Ger Loughnane: ‘I was on the verge of a massive heart attack, and there’d have been no coming back’

The best time to visit Clare is in October-coloured weather, with the wind and the light working off each other and the salty tang of the Atlantic on the breeze. When Seamus Heaney wrote of this place, he captured it perfectly – how it catches the heart off guard and blows it open.So many Clare people bear the marks of the place that made them. Ger Loughnane has long since settled in Ennis, but he will always be a Feakle man, and Feakle gave us the Tulla Céilí Band, the finishing school that produced master fiddler Martin Hayes. Consider Hayes’ words in an interview with this newspaper in 2013. “When the music is really going well, you feel like you’re just participating in it,” he said. “You feel like it’s just happening to you, with you and out of you. You feel like you’ve made yourself transparent enough for the music to flow.”It’s how Loughnane, at his lyrical best, talks of hurling. He has just turned 73, but still has an athlete’s ranginess and cleanliness, and he shakes hands with a hurler’s grip.READ MORE“Keeping busy is the whole bloody thing when you come to a certain age. You know that you have something to get up for every day. Between going down and getting the grandchildren out of school, and then between the dogs and maintenance of the house and the place around it, there’s always something to do every day. So it’s about having something to do, you know, that’s not artificial either, that’s not fakery,” he said.“The one thing I always hated was fakery. I won’t say something to somebody behind somebody’s back and say something completely different when I meet them. Maybe I should have a better filter, but I’m happy with that.“Maybe there’s a directness to people who become managers. I’ll always remember after Kilkenny beat Clare in the 2002 All-Ireland final. Kilkenny’s banquet was in the Burlington and I decided to go in to see Brian Cody. We were chatting away and Henry Shefflin, who’d been named man of the match, came over. Cody turned on him, [saying] ‘You hit that ball in the one spot that gave the goalie a chance to save it; never do that again’. Henry’s face ... he just turned on his heel.”Ger Loughnane has always been determined not to be a prisoner of the past. Photograph: Eamon Ward [ The waiting is over as GAA’s experimental rules go on trial in college matchesOpens in new window ]Loughnane isn’t convinced by the split season, and will wait and see how the new hurling rules work out, but there is that old certainty in his voice when he considers the serial champions and their motivation.“Next year, the Ryder Cup is going to be in Limerick. JP McManus is going to want the Liam MacCarthy Cup and the Cheltenham Gold Cup to be in Adare Manor. Look at Jim Furyk. He’s already been to Tipp and Limerick; he’s already talking about hurling; he’s nearly a hurling pundit at this stage. This is going to be a massive one for JP and Limerick are going to kill to win it for him because they know they owe him.”Loughnane was the smiling public man for long enough. By 2018, he’d had his fill of it. It was coming. He’d started to grow weary of the treks to games for RTÉ. Loved the games – don’t do him a disservice – but time started to matter more and more, and too much was being stolen from him.Ger Loughnane: 'The one thing I always hated was fakery. I won’t say something to somebody behind somebody’s back and say something completely different when I meet them'. Photograph: Eamon Ward He craved being out on the mountains with the dogs, and their excitement was always infectious to him. He was also dodging bullets in Snipers’ Alley – the term doctors use to mark the often treacherous terrain of late middle-age.Loughnane looks well for a man who died 15 years ago. He’d been in treatment for leukaemia in 2011, and word had gone around on Twitter that he’d passed away. It was an early wake-up call to the dangerous and unreliable territory of social media.“I did have a very narrow escape because, when my immune system went down, it could have been curtains. There was 24 hours when I was dodgy enough, but I had a narrower escape since that I’ve never talked about publicly. Back in 2016. I was out with the dogs one day, way up in the mountain. A fox came across our way, and the dogs went tearing off after it,” he said.[ Famous photo of Jimmy Barry-Murphy and Christy Ring a powerful reminder of Cork hurling’s lost empireOpens in new window ]“I took out my phone to video the dogs and when I watched the video back, my breath was croaky and laboured. I had no pain, but I was thinking, ‘Jeez, there’s something wrong’. I ended up in the hospital above in Galway. They did an angiogram and said they’d have to put two stents in. I was lying there, and it was taking ages, and I could see the concern on their faces.