HurlingÕs marathon man plays over seven decades

Date Published: {J}

ONE suspects that the greats of the game – Cork’s Christy Ring, Limerick’s Mick Mackey, Tipperary’s Jimmy Doyle or Kilkenny’s Eddie Keher – would love to have boasted of the ‘claim to fame’, for want of a better term, of Vice-President of the Galway Hurling Board, Richie Williams.

It’s as simple as this. Williams – now in his late sixties – has fielded at adult level in Galway championship hurling every decade since he first made his appearance as a teenager in the Cussane (Athenry) colours in 1958. It is quite the record.

Williams is modest about the accomplishment and it takes almost two hours of conversation before he even begins to open up about his own exploits in the game. Instead, he prefers to concentrate and chat about Tuam Hurling Club, reciting the history of the club as if he were reading it from the Bible.

However, what Williams fails to realise is that, at least in later years, he has been as much a part of Tuam Hurling Club as Tuam Hurling Club has been a part of him. In many respects, Williams is the embodiment of Tuam HC – a fact underlined by Williams’ willingness to answer the call for the club’s only adult side for their first round tie against Tynagh/Abbey-Duniry in the Junior ‘C’ championship earlier this year.

“Well, we were short,” chuckles the retired Garda, who, coincidentally, was manager of that side. “Very short!”

The Carnaun, Athenry native – who joined the club in the late 70s – relaxes into his armchair. “What happened there were some fellows didn’t make it on time and Michael Walsh – who is as old as myself – and I played in it. I played in the full-forward line.

“Then fellows came but I was there for about 20 or 25 minutes before I went off. Michael was in goal. I thought when the others arrived, that it was grand, but then, in the second half, about five minutes in, this fellow pulled a muscle and I had to go full-back. Needless to say, we were hammered.”

Still, one of the most important things in life and hurling is turning up and for well over a century Tuam – quite often, against all the odds – has been doing that. And Williams, invariably, has always been there to fight the good fight, be it with Cussane or Athenry in the ’50s, ’60s and early ’70s or Tuam in the late ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, 2000s and now 2010s.

“So, I have played every decade from the 50s,” muses Williams, who has also held every office at one time or another with Tuam Hurling Club. “I suppose, once a fool, always a fool!”

Just as Talking Sport is about to chide him for the statement, the Tuam Secretary and County Delegate adds with a smile: “You know, I had a bypass in 2008. So, I thought then my career had almost run its course. I was manager of the junior team this year, though, so that is why it was easy to pick myself!”

No doubt, given his medical background, the conversation he had with his loving wife Patricia that evening was likely to have been an interesting one! By the same token, though, Williams argues that were it not for hurling, he might not be with us today.

Having been down at the pitch one evening, he was pucking around a ball with a clubmate when he got a sharp pain. “I said I better get it checked out,” adds Williams. “So, hurling probably saved my life.”

In any event, it is hard to dispute his love of hurling and this shines through as he alludes to the trials and tribulations of the Tuam club. As far as he is aware, the club was founded in 1903, although he notes hurling was played under the banner of St. Jarlath’s of Tuam prior to this time.

In the ensuing years, the club – located in the football stronghold of North Galway, where their sister club Tuam Stars leads the senior football roll of honour with 24 titles – toiled as best it could with the small ball, although with the turning of the sod on the local sugar factory by Eamon De Valera on November 24, 1933 it looked as if the club’s fortunes were also to change for the better.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.