19, playing a college trial for Fitzgibbon Cup. The prototype is tall and thin get it. I was probably exhausted – but it wasn’t that. I’d say it was just its time.’
Looking at him on the surface during his career when he was a livewire, all-action attacker with that capacity to connect with the crowd, it’s remarkable how different the interior life was at times – the panic attacks, the dark moments. So did anyone have any idea, particularly when he looked so strong at times from the outside?
‘They probably didn’t. But I was very good at hiding it.’
And it gave him that lifelong curiosity to always look beneath the surface.
Of course the game still engages him. Tony Kelly hails from the same club, Ballyea. When Griffin talks about creativity and expressionism, Kelly is a prime example in that regard on the hurling field. So he watched him closely in last year’s Championship.
‘Ah yeah. I love the game of hurling. I was only saying to my son the other day I think it is the best game on earth. Not because I’m biased but if you think about the amount of things that have to happen at the same time, from a physiological perspective, from a motor skills perspective. Like what Tony
Kelly does – my son is mad into Harry Potter – I say, “He’s like the Harry
Potter of hurling” when he’s playing Quidditch. I’m in contact with Tony. I’d send him a text every now and again. I love watching the game of hurling. I loved watching Waterford last year.
‘A few nights before my lung collapsed I played a junior match for Ballyea. My nephew was in goal – 18. There I was, 39, down the other end. And I enjoyed it. Put it this way, it probably wasn’t all happening in the way I wanted it to. But I got a few points, got a great picture with Oisín at the end. I loved that.’
His first son Jerome is now six, Jesse just 10 months. ‘Jerome’s a good runner. Loves hurling. We live on the border of Wicklow and Kildare, not a lot of hurling but there is in Naas. He loves his football. Whatever gets him out of his head and into his body to express himself. He loves his art, his music. He’s wise enough to decide. ‘Throughout the book I say that: “find your thing”. I used to be driving
POSITIVE OUTLOOK: Tony Griffin (main) on his hugely successful fundraising tour in 2007 (left) and 12 months later playing for Clare (far left)
Jesse up around the Wicklow hills, trying to get him to sleep because he had colic. I remember one evening the quote came loud and clear: “The most important relationship you will ever have is with yourself. Every other is secondary.”
EMBRACING ‘YOUR FLAVOUR OF WEIRDNESS’
AND so to ‘The Teenager’s Book of Life’.
‘How does it do what it says on the tin? I’ve been going to school for years and the one thing I noticed was, young people – every decade brings its own challenges in life. I found the teenage years are ones where so much is happening – mentally, physically, hormonally and socially. You’re not adult – but you’re not a child. But people treat you like a child, or at least they can.
‘I look back on my own teenage years and I had sport, that was a massive thing for me. But it was in my early 20s, late teens, that I met someone who had a profound impact on my life. A Canadian chiropractic doctor working with the Clare team. He was the first person who ever reflected back to me that I could do things with my life. That I had potential. Possibility. He was the first person to say to me, “Do you know what you want from your life?”.
‘He was someone who had done a lot of things in life, boxed for Canada. Travis McDonagh. Just a really influential person at that stage in my life. A lot of young people don’t have that person. I realise that Soar was that for a lot of young people. It wouldn’t tell them what to do but would ask them certain questions which would cause them to think of their own version to that answer.
‘One of the things that became really clear going into schools was how much young people put up a facade in order to not stand out. They just wanted to fit in, keep their head down. In that process, I could see what adults often become, which is they forget who they are.
‘We, as adults, almost forget our magic. And very often it is lost in that period 13-20 where you go through a school system that doesn’t
encourage you to ask too many questions. Perhaps you’re going through a stage of life that can be very tough.
‘And I think it is very tough for this generation with social media to embrace and accept themselves.
‘So I set out in the book to write almost an elongated love letter to teenagers. To remind them of who they really are, encourage them to be their own flavour of weirdness. And that that is what attracts the people into your life who will be your best friends.
‘If you can do that it is the most courageous thing in the world to be yourself.
‘It was encouraging young people to accept themselves. But there are also some home truths they need to hear. I wanted to tell them a few things about life that they might not already know.
‘You’re going to get lost at times. You’re going to get your heart broken. People are going to let you down. Things aren’t going to turn out the way you think you might.
‘Real life is… people die. You get your heart broken. You fail. You have to get back up.
‘Real life is painful at times. I wanted, throughout the book, to give some home truths. Maybe your parents try to give it but you don’t listen.
