Hayes still striving to fill the void.

Four miles from Portumna, Al Hayes Motors sprawls out on the side of a road to nowhere in particular, the cars aligned in neat rows across the fields. New and second-hand, biggest and best in the west. Providing cars and hurlers to the locality is Hayes’ most prosperous trade, and these days business is good.

Damien hurls for Galway, as have his brothers, Derek and Niall. Last October they were busy helping Portumna — a side sponsored by their father, Al — win their first county title. They wore tracksuit tops with Port an Omra stitched under their club crests. This was the real deal.

They just wanted a gimmick to top it all off. Looking around the lot, they thought about an old blue 1992 Volkswagen Passat and contracted the germ of an idea. They took the Passat and illuminated the fading blue by painting half of the car yellow, the club colours. Every St Patrick’s Day, they include some of their cars as part of the parade. Plenty of advertising hoardings and horn blowing. They pulled out an old hoarding, painted a pair of hurleys onto it and attached it to the roof rack on top of the car. On the day of the final, Damien helped carry Portumna over the line. That night, as the team bus drove past the bonfires in nearby Killimor and on through Portumna out to the townland of Gortanumera in which Hayes’ place stretches out and 11 of the panel were raised, Al and the Passat were out front leading them home.

“Drove it up to Athleague then for the Connacht final and then to Clones,” says Damien. “It wasn’t a bad old car afterwards.”

By the time they lost to Dunloy in the All-Ireland semi-final a few weeks ago Portumna looked tired, but on the day Dunloy were just plain better. Still, by then they had memories that will still make them smile long after the semi-final is forgotten and the old Passat is bitten by rust and the paint peeled away. Losing to Dunloy hurt, but winning a county final offered them an antidote.

That was everything to them. Last October, Hayes lost his second successive All-Ireland under-21 final, to Kilkenny. Galway were poor and Kilkenny steamrolled them. It devastated him, but also helped in the making of him.

“Losing with the under-21s drove me more as a player to win the club senior (title). It was just that I didn’t want to lose no more, simple as that. Losing is such a terrible feeling I didn’t want to feel it anymore.”

He swept through the club championship like a bushfire, incinerating teams as he went. In the county final against Loughrea, he picked up a knee injury six minutes into the game. By half-time the final was hanging there for Portumna to win, but Hayes was struggling in the dressing room.

“They gave me physio but my leg was fierce sore when I went to bend it all the way back. I went out and was put in full-forward. What was said was they’d give me five minutes and see how it goes. That’s when it hit me. Five minutes, and I could be on the bench.”

He resumed the match, blocked out the pain and did what he does best, picking up ball out the field and running hard at Loughrea, drawing frees and pulling markers out of position.

With 10 minutes left Portumna were four points down, but ended up winning by four. In the second half he created 1-4 and finished up man of the match. After the game his injury was diagnosed as cartilage damage, and he was out for 10 weeks. When he considered a trip to Rome with Connacht for the Railway Cup, he was told one twist could snap his cruciate ligament.

He slowed down then, so he could speed up now. He sets out for his fourth year with the Galway seniors, hoping for a decent League and a few spoons of confidence to nourish the team. His two All-Ireland minor medals were dulled slightly by Galway’s failure at under-21 level, and the unhealthy clamour that once surrounded the mass production of All-Ireland winning minors in Galway has largely passed. People have been forced to be patient and let things evolve themselves.

“I’m not sure there is massive talent in Galway,” he says. “We’ve basically had the same bunch of players for the last three or four years. We wouldn’t have the talent that Kilkenny would have. The one thing about our underage teams is that we produce small hurlers. We’re not producing men. We’ve lovely little corner-forwards and all that but we don’t have any big men coming, but we’ll just have to keep trying.”

