You'll see sketches and pieces about hurling, the historic game of Ireland.
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 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 Cornwall Lifeboatman was done.
Sixty two years later, he looks at me questioningly from the hallway wall.
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.
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 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.
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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.

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​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.
I said my goodbyes to the boys of the band. There are times when the only way to be is solitary.

A vague anxiety was hovering somewhere in the back of my mind.
I couldn’t find a cause for it.  It wasn’t even that there was 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 found myself wandering into Lewisham High Street.
In those days most shops were shut on Sundays. The street was a canyon of glass and concrete, with people meandering, strolling, window-shopping, chatting, looking, buying tea at the tea stalls, all 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 walls of hot sun-reflecting glass, the rumble of buses and the crowd on the sun-bright 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. Turning down an alleyway, I came to the green square in Catford where I lived. The square was ringed by tall chestnuts and beeches, with the sun dappling through the leaves and branches in shadow-patterns on the short grass.
I was heading for a wooden bench in the sunny gap between two trees when I was brought to a standstill by a strident high and familiar voice.
From an open window on the far side of the green, Miceál O’Héihir was sounding the halftime score of the All Ireland Hurling Final.
Like filings to a magnet, I was drawn across the green. “And the Wexford men are traipsing off” intoned Miceál.
A face appeared in the open window. “Where are you from?” Asked the face.
“Wexford” I answered.

​
“A Jaysus! We’re batin’ the shite out o’ ye”, he exclaimed. “Come on in! Hear in the second half!”
“Thanks”, I said “leave the window open, I’ll sit here on the wall.”

On the wall, with my back to the window, I sat looking over the small green. But I wasn’t seeing that green patch of grass in a square in South East London.
I was seeing the green fields and the rolling hills of south county Wexford, the back roads and the winding lanes, the high hedges and the looping Hawthorne. I was hearing the rattle of the empty billycan on the handlebars of the bike on the old dusty road, the chirrup of birds in the hedgerow, that early evening birdsong, the bark of a dog as I passed a gate, the greeting, 'grand day' from a passing farmer, as I made my way to Grant’s farm to to collect the milk for the following day.
Then a Croke Park roar interrupted my reverie.

The second-half was starting. Miceál was announcing the throw -in. The cheering and the roaring filled the air.
“Wexford are eight points down!… A wide for Tipperary!“, Shouted Miceál “…pucks it out… Phil Wilson catches….bursts past Babs Keating…runs through Jimmy Doyle. …flicks it over to Jack Berry! Here come the Boys of Wexford!” Roared Miceál, his voice rising, excitement mounting…
.”A pass back to Paul Lynch…Paul looks up, steadies and strikes…and it’s over the bar! A point for Wexford!!
This looks like a different Wexford team from the first half…”. The rest of his words were lost in the voice of the entire Wexford county as it roared the team on.

“…a long puck out…a bobbing ball…Dan Quigley gathers.”
Some of his words were getting lost in bursting roars from the crowd in Croke Park.
Amid the background din came names and words that meant that the Wexford men were fighting back. The name Dan Quigley came up again,… “What a catch! Flips it over to Ned Colfer!
Colfer to Willie Murphy!
Murphy to Phil Wilson!
Phil turns and fires it up the field! It’s coming down!.
Tony Doran is in there!! So is Christy Jacob! So is Seamus Whelan!
“Up goes Tony! He catches! Holds, and swivels.!
He palms the ball!
He shortens the grip and with a mighty twist of the shoulders buries it in the Tipperary net!”
​

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​It was a simply stated 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, winding lane ways 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.

And later went.

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