The Big Interview:
Larry O'Gorman.

By Denis Walsh
August 10, 2003

Larry O'Gorman had sunk so deep that not even his air bubbles were reaching the surface of the water. Last year he was captain of Wexford, this year he was nobody. A number. For practice matches at training he was nailed to a place on the B team. For the National League they didn't need him to start; they didn't need him coming on. Wexford lost two of their first three matches badly and it made no difference to O'Gorman's status.

He wasn't the solution. He wasn't in, he wasn't out. Just there.

On Easter Monday Wexford played Waterford in a pitch opening. Wexford had played a League game that weekend and it was their understanding that both counties would be fielding shadow fifteens. On the way Wexford trawled a few volunteers into their nets to make up a quota; Waterford fielded more or less their championship team. It finished in a pointless massacre, 6-22 to 1-5.

It was O'Gorman's first game of the year and his mother and girlfriend had come to watch. The casual humiliation turned their stomachs. O'Gorman is 35, a decorated veteran. He could walk away with an honourable discharge. What did he need with this? They felt compelled to ask the question, already knowing in their hearts the answer it would receive.

"It was embarrassing," says O'Gorman. "When it was over they were saying, 'Come on, give it up, let's go on the drink.' I said, 'No, no way. I'll keep going.' I went back into training two nights later ... During the League I was devastated, to be honest. I don't know how other people might see it or think how I'd feel about it but all along I was training hard.

Sacrificed everything. Gave up everything. Gave up drink, gave up everything. I was like a hedgehog gone into hibernation. Just trained, went home, went up to bed, got up, went to work. Some nights that I had off I went to the handball alley and went doing a couple of runs myself. Done a bit of training with the club when I should have been resting.

"When it wasn't happening there was a lot of fellas saying, 'Pack it in Larry. They're not going to use you. What the hell have you been training for the last six months for?' There was so many people saying I wasn't good enough. There was people saying I should give it up, don't be wasting your time. My father always said there's no need to listen to people like that because they don't know what it means to you and they don't know what it takes. There was no way I was going to throw a towel in here when the fight wasn't over and the battle was still going on. 'No way,' I said. 'I'll hang in there.'"

For anybody else, last summer would have been enough. The way the summer unfolded it seemed as if he was being led gently to the door. Faythe Harriers' victory in the 2001 county championship had bequeathed him the captaincy but there was no place for him at centre field or in the half-back line, those blocks of the team that had always been his neighbourhood. They needed a full-forward and O'Gorman smoothed his edges to squat into a round hole. It worked in the League and didn't in the championship. He was replaced in the Leinster final and dropped for the qualifier game against Clare a week later. He took it and came back. They could kill his career if they wanted but the blood would be on their hands; the euthanasia of retirement wasn't an option. "They told me I was too tired. They brought me on then with 20 minutes to go and I ran riot. I couldn't understand it. If somebody had asked me how I felt I'd have said, 'I feel great.' I can't understand how anybody could tell you that you feel tired."

There were times this year when doubts tried to bully his optimism. Out of the blue he played in the last match of the League against Kilkenny, but in the weeks that followed he knew he wasn't in their plans for the championship. He went to see Liam Griffin. Counsellor, guru, friend. Griffin didn't tell him anything he didn't know. He just needed to hear it, needed him to say it, to verify it.

"In training I was keeping my mouth shut and getting on with it. I spoke to Liam about it and he was saying to me, 'Just hang in there, Larry, you'll get your chance. If it happens to be your last year, enjoy it. Look at Charlie Carter, look at Brian McEvoy (who quit the Kilkenny panel). I can't see Larry O'Gorman walking out on Wexford. I can see in Larry O'Gorman's eyes, when he hurls for Wexford, what it means to him.

The passion that comes from within. I can see it in the performance.' That got me thinking again."

ACCORDING to the records O'Gorman has played more than 140 competitive games for the Wexford seniors, but tracing the origin of those statistics doesn't even take you back to the beginning. It is 22 years since he made his debut in Croke Park, a makeshift goalkeeper for the under-14s in a Leinster final against Kilkenny. He wore a borrowed helmet that was too big and secured it with Sellotape under his chin.

"It was like a dustbin on my head, it kept falling over my eyes. Six goals went past me but I blamed the helmet. Every time I pucked the ball out I used look behind me to see if I could pick out anybody I knew. I wasn't even thinking of the game. I don't think a dose of heroin would have got me on such a high."

Through that nick it entered his bloodstream: the buzz, the show, the jersey. It was plain to others the status he derived from the jersey, the definition it gave him of his place in the world, the playful hubris it allowed him to pursue. His fanaticism was childish from the beginning and that is how it remained, frozen and unstained.

He tells a story from the summer of 1996, the year Wexford won the All- Ireland for the first time in 28 years. The wedding of his youngest sister, Theresa, clashed with a special training weekend where the Wexford panel set up an army camp on the beach. He gave a reading at the mass, walked down the aisle and straight to the army camp. He returned to the reception later, stayed for an hour and a half and then left again for the camp.