The effort will come easily to him. At home, they hurl their way through the days, talking it and playing it. Cars are bought and sold from the lot and the family farm is kept ticking over, all to the backing track of hurling talk and matches. Damien, Niall and Derek have played for Galway at different levels. Another brother is in an under-14 development squad for the county. When he was growing up a fourth brother, Keith, was closest to Damien in age. They played in Croke Park for the first time together in 1993 — at half-time on All-Ireland final day as part of the mini-sevens exhibition games.

Together, they saw action as minors with Portumna, while Keith stepped up to the plate with Galway. In 1997 he won man of the match in the All-Ireland minor final against Clare. In 1998 he scored 2-9 from play against Kiltormer in a county minor final. Damien stood inside at corner-forward, shuffling from foot to foot, watching his brother in wonder. The rest of the county was too.

Then in April 1999, everything stopped. Keith was killed in a car crash a mile from home. The entire area was numbed. People rallied round. Damien had attended a few trials for the Galway minors, and manager John Hardiman called to the house to tell him he’d seen enough. He was in, there was no need to attend any more trials. He’d call again for him when the time was right. He did, and the Hayes family have never forgotten him for it.

Hurling wrapped itself around the family and gave what support it could. Later that year, Portumna won another county minor title. Damien was team captain, but it was Keith that inspired them.

“We won that for him as a group of players. Ah, it was fierce special that one. Fierce special victory. He was some hurler. He had some pace. When he soloed with a ball there’d be no one catching him.”

That September, Damien was still hurling and getting on with things. The Galway minors got to the All-Ireland final and beat Kilkenny.

“It all helped us move on slightly. They say you never get over it, you just get used to it. When we won the minor All-Ireland that was very special. After the year, at least it was a bit of an up.

“You have to move on with your life as well. You can’t be pitying yourself the whole time. There were so many lovely people that supported us. It was an awful tragedy, but at least we know we’re certain to meet again anyway.”

Life went on. By the end of his years as a minor, Hayes had All-Ireland medals from 1999 and 2000. The following year he was a substitute with the seniors as Galway lost the All-Ireland final to Tipperary. It seems so distant, and the climb back to that level is so far, that it’s hard to get a handle on it all now.

“We could’ve done it that year, and probably should’ve. I thought I was going to get it all in one year, but it just didn’t come and we haven’t even got close to making another one (final) since. It just shows you when you get a chance you’ve got to try and take it. It was a gas time, a great year to be part of it all. I came on in the quarter-final and played a few challenge games. That day we should’ve won it, but what can you do?” Since then, times have been tough but Hayes has clung grimly to the course no matter what. Last year he headed to Bolton to complete his degree in Automobile Engineering but kept coming home for hurling. He enjoyed the life, occasionally headed over to the Reebok Stadium and sometimes took the train to Piccadilly Station in Manchester and from there the tram to Old Trafford, but his Friday routine was set in stone. In the morning he would fly into Dublin and get a bus to Kill, county Kildare. From there he would walk a mile out the road to a Volkswagen/Audi depot and drive a car down to the garage. Then he’d hurl for the weekend with Portumna and check in with Galway.

One weekend he came home to play Wexford in a League game and took a knock on the elbow that turned out to be a flake fracture. It forced the hurling out for a few months, and the books took over.

The following May he was back home with his degree, fit and ready. After Clare were despatched, they met Tipperary in Salthill. A late goal from Hayes helped slim the gap to a point in the end, but Galway’s failure to score for 20 minutes underlined the actual gap between them.

Now, Galway turn into another League and the uncertainty of a championship where they remain the only team in the country not to have a hoot of an idea who they will play in June. Leinster issued an invitation for Galway to join their championship last winter, but the offer was rejected.

“I was disappointed we didn’t go into Leinster. At least we would’ve known who we were playing in the championship before the League started rather than finding out six days before the match.

“It would have been good games for us. Kilkenny have won the last few Leinster titles and throwing Galway into the mix would’ve added another bit of flavour. You wouldn’t have known what would’ve happened.”

But he’ll plough on, selling cars and hurling and praying for a moment’s peace. Living a life within a life. One sustained by the other.