HURLING WAS MY SAVIOUR

Wexford’s inspirational All-Ireland winning captain Martin Storey reflects on both the personal and sporting challenges he’s faced so far in his life

MICHAEL DUIGNAN: I was down here in the Riverside Park Hotel earlier this year for Oulart-The Ballagh’s dinner dance to mark the historic Leinster club hurling titles in senior hurling and camogie. There’s obviously a story there with the club and the two parishes. Where does it start and end with Oulart and The Ballagh?

MARTIN STOREY: Oulart had a junior team and Ballagh had a junior team. The rivalry was terrible and tough and raw. Neighbouring parishes. When they joined up, they won junior, and intermediate in two consecutive years. Didn’t win senior for over 25 years. When it was going well it was great; when it wasn’t going well, there would be the little splits. I’m The Ballagh. My father would have been old style, ‘Oh it’s two Ballagh men they took off today – not the Oulart men.’

Rapparees here in Enniscorthy beat us in every district final all the way up. The first year at Under 21 was the first year we beat them in a district final. It was like winning a county final. That was the breakthrough.

DUIGNAN: When did you win your first senior title?

STOREY: 1994. That was the club’s first. We were senior since ’67. We’d been beaten in six or seven county finals before we won one. It was heartbreaking. You thought you were never going to win one. Buffers Alley and Rathnure were totally dominating. We were just below the level.

It paralleled Wexford. We’d beat Offaly, and then Kilkenny would beat you. Just below it. We would have had a discipline problem. That if things weren’t going well, we’d fight and cause rows. They brought in Tom Neville then. Living in Carlow; hurled with Wexford all his life. Changed the discipline. Tom was great. First time he came into the Oulart dressing room he made the three county lads stand up.

He said, ‘I’m after watching ye for years. Ye are three f**kin eejits.’

Now I didn’t know this man. I said, ‘I’m no f**kin eejit, Tom – and I won’t be called one either.’

He said, ‘You are one Martin. Because ye are trying to carry these lads. You’re doing their job. Their work. When ye play well you’re heroes. When ye play bad they are slagging you, blaming you for losing the matches. So you are f**king eejits.’

He gave everyone responsibility. That told me to do my job, no matter what. We won then in ’94, ’95, ’97 – the club has won nine since. DUIGNAN: No more than with the club, you had 10 years there with Wexford before you won anything. Could you see any light at end of the tunnel?

STOREY: It was heartbreaking standing on Leinster final day and the cup being handed to Offaly two or three times. To Kilkenny, two or three times. Then all the National League finals – I played in five, counting replays. And you never getting your hands on the trophy. I came in for the National League of ’85. I suppose, sometimes, you thought that you would never, ever, ever make the breakthrough.

DUIGNAN: You won your first club Championship with Oulart in ’94, again in ’95. Then won the All-Ireland with Wexford in ’96. Co-incidental?

STOREY: No. You did begin to feel you were good enough. There was always eternal hope with us. That’s why we went back so hard and so often. George O’Connor was 37, after playing for donkeys years. He didn’t have to come back in ’96. John O’Connor didn’t. I didn’t. All you wanted was for it to happen once. You can’t describe the hurt going home, year after year.

DUIGNAN: Some losses must have been so sickening for you. We beat ye in a Leinster final in 1988, in a league final ’91. We only scored 2-6 which won it for us in the League final.

STOREY: We could never get it right. Liam Griffin’s organisational skills changed everything. And he had a game plan. He pulled the three of us in the half-forward line out before the ’96 Leinster final – myself, Larry Murphy and Rory McCarthy. Said the winning of it was us stopping the Offaly half-back line. ‘If ye dominate them, we will win Leinster. If ye don’t, then they will win. It’s that simple.’

They had three All-Stars in it: Brian Whelahan, Hubert Rigney, Kevin Martin. He said, ‘We attack these, put them under so much pressure. They set up so many scores. Put them on the back foot’. I’d say that was the first time that you got a clear directive of a game plan.

DUIGNAN: That was one of the great matches.

STOREY: If you want to show young lads what hurling is all about, that’s what hurling is about. Scoring was phenomenal: 2-23 to 2-15.

DUIGNAN: Liam Griffin had said to the Wexford lads, ‘You’re going to get a goal – and within a minute Offaly are going to get a goal.’ And it happened that way.

STOREY: We scored a goal and there wasn’t 30 seconds before you scored one the other end. I thought, ‘Oh f**k, not again.’ If the camera had been on me when you scored the goal… We’ve always done that. Lead. Then a goal. Johnny Pilkington would usually run through the middle and score two or three real good points from 80 yards and you thought, ‘Oh no.’

Griffin said, ‘ye’ll switch off after scoring a goal.’ And we did. But he had told us keep the foot on them, to keep going. And that’s what happened. I always preferred playing Kilkenny and Offaly. Because they had beaten us. So they were the standard that you needed to get to.

Like, I preferred to hurl on Brian Whelahan because you knew you were going on the best. You had to get your head right otherwise you’d

be destroyed. I liked the challenge of it.

DUIGNAN: Then there was the controversy over some players taking part in club games, and Liam Dunne being stripped of the captaincy.

STOREY: That was ’95. I wouldn’t take it. I refused. Jaysus I couldn’t take it off my own club man. I would have been playing in that club match only I was injured.

Griffin sent everyone on a lap of a field. I wouldn’t go. I went over to Griffin and said, “You’re making a mistake. You’re punishing Oulart, and you’re punishing us.” The county board fixed the match. If you want to make a stand, go after them. Well, he took it off Liam. Offered it to me, I refused it. Offered it to Billy Byrne and he didn’t want it. So George O’Connor was made captain! DUIGNAN: How did Dunne take it? STOREY: We jeered him: The only man in Wexford hurling to have the

captaincy stripped off him. Dunne would say to me, ‘It should have been you. You should have been captain in ’95 and have had it taken off you!’

It was a laugh. A skit. You didn’t carry anything. I remember the slagging in the pub. Like we all came back after Liam Dunne’s first sending off with the county and everyone had a red beer mat in Oulart ready when he walked in.

DUIGNAN: So how did captaincy in ’96 come about?

STOREY: He rang (my wife) Rosaleen at home. Talked to her for 20 minutes. He was very good that way, being all-inclusive. He said, something like, ‘When I finish with him he’s going to be the best hurler in Ireland.’ And Rosaleen hung up the phone. DUIGNAN: She thought you were that already! STOREY: He changed my way of thinking so much. Gave me a total team ethos. I probably didn’t shoot enough afterwards, because you were always trying to do the right thing with the ball. Made you such a better hurler. DUIGNAN: Did you want it? STOREY: You always wanted to be captain. It was always in my head, ‘Oh I’d love to hurl in Croke Park.’ The only thing I ever wanted to do.

Was never picked to hurl minor with Wexford. So I did wonder if I’d

‘I SUPPOSE SOMETIMES YOU THOUGH IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN’ ‘YOU HURLED ALL YOUR LIFE TO WIN AN ALL-IRELAND MEDAL’