McQuaid runs smooth camp
Monaghan man made switch from athletics to camogie
PEOPLE HAVE had the chance to reminisce about the historic Wexford camogie three-in-a-row recently, especially with the first of those titles now approaching a full decade in the rearview mirror.
They rightly remember the great players across the field; there’s no point in even starting to name them, they were all over the park.
They also tend to remember the diminutive J.J. Doyle prowling the sidelines, barking orders.
Outside of those actually on the pitch, few remember the vital piece of the puzzle that was trainer Gerry McQuaid. Although some were taking notice, as the affable Monaghan man has since formed an integral part of the backroom team of several Senior clubs around the county.
For McQuaid it was a big deal and a huge challenge. Coming from a non-hurling background, he had a group to win over, but he was able to do it with his usual mix of calm professionalism, knowledge, genuine interest in those he’s working with and, of course, engaging sessions.
‘At the start it was like “where’s he from, oh he’s a runner, jeez we are going to get the legs run off us here”,’ Gerry recalled.
‘It wasn’t that at all, it’s getting fit with the ball. What I disagree with, I suppose, is teams and clubs that would say, right, we’re putting the hurls down, you are going training six weeks with no hurls.
‘I mean, why? You come to hurl so let’s train hurling, lets get fit hurling and doing everything with the ball.
‘I’m a firm believer, ones that are serious enough about it, they would do their own running that I would give them on their own to better themselves.
‘But they are certainly not going to come to a training session of mine and think all this guy is going to do is run, run, run, because he’s a runner, that’s not the case at all. When it comes to a session of mine, 95 per cent of the running they are going to be doing is with the hurl and the sliothar.’
There are plenty of happy memories for McQuaid from his three years travelling the country with Wexford, but it’s the small things that seem to mean more to him.
‘There’s loads of little things. The travelling on the bus, meeting in Enniscorthy, in Bunclody, girls getting on having those conversations on the bus with them, winning usually which was nice, getting beaten sometimes which wasn’t nice. Going for your meal after and heading back, long days,’ he remembered.
‘I never hurled, [so] to see these girls in their prime and peaking at a certain time and flying across the ground, taking belts, taking balls out of the air, here we have some of the best players in the country, that happen to be from Wexford, who are doing this for the love of the game, for themselves, families, club and county. I had nothing but admiration and respect for them.
‘I’m happy that I was a part of that for the time I was there. I was let in and I will go places in Wexford now and talk to people in relation to someone, [they] know I was involved in camogie so it gave me a connection to Wexford.
‘I’m up around Monaghan now, I left there when I was 17. Although I’ll always be from Monaghan, I probably feel more of a connection to Wexford now, a big reason was the G.A.A. family.’
Gerry left his home in Glaslough - Ireland’s tidiest town in 2019 - as a teenager to pursue education in America. Now a popular route for sportspeople in this country, McQuaid was one of the pioneers in taking up scholarships in the U.S. collegiate system.
Indiana University was where middle distance runner McQuaid found a home, which leaves him in an ideal position to advise those looking to follow in his footsteps. His advice is simple: know what you are getting into.
‘I went out probably to run but I got an education,’ Gerry explained. ‘The education I got was from a Division 1 University. My degree is a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology, so it’s physical education.
‘I would have got that degree, whereas others that go to smaller colleges, they go and it doesn’t work out for them. The thing for me is, all I had to do was keep up my grades, keep my grades above a certain G.P.A. (Grade Point Average), then if I got injured they would still support me as long as I was keeping the grades up.
‘People go to these colleges in the lower divisions and they get injured, they get demotivated, there’s no support for them, they get homesick and say this is not for me. Others go and they realise the qualification that they got when they come back maybe isn’t up to par.
‘When I came back I would have had to send all the classes I would have taken to the Department of Education. They scrutinise, well, this degree is from Indiana University, this is a quality degree, it is up to the standards of Irish university, therefore they granted me a teaching license, for instance.
‘If a parent rang me for advice I would have to see what type of university it is, what type of support network are around them if they are failing academically, what about socially and emotionally if they don’t fit in, all of those things.
‘At the end of the day they are young people, young men and women going out there, away from home. They need that support and if they don’t get it, it’s a difficult place to be.
‘The world is a small place now because of social media, cameras and whatever. I arrived into Indianapolis airport in the middle of a summer heatwave, 104 degrees, and I was a little white boy from Glaslough, in County Monaghan.
‘Burnt alive I was, didn’t get to phone home for a month and then you get in, I remember, there was 45,000 students at Indiana. It was difficult, the first year it was just a difficult place to be in.’
After that initial change of environment, Gerry has largely fond memories of his days over in the States. While recognising that some things have changed since his time over there three decades ago, the professionalism he encountered is something that has guided his life at home.