"I just told them I wasn't going to annoy myself any longer and headed back to the lads. Theresa and Dermot didn't mind a bit."

In the landscape of O'Gorman's life that summer stands as a tower in the distance, visible from every place he has travelled since. There were three Hurler of the Year awards available that year and he won two of them. In the losing years he happily wore the mask of Wexford's stoicism but he was also a metaphor for Wexford's flaws. On big days in Croke Park he would take a spectacular catch over his head and launch the ball back into the skies to the acclaim of the crowd. You never knew if he was just suddenly overcome by the adrenalin of the moment or whether he was consciously playing to the galleries. Wexford had any number of talented players whose gifts were misdirected but because O'Gorman's talent was so significant and his flaws so over-blown he made for a vivid example.

Reforming O'Gorman was one of Griffin's biggest projects. At half-time of a National League match against Meath they took him off for "messing around with the ball". For the League quarter-final against Offaly he was dropped.

They had talked to him and talked to him but talking hadn't been enough. So they took away the jersey. Nothing exceeded the terror of that. It was the direct route to his senses. He changed.

O'GORMAN was born in Bishopswater, a working-class area of Wexford town. He grew up with five brothers and four sisters in a house that wasn't designed for that many. Space management was strict in the O'Gorman household. They had two bunk beds and each one slept three. When they were small they used put their heads down at opposite ends and their mother used rest a soother on each child's big toe so that the one at the other end could suck it.

Or at least that's the story she told them.

"Back then we used have sheep-dip baths. My mother used fill the bath on a Saturday night, throw us in one by one and take us out after a quick dip. Then we used run around the sitting room to dry out. We used always say that the first up in the morning was the best dressed going to school.

"Our street used be called Hungry Hill because whatever you seen you grabbed and you ate it. There was a tradition for big families. There was families with 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 kids. There were seven or eight families that big.

"People used call me 'Hand-me-downs.' There was a lot of things passed down to lads along the line, whether it was clothes or gear or hurls or boots. It wasn't the rich side of town."

In Bishopswater sport was another of the atmosphere's gases. Hurling, football, handball, tennis, golf, soccer, you name it. "I didn't have to look for sport, sport was there. You were born to it."

His father, Paddy, was a GAA man but for a townie he also had a passion for the countryman's pursuits of shooting and fishing. He drove a moped and Larry can remember being taken out to the fields on a summer's evening - his father, their dog and Larry all transported by a mesmerising trick of balance. Rabbits were their quarry. Paddy had a double-barrelled shotgun; Larry brought his hurley and took aim with the handle.

Hurling, though, was the biggest thing. Bishopswater is home to Faythe Harriers. Growing up his heroes were neighbours: the O'Connors, the Walkers, 'Sack' Walsh, 'Heffo' Walsh, Liam Bennett, Jimmy Goodison, Ned Buggy. They weren't all Wexford players, but that didn't necessarily matter.

"It was great to be going to matches and watching lads from your own street. You wouldn't care about anybody else on the field. You'd be there carrying their gear bag from the dressing room out to the car, stuff like that. Going to watch them training and standing there in a dressing room after a match and all of them looking like giants of men. I grew up with that. You'd have hurling matches out on the green, four or five or six a side. Put the gear bags down at either end for goals. Men and young lads and women if they wanted to join in. Some women used a sweeping brush - hurleys were fairly scarce at the time."

From their street Wexford Park was a short walk and on match days O'Gorman and his friends were drawn to it. When they didn't have money to pass through the gate they scaled the wall, hoisted on each other's shoulders. After matches they scavenged for broken hurleys and at work the following day Paddy would mend the sundered pieces with panel pins and masking tape. After a while the groundsman appointed O'Gorman to stand behind the goal on match days and return the ball. He was given 10p for his trouble, or a couple of toffees.

Three of O'Gorman's brothers and one of his sisters played for Wexford. The family moped was no good on match days such as those so a mini-bus would be hired for the supporters. More than 20 years after its first excursion the mini-bus followed O'Gorman to his All-Ireland medal.

At the final whistle O'Gorman had the match ball in his fist and guided by fate's kind hand two of his sisters got to him on the pitch before he was swept away on a tidal wave of supporters. He entrusted the ball to them. It was O'Gorman's wish to put the ball on the grave of his late brother, Francis, but he made the mistake of making the intention public and people began ringing him to ask where his brother was buried. He knew the ball would be whipped, so he satisfied himself with the intention. One of his sisters has it now, perched on a plinth of Waterford crystal.

"Francis was a brother we never really got to know because he died when he was only three or four but he was always part of our family. We still think of him as a great loss and we still go to the graveyard and say a few prayers. He name was always kept with us. As a family we've always stuck together. We did things together, we went to mass together, we travelled together. Very close and united."

