​​You'll see sketches about hurling, the historic game of Ireland, and the fastest field game in the world.
However, the fastest field game in the world is changing.
For centuries it has been representative of parishes, towns, villages and areas, played for the honour and the privilege of representing where the players came from.
And it still is, perhaps with even more passion.
​It's played for the honour and the respect of fellow-team-members, opponents, neutral observers and followers who simply know and love the game.
The sport is now gaining global eminence. 
The travelling Irish, Television, Social Media and other channels have all contributed to the spreading of the word that a game exists in which the skills are unsurpassed, the speed and action are spectacular, and the spirit of the players is extraordinary. 

For many years, as a boy, my time was spent sketching with pencils.
It got lost in the run of life at about the age of 19 or 20.
However, having come across a couple of pencil drawings from 1964, which my wife liked, and thought them good enough to hang in the hallway,  the wish to take part in this revealing, soothing and refreshing activity resurrected itself.
I was twenty then, when that last sketch of a robed and bearded gentleman from the East was done.

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Sixty two years later, he looks at me questioningly from the hallway wall.

Wherever you are in the world, at whatever stage in your life, you are very welcome, and if you feel you'd like to write, relate an incident, or just say 'hello', get in touch.
I'll be glad to hear from you.
​And your word will not go unacknowledged.

During the years in between, I had attended many hurling matches, not only because I'm a hurling fan,  of the teams and of the followers, but because it gave me direct connection with people from Wexford, my home county.

I'm also a fan of Hurling People. They're a breed.

So, what you'll see here is a collection of sketches of hurling action, in pencil, pen and sometimes colour.
If you read the accompanying texts, you'll get views, opinions and some little stories about what hurling has done for people at odd times, myself included, and what it has come to mean to many of us.
I've had a great time ​compiling this website. I'll carry on, building on the stories, the observations, getting yarns, contributions and incidents from readers, and putting in the few sketches.
If you get one half of the enjoyment that I did, and do, from this, you'll be having a grand time too.
​

​

​How Tony Doran, the Wexford hurling Team,
​      and I, won the 1968 All-Ireland Hurling Final.

It was 1968. We’d just finished a Sunday lunch gig in the “Green Man“ pub, Blackheath Common, South London.
The instruments had been loaded into the van. Our work was done for the day.
The boys in the band were going to a gig in hyde Park that afternoon. They said I should join them. But there are times in life when you want, and need, to be on your own.
Without having to converse, or take part in something, or go along.
You just need to be. To exist. Without interference. Without interruption.

There are those times when the only way to be is solitary.
At ease and within yourself.

And a vague anxiety was hovering somewhere in the back of my mind.
I couldn’t find a cause for it.  There wasn't even anything wrong.
I just didn’t feel right.
I felt without direction, unsettled, aimless.
And that was how my mind responded; aimlessly. 

Moving from the Common, I wandered into Lewisham High Street.
In those days most shops were shut on Sundays. The street was a canyon of glass and concrete.
People meandering, strolling, window-shopping, chatting, looking, buying tea at the tea stalls,  milling slowly in the warm September sun.
Behind a tea stall at which I had stopped, was a barrow full of books, all hardbacks, with their spines turned up.

Picking up what turned out to be an old English reader, with essays by the likes of Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Dickens, John D Sheridan, a page dropped open on “The Wayfarer”, the poem by Pádraic Pearse.
There, amid the roar of traffic, the high concrete buildings, the reflecting glass of the shop windows, the rumble of buses and the crowd on the sun-baked city concrete, my eye fell on the words,

“… To see a leaping squirrel in a tree,
Or a red ladybird upon a stalk,
Or little rabbits in a field at evening,
Lit by a slanting sun, on some green hill,
Where shadows drifted by…“

And they took my breath away.

I paid 6p for tea, three pennies for the book, and moved on.

Now, in the realm of theatres of the world, every city has its centres. New York has Broadway; London has Shaftesbury Avenue.
 
But for real theatre of human emotion, passion, heroism, triumph, and heartbreak, nowhere in the world compares to Dublin’s Croke Park on an All-Ireland Hurling Final Day.
 