“Eventually, they finished, and your man says, ‘I want to show you something; look up at that screen there’. The image of my heart before the stents had just one vein – the tiniest of veins – getting blood through. He says, ‘That tiny vein kept you alive’. The other image was with the stents, and there was blood flowing everywhere; it was like a Delta. He was shaking his head, saying, ‘You’re the luckiest man alive’. I was on the verge of a massive heart attack, and there’d have been no coming back from it.”Two years on, in 2018, he was enthralled by what he says was the greatest hurling championship he’s ever seen. He came to a realisation. That’s it. It won’t get better than this. Go back to the dogs and the mountain air. He made the call to RTÉ head of sport Declan McBennett and walked away from The Sunday Game.Michael Lyster with Ger Loughnane and Donal O'Grady. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho “When I was hurling for Clare, I came to a point where I’d had enough of it. The following year, Sean Hehir, who I have huge regard for, was manager, and he asked me if I’d give it one more year. I said no. I never regretted it, never missed it. Leaving RTÉ ... that was the strangest of all because it was great fun, the mixture of people and the interaction we had, it was hugely enjoyable. There was no fakery,” he said.“Then, in 2018, Limerick won the All-Ireland for the first time in 45 years and, to me, it was hurling’s greatest year. The round robin came in, and it was a massive success, and there were so many brilliant games. Not many would know this, but I covered the 1978 All-Ireland final for RTÉ. I was on with Pat Hartigan of Limerick, and Bill O’Herlihy was presenter. I’ll never forget it, the three of us in a studio, looking up at a tiny television in the corner.“So 2018 marked 40 years from there. Michael Lyster was leaving too. It just seemed right for me to go. After the broadcast finished, I bumped into Jamesie O’Connor and JJ Delaney, who were there for Sky, and told them they’d never see me near a camera or a microphone again.”He’d already retired from teaching and the first year in his post-TV life was fantastic. His son Barry and wife Bridget had three kids, and he and Mary loved spending time with the grandchildren. There were holidays in the sun and days at home were often crowded and noisy. Boredom often afflicts the retired, but the Loughnane family would learn the cruel truth that boredom can be a luxury.[ Eoin Kennedy’s talent has been no secret in Cuala for quite a while nowOpens in new window ]In October 2019, Bridget was diagnosed with bowel cancer. She went through the grinder of all the treatments available but to no avail. She died in August 2022. The following February, the Loughnanes’ other son, Conor, passed away suddenly.“Jim McGuinness did an interview on The Late Late Show, and I’ll never forget it. He was telling Ryan Tubridy about the first brother he lost, and Tubridy said to McGuinness that it must have been absolutely terrible to lose a second one. McGuinness said they dealt with it because they’d already been through it. That’s a huge thing. I don’t know if you get strength from it or what it was, but we lost Conor only six months after Bridget,” said Loughnane.“That was very, very soon. For such a tragedy, as well. Bridget’s death was so traumatic that Conor’s death ... it was another obstacle that you had to overcome. It didn’t lessen it in any way, didn’t lessen any of the pain, but if you survived Bridget’s death, you could survive anything.“The grandchildren have been a massive, massive help in keeping us going, but you’d be worried about any effect on them long term. A priest said to me inside in the hospital that children are very resilient and will be back outside playing in no time. I said, ‘What about in 30 years’ time?’“So you always have that worry. But Barry is brilliant. He has a fiercely busy job, and then he comes home to the three kids, and he’s so well organised, and they’re such a team together – it’s just amazing, and they have such support from Bridget’s family, and the childminder, and the school is great to them as well. All of that support structure around them is great. All you can do is to do everything possible to limit any long-term damage to them.“The death of a mother of very young children is in a league of its own as regards tragedy. To see them grapple with the reality of their new life, that’s very difficult. And to see it sink into them that their mother is gone and won’t be coming back. That’s a very hard concept for young kids.”Loughnane takes a moment and gathers his thoughts. There is one story from the months after they lost Bridget that he keeps coming back to.Clare manager Brian Lohan celebrates with his former manager Ger Loughnane after Clare's All-Ireland hurling win in 2024. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho “When Bridget died, it was only two weeks after Aaron’s third birthday. The last time he saw her, Bridget had just slipped into a coma in the hospital, so she couldn’t speak to him. A year and a half later, I kept the date in my phone; it was January 2nd, 2024, I was up the mountain with Aaron, and he saw a deer. All the bedtime stories I’d be telling him were about deers and foxes and dogs and hares. He was mad about them and, the next thing, he saw a deer, in reality. He was so excited.