In a corner of the Distillery Bar in Bishopswater there is a framed picture of O'Gorman at the end of the 1996 All-Ireland final with the ball in his hand. Alongside is a mounted hurley signed by every member of the panel. In good times the celebrations never finished before they reached the Distillery Bar; in bad times it has been a refuge. Some of the men he jostled with on the green when he was a boy drink here. When he needs an arm around his shoulder they extend it. The families around here are big.

A NEW WEXFORD management took over at the beginning of the year and they were never going to hunt O'Gorman from the dressing room. If he never pucked a ball there was a richness to his presence. Larry O is a character, a messer, a chancer. There are many stories to demonstrate this to the satisfaction of the court but none better than the day he missed the tourist boat to Alcatraz on the Wexford team holiday, early in 1997. The taxi bringing him to the boat was late and as he stood on the wharf in San Francisco with three of his teammates the rest of the panel waved from the bay. At a loose end, they idled along the waterfront and as they did a black stretch limo pulled up. The lads passed no heed on it until a wave of people surged by. When they looked around Muhammad Ali was standing there.

In an instant Larry O realised that this was his chance to make Ali's day. "There was people bowing and crying but I just went over talking to him. I shook his hand and mentioned a few things to him about Dublin and the time he fought in Croke Park. He wasn't able to talk too well but we had a bit of a laugh. A couple of minutes later I was taking a picture of Tommy Kehoe (Wexford player) and Ali was walking towards us. I looked over at him and said, 'Ali, I'm the greatest.' He just looked at me and put up two fists. He tapped me on the back of the head and walked on. I ran off. I was like a young child after getting my first ice cream."

We've seen the picture. Ali in black, Larry O in his Wexford track suit. For the story to have any sort of sustainable existence, documentary evidence was critical. Larry O must have sensed that. To the dressing room, though, he brought more than levity. The new management asserted the value of his experience and his willingness to share it with the young players. O'Gorman accepted their thanks and reminded them that he could perform that function for the team on the field of play. For the Leinster championship his plea fell on deaf ears. He remained on the bench, unused.

"The day of the Leinster final I was like a young greyhound waiting to get out for his first gallop. It just wasn't happening for us that day. I was sitting next to Dave Guiney and Larry Murphy was out in front of me and we were looking around at each other saying, 'What's happening?' You'd be thinking, 'For 15 or 20 minutes here we could make a lot of difference.' Just to come on and give the team a buzz or a lift or whatever. The same from Larry Murphy's point of view. He said the same. If he got a run in the Leinster final it might have got things going."

Over the following days he detected a change in the climate. Wexford had been overpowered in the Leinster final. Centre field had been cleaned out. They looked at O'Gorman. Seriously. The attention was like the sun on O'Gorman's back. "After a couple of training sessions John the Wexford manager said, 'That's it Larry, you're flying. Great stuff.' The more they said that to me the better I got. And the more Martin Quigley said it to me and Dickie Murphy (selectors) 'Ah, Larry boy, you're flying, great stuff.' So I was getting better and getting better and getting better all along. It came to the middle of the week before the Waterford game and I was jumping out of my skin."

On the eve of the Waterford game the Wexford team was announced and his name was there. Restored. "I felt I was coming back from the dead. I was in a coffin for a few months and the lid wasn't properly closed down. I was sky-high."

His father hadn't been well, although he isn't so bad now. He needs a heart by-pass and he's waiting. But for the Waterford game his mother said that Paddy was "like a new man". All year Paddy had felt his son's despair. They all did. They knew that Wexford would dispense with their son one day and they dreaded the parting. O'Gorman can prepare for it, but he won't be ready.

"I wonder why guys give it up so easily. I hate the thought of giving up. I honestly thought that hurling was bigger than anything else in life. I gave up so much in life for it. People say, 'Ah but Larry, you're able to get out and enjoy yourself and do this and do that.' But that's the type of character I am. I don't mind going into a pub and having a Ballygowan or something like that. There's other walks of life where I could have had a boat and be gone fishing every weekend. I could be going out with the boys on holidays, I could be going to parties, weddings, twenty-firsts, barbecues. You don't. You're at home and you're looking at a video of the '96 Leinster final or reading a programme from the '93 League final against Cork. It would sound silly to a lot of guys but it's important to us."

The last time O'Gorman met Cork in a championship match was the All-Ireland minor final of 1985. He started in the corner that day but was shifted to centre-back and struck over two points. They lost by seven. It was a good Cork team but it is seven years since the last of them played senior championship. Seanie Flood and Ger Cushe were on that Wexford team. Cushe is retired long enough to have done two years as a senior selector with Tony Dempsey. Flood finished up in 2001. O'Gorman was an All Star nominee that year.

His story is deep in the last chapter. Maybe on the last page. He'll push it to the last word.

The Big Interview: Larry O'Gorman.

The Big Interview:
Larry O'Gorman.