This was what was revealed to me on that warm September Sunday in 1968.
 
Walking back to my flat in Catford, South-East London, I heard the strident, unmistakable voice of Miceal O’Heihir through an open window.
He was announcing the halftime score of the hurling final. “Tipperary one goal and 11 points”, said Miceal, “Wexford one goal and three points.”
 
 Wexford.  My county.  In the all-Ireland.  And I hadn’t even known it.
 
I stood, stunned, stilled by the name of my county, the sudden flash of pictures and memories and the notion that what was a magnificent event for the county was taking place.
​And I hadn't even known about it.
 
The Wexford men were traipsing off, eight points down. It sounded bleak.
A face appeared in the open window from which the broadcast was coming.
 
“Where’re ye from?” It asked. 
“Wexford” I replied.
 
“We’re batin’ the lard outa ye. Yiz are in for murder in the second half.”
There was a hint of sympathy in his tone.
 
He invited me in to listen.
I politely declined, sat on the wall, facing a grass-covered square in that part of London city.
 
But I was seeing the green of my home county, the patchwork of fields stretching off behind the village of Kilmore Quay, the high hedgerows, the looping Hawthorne, and the winding lanes.
I was hearing the wash of the waves on the front strand, and the crash and hiss of the Atlantic as it thundered on to the Burrow.
  
I was off the wall, on the pathway!
Scything with my imaginary hurl, scoring, pointing, hooking, blocking, with the Boys of Wexford in Croke Park. 
 
The game raged on
 
Jack Berry goes for a high one,  catches it from the clutches of five other probing hands in the air, tears past TJ Ryan, and far out, lets fly.
 
Up it goes, soaring high, high, high, sixty-three thousand pairs of eyes on it in Croke Park Dublin, mine on it in Catford, South-East London.
By sheer force of will, we floated it majestically between the Tipperary uprights.
 
We were inspired!
 
Another long one deep into the Tipperary half.
Paul Lynch rises, catches, passes it to the path of the sprinting Jack Berry. Jack grips it in full flight. A roaring crowd propels him into the Tipperary goal area.
He darts to the left, pirouettes to the right, and fires.
 
The net billows! Another Wexford goal!
 
Croke Park erupted in Dublin!
I erupted in Catford, South-East London!
 
Out it came again, a long ball aimed down the field for Tipperary’s Jimmy Doyle. But Jimmy was hurting, off his game.
 
 I was hearing the rattle of the billycan as I cycled to Grant's farm for the milk.
I was passing Murphy’s gate, standing up on the pedals, pumping and accelerating away from their barking dog.
I was seeing the blue skies, the puff clouds, the green fields with the lazy cows, and the darting rabbits. 
 
And my reverie was interrupted. 
 
Second half.
It had started. The teams were out again. There was a note of change in Miceal's voice.
 
Dan Quigley caught a highball, pumped it upfield to Tony Doran.
Tony grabbed it, passed to a running Paul Lynch, who looked, lifted, and fired it over for a second Wexford point.
 
Miceal’s Voice was lifting, his speech quickening. The roar was louder. The game was getting faster. 
 
Miceal was now calling them “the Boys of Wexford”. There was warmth, admiration, a rising excitement to his tone. 
 
This was a different Wexford team from the first half.
 
Flashes, scenes of my home county, were exploding into my mind
 
The game hurled on
 
Ned Colfer flicked one over to Dan Quigley. Dan boomed it up the field to his brother John. 
 
John passed to Paul Lynch. Paul to Jack Berry. Jack turns, fires, straight between the posts. The game was changing.
 
 There was a fresh and definite rhythm, a gathering pace, a surging momentum, in Croke Park.
You could sense it in the voice of the commentator, the roars and rippling changes of the cadence in the crowd.
 It was growing into me in Catford, Southeast London.
The Boys of Wexford were roaring back to life. 
 
Up goes Big Dan again.
A mighty catch! He bursts out and passes inch-perfect to a running Phil Wilson.
 Phil runs and jinks, deep into the Tipperary half.
Over it flies to Tony Doran. 
 