‘Or a teacher says it and you don’t hear it. I wanted to give it to them so straight and so honest – at a level I know they can understand.’
So where does sport fit into that mix? The book seems timely with all the issues presented by lockdown. Does sport have a valued part to play in terms of physical and mental health, particularly for this country’s youth?
‘Sport taught me a few things about myself. That to me is the real purpose of sport. It’s not about how much you win. It’s about how much you learn about yourself. Say for example, courage under pressure.
That’s a value. Hurling or football or any sport, that’s just the petri dish you’re swimming in. Learning about character, honesty, work ethic, how to get up when you’re knocked down – that’s why the function of sport for kids, for teenagers, it’s about what they can learn and carry through life. It doesn’t stop when you retire from the sport.
‘I got in contact with a researcher in New Zealand who lost her daughter, her best friend and her best friend’s daughter when they were hit by a drunk driver. She was a resilience researcher, helping people overcome the aftermath of the earthquake down there. She has a Ted Talk with 20 million views. I got in contact and asked, “How do I go about saying this for teenagers? Three steps for when life knocks you down”.
‘If I had known that when I was playing hurling, I tell you I would have bounced back quicker a lot more often. That’s something for life.
‘I’ve been really encouraged that a lot of coaches who are reading the book have got in contact and said I’m going to use this with my swim team or my GAA team because all these themes are things we face all the time in our sport.’
FEEDING ‘THE GLADIATOR’
The lure of the game still reels him in even if he hasn’t made peace with the ageing process.
‘I’m kind of an all-or-nothing-type person. It’s very hard to go back and be s***e! I did it last year because I wanted to play with Oisín – he’s the first grandchild in our family. But it’s very hard to go back and – okay you’ll score two or three points but that’s on memory – and then the rest you’re thinking, “Why am I doing this? Why have I driven to Clare to play this match?”.
Maybe he’ll stick around for one more year. ‘I’ve a friend, a guy called Martin Bennett who was Waterford’s sprint coach last year. I used to go to him all last January and February. Before lockdown. He used to do one-on-one sessions with me – sprinting, boxing, weights.
‘For the first time in 10 years I felt myself get fit again. My timings were good. Then lockdown hit – it all went out the window.
‘Then when I played that game in late August I was like “I wish this was January when I was actually flying it. So I obviously haven’t made full peace with my s***eness!”
He’s never been afraid to jump out of his comfort zone. The latest leap involves writing full-time.
‘I am making a life out of writing now and it’s bringing me great satisfaction. I wanted to do it for 20 years. Hurling, it’s like a past life, to be honest. It feels like that at times. But the DNA is in you. Sometimes, when I’m feeling sorry for myself I say, “Tony, you’ve been here before. Remember Cork in ’06 when you lost the Munster semi-final and thought the year was over. It’s only a game”.
‘I’ve learned things to get back up when I’ve been knocked down.
‘When you’ve a family, you can forget that you were also once a gladiator.
You forget to feed that part of yourself. After the lung operation – because I had to get an operation after they pumped the lung back up. A thing which is quite invasive, to reseal the whole lining so it shouldn’t happen again. I was in so much pain. But I remember saying to myself, “You’ve got to get back training. Back jogging”. Because that’s good for me.
‘Not everyone is into sport. Parents think, sport is good for you. That’s not true; self-expression is good for you. If your form of selfexpression is to play the piano, or write music, or to game… I’m no expert on parenting teenagers but when young people find something that brings them alive, they usually are in a much better place.’
A relevant book then for our times?
‘This is a big statement but I think it’s the most important book written for teenagers that I’ve ever come across. I’ve tried to find them. Mostly US books – parents buy them but young people don’t read them. And I think I’ve distilled down 20 years of learning about the human condition, 10 of which were spent with live ammunition of young people, standing in front of me. Everything from “I’m suicidal – I’m going home to take my own life” to “I’m just lost and I can’t listen to my parents fighting any more” and “I’ve no motivation”.
‘And everything in between.
‘I’ve distilled it down into a book that teenagers will hear something from. It will speak to them – and parents, too. If they read the book, I think it can have a really profound impact on how they see their teenager, how they relate to their teenager that may make their relationship shift.
‘And if that’s the case, they are going to be having conversations – and who knows where that can lead.’
The Teenager’s Book of Life – by Tony Griffin. Published by SoulPlace Publishing. www.theteenagers bookoflife.com.
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