“We had a great day out and, in the van coming down, he turned to me and asked, ‘Did you visit my Mam when she was in the hospital?’ This was out of the blue after all the excitement about the deer. I said, of course I did, and then he asked, ‘Did she talk back to you?’ I copped on straight away what it was. It was worrying him that she wasn’t able to talk to him when he’d gone in to see her. He was only barely three, and he remembered it. Everyone would have assumed he was too young to remember that. A year and a half later, it was bothering him. Never underestimate the mind of a child.”Aaron, Harry and Neila are the light of Ger and Mary’s lives, and he breaks into laughter when recalling the morning of the 2024 All-Ireland final, when Clare beat Cork to claim their fifth title.“We parked up the car and started walking with Harry and his cousin, Dillon, and one of them piped up – ‘We’re going to count how many times people say ‘we’re going to do it’ to us.’”That was a reference to Clare’s breakthrough win in the 1995 All-Ireland final when Loughnane was manager. At half-time, Clare trailed Offaly by two points and hadn’t got into their stride at all. Marty Morrissey was waiting for Loughnane as he headed for the tunnel. People only remember Loughnane’s final line to the RTÉ man: “We’re going to do it.”“It’s become a meme. People who weren’t born then know it. That morning, we were still a good bit away from Croke Park, and Harry goes, ‘We’re on 25 already’.”That era with two All-Irelands and three Munsters for Clare? It’s the shared laughter he relishes most, as much as the details of games. There’s always something that acts as a trigger. Ireland head to Vienna shortly to play Austria. Loughnane remembers the morning of the All-Ireland final in 1995, when Jack Charlton’s side were getting ready to make the same trip.“We flew up to Dublin very early and were staying at the Airport Hotel. Turned out the Ireland soccer team were there as well. Niall Quinn and Denis Irwin had played a bit of hurling, and they came over to wish us well. We had our breakfast in the hotel, and then the players were to go to bed for two hours,” said Loughnane.Ger Loughnane with the All-Ireland-winning Clare team of 1995. Photograph: Tom Honan/Inpho “After the players’ naps, they were to go to Colum Flynn for a rub. But I’d spotted Jack Charlton going into his room and thought we’d have a bit of fun.“So we gave the players Jack’s room number instead of Colum’s. After the third or fourth player knocked on his door, Jack got thick. He opened his door wide and sat with his feet up on the table, watching the television. No matter what kind of commotion was at the door, he wouldn’t look sideways!”The Loughnane home in Ennis has no shortage of photographs on the walls and on shelves, but you’d never know it’s a hurling house. Loughnane was the first Clare hurler to win an All Star, but he has always been determined not to be a prisoner of the past.[ Mary McAleese questioned the GAA’s attitude towards women – now they’ve replaced her with a manOpens in new window ]“I finished up with two All Stars. One of them is down in the Clare Museum. I brought Aaron in to see it because he was asking about it. It looks fairly rattled, I can tell you now. They must have let it fall. I have no idea where the other one is; it got lost,” he said.“As you see here, there’s no photographs up from when I played or managed. I think if you have photographs up and all that kind of stuff, you start living in the past. That’s the biggest danger. For me, my whole drive was to be in the record books. You know yourself in college, you’d be out in the pub, and fellas would be arguing about players and teams, and you’d be defending your own team,” he said.Clare’s Shane O'Donnell celebrates with former manager Ger Loughnane after the All-Ireland Hurling Championship Final win over Cork in 2024. Photograph: Ryan Byrne/Inpho “The big put-down for Clare always was ‘right, we’ll have a look at the record books’. You would say nothing because you’d know we weren’t there for a long, long time. To be in the record books is everything.”It’s why he says something startling. He hopes to see Clare win another All-Ireland in his lifetime, but would prefer a prize closer to home.“Think of this: John Kiely has won seven Munsters with Limerick. Clare have won six in our history – and one of those was a walkover against Kerry. If it was a choice, I’d rather see Clare win Munster than the All-Ireland,” he said.“It’s the one thing where we’re stuck in the last century. To win in Munster, it’s a huge thing. Look at the way Limerick celebrate every one of them. My best days with Clare were when we won the Munster Championship. Shane O’Donnell is gone from Clare now. He has two All-Irelands but never won a Munster. For Clare to win Munster would be immense.”