‘The big sports are basketball, American football, baseball to an extent. Track and field was down the line but we went places. If we were going to Texas, to Philadelphia, to California or wherever, we would get a bus, everything was organised.
‘You have your athletic team managers there. They would come down, they had a wad of cash, they would count out 110 dollars, 120 dollars, or whatever it was, you would sign your name and they would hand you 120 dollars, that was yours for the two days you were away to feed yourself.
‘My eating habits weren’t great. I could race three times that weekend, I wouldn’t hardly eat because of the nerves. I’d be coming home with 85 dollars! I wouldn’t be spending anything.
‘I raced in the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I can remember indoor track and field, big time championships, I can remember going out and warming up and the lake frozen and them out fishing on it in the little huts.
‘Then you come back in, massive indoor track, then off through a tunnel and there’s your indoor, American football practice arena. I mean, this was the early nineties [and] the professionalism was just phenomenal.
‘You take that with you and you learn over there and you come back. Anything that’s worth doing is worth doing right if you are involved.’
McQuaid has continued to do things after helping Wexford to four camogie All-Irelands in three years with two teams. He’s been around the block a bit but teams always want him back which says a lot about his qualities, not just as a professional but also as a person.
Gerry has had stints with Rathnure, St. Anne’s, Oylegate-Glenbrien, Cloughbawn, and most recently Glynn-Barntown, while he’ll always oblige if a mentor from an under-age club gets in contact asking him to do a session.
The most rewarding of those Senior stints from a silverware perspective was his time with the Rathangan club. However, it did prove to be a baptism of fire.
‘I remember Pierce White calling me up and asking me would I come down to St. Anne’s, I was “where is it?” ‘Rathangan.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘Down by the sea.’
‘I go “right, who’s the manager?”
‘He says “Darragh Ryan”.
‘I go “is he a hurler, does he know his stuff?”
‘I’m wondering who I’m going to go in here with and he said “he would have hurled for Wexford”. I’ll be honest I didn’t know. I went down, met them, mightily impressed.
‘I remember the first night training with St. Anne’s in 2014, Dee O’Keeffe, McGovern, Rochford, the whole works, the Fogartys, the lot of them. I remember looking out the door, it was January time, there was a gale-force wind, and rain, I’d never seen anything like it.
‘I was waiting for the phone to ring, these boys are going to cancel this, waiting, waiting. Didn’t cancel. I got lost.
‘Then I tried to get out in Rathangan and couldn’t open the door with my hands, used two feet to push the door open with my feet.
‘They all showed up and I was like here we go, there was no hurling ’cause you couldn’t hurl that night, so I said we’re going to run. We are going to do six times three minutes on, one minute off.
‘If we go this way lads it will be a bit handier lads cause we’ll miss a bit of the wind. I’ll never forget, swear to God, when I said that they all turned around and ran into the wind, they decided to run the hard way!’
‘That impressed me, they weren’t looking for an easy way out. They worked and I suppose they were a hare’s breadth away from winning the hurling, went to a replay against the Shels, I was in Indiana for the replay unfortunately.
‘Then they won the football, county final was played November 16, won by a point against Gusserane.’
Training both hurling and football with St. Anne’s at the time, McQuaid had first-hand experience of the difficulties involved for dual clubs, which made their run in 2014 all the more remarkable.
‘Training was probably 70 to 80 per cent hurling, 20 to 30 per cent football,’ he said. ‘You needed to be fitter for football, there was no effort spared in relation to getting them to a certain level of fitness.
‘The only thing I noticed after they came back after two weeks of football was, jeez they were spilling, their touch was off, everything was off. That is the difficulty with the dual club, but what a club to be able to do that, very, very close to winning both.’
Last season Gerry was with Glynn-Barntown hurlers, another side who were performing exceptionally well and peaking at the right time, only to succumb to a wild bit of bad luck against the eventual county champions, St. Martin’s.
While other clubs were in touch and Shane Carley also tried to get McQuaid back for 2020, it was impossible as the Monaghan man is in flux between counties, as his job with the National Council for Special Education takes him all the way up to the north-west of the country.
Instead, when sport is back up and running he’ll be back looking at the ‘Road to Croke Park’ and another chance to lead a team to All-Ireland camogie glory.
‘I got a phone call from a guy called (Arthur) Aussie Hughes, who would have trained Middletown hurlers, he got the job as Armagh camogie manager right, so I got a phone call and I said I’ll come on board.
‘So I have been since last December I’d say, I trained them right through, I was with them the Tuesday night before the shutdown.’
If the championship does get up and running again, there’s not an unreasonable chance that Gerry and his charges will come face to face with the Wexford second string, who are also in the All-Ireland Junior championship.
There would certainly be something very fitting about his adopted team coming up against his adopted county in Croke Park at the end of the year for Gerry McQuaid.
To see these girls in their prime and peaking at a certain time... I had nothing but admiration for them