Tony turns, twists, trips and falls, bounds back up, and with a mighty surge, bursts through the Tipperary back line.....… and buries it!!
 
I was off the wall, on the pathway!
Scything with my imaginary hurl, scoring, pointing, hooking, blocking, with the Boys of Wexford in Croke Park. 
 
The game raged on
 
Jack Berry goes for a high one,  catches it from the clutches of five other probing hands in the air, tears past TJ Ryan, and far out, lets fly.
 
Up it goes, soaring high, high, high, sixty-three thousand pairs of eyes on it in Croke Park Dublin, mine on it in Catford, South-East London.
By sheer force of will, we floated it majestically between the Tipperary uprights.
 
We were inspired!
 
Another long one deep into the Tipperary half.
Paul Lynch rises, catches, passes it to the path of the sprinting Jack Berry. Jack grips it in full flight. A roaring crowd propels him into the Tipperary goal area.
He darts to the left, pirouettes to the right, and fires.
 
The net billows! Another Wexford goal!
 
Croke Park erupted in Dublin!
I erupted in Catford, South-East London!
 
Out it came again, a long ball aimed down the field for Tipperary’s Jimmy Doyle. But Jimmy was hurting, off his game.
​
Running onto it was Wexford’s Nick O’Donnell, booming it up the field to Phil Wilson, a flick to John Quigley, and then to the mighty Tony.
And to me in South East London.
 
Tony and I!
 

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Up we went, going high and hard, snatching it from Tipp defenders, and before we’d even hit the ground, palmed it, swivelled, and fired, rattling and billowing the Tipperary net to the roar of the worldwide Wexford voice!
 
We were ahead. On we hurled.
 
Tony and the team in Croke Park. 
Me in Catford, South East London.
 
We hurled, tackled, blocked, and hooked. We were men possessed.
 
Our lungs were burning, our legs were screaming, our shoulders were aching.
 And on we hurled. 
The pitch got bigger.
The ball got smaller.
Fatigue hauled on weary limbs. Moving the body was like pushing through thick mud. 
But the whiff of victory pumped hand, heart and body into a frenzy of energy and purpose.

 
The Boys of Wexford in Croke Park. Me in Catford, South East London.
 
The scores were building. The points were mounting.
Two more times we smashed the Tipperary net.
We inspired ourselves.
 
Committing sublime, murderous strokes like relentless assassins.
 
And then it went; the shrill, thin, merciful blast of the final whistle.
 
Wexford 5-8, Tipperary 3-12.
 
We, Wexford, were the All-Ireland Champions.
 
Sitting on the wall, relief, elation, pride, the sense of identity, all in an exquisite sadness, flooded through me in body-shocking sobs.
 
“What’re ye bawlin about?” asked Tipperary. He was at the windowsill, sucking on a Gold Flake.
“Ye’ve just won the All-Ireland!”
 
I took a breath. The sobs subsided. The cheering and the noise faded.
 
 I turned to that kindly Tipperary man.
 
 The change that had swept over Croke Park in Dublin, and into my life in Catford, Southeast London, in those thirty-five minutes of hurling history, expressed everything I felt.

​“I’m going home,” I said.

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​A simple declaration.

And it wasn’t talking about the small apartment around the corner; in Catford, South East London, which I had casually called my home, the place where I currently lay my head, where I slept, where I ate, where I'd come to live with and know the kind people of the area.
No.
It was to green fields and high ditches, the winding laneways and hidden farmhouses, birds in a clear sky, warm quiet greetings on the roads, chance meetings at crossroads, rabbits in the fields at evenings, lit by slanting suns on green hills, where shadows drifted by…..
That was the home to which I was going.

That home.

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If you 'd like to purchase any of the sketches or coloured paintings you see on this site, get in touch on 087 2321128, or [email protected] 
Jersey colours can be altered to your club or county preference.

Or you may like a picture, or pictures, with appropriate captions.
Let me know. 353 87 2321128.
[email protected]