Aaron Gillane has Patrickswell coursing through his veins.
He’s a proud Limerick man of course, but he’s a Patrickswell man first and foremost.
No cliches, no triteness, just full-on hell-for-leather passion for the village he was born, reared and made in. The celebrations of the All-Ireland win were great, but God by the end of it all, this man was just delighted to get back in with his club.
To get back hurling with the lads he’s shared a field with since he was six. To get back talking to the men like Ciaran Carey and Gary Kirby who, as mentors, have helped make him the hurler he is today.
The journey with Limerick was a life-changing one, but you get the impression from Gillane that the most important part of it all for him was the joy it’s brought to Patrickswell.
That’s what matters most.
“You miss the club so much when you’re training through the whole year with Limerick, you don’t really get to be around that much,” he said at a PwC event on Wednesday.
He’s a club-man, a family man.
“There’s people you’ve been playing with since you were four or five. They’re your next-door neighbours and your best friends. It’s great to get back in with them.”
His younger brother Jason is a minor now and he’s one of his club team’s key players. He’s not far off the club’s senior team and he’s aspiring to take off on a similar trail to the one his older brother began blazing when he was around that age.
Gillane will be doing his best to lead him the right way too.
“My brother is on the panel this year. It’s my first year playing with him so that’s nice as well.
“He’s a minor but he’s on the senior panel. He’d be close enough (to the team), maybe next year. His main focus will be winning the minor. They haven’t won that in a few years so that’s what I’ll be telling him to focus on.”
“They actually won the minor semi-final last night so they’re into the final now. It’s something else to look forward to. We’ve a county (senior) quarter-final and a minor final to look forward to so there’ll be a good buzz around the village for the next few weeks,” he said.
And that’s why winning alongside his club-mates and his best friends, Diarmuid Byrnes and Cian Lynch was extra special for Gillane. They’ve been side by side every step of this brilliant journey so far, and they’re hoping that there’s even more great days to come in the blue and yellow and in the green and white.
“The three of us are be best friends. Myself and Cian have played all the way from U6s to senior with the club. We were in Ard Scoil together and won a Harty Cup, at minor we won together, then Mary I won Fitzgibbon together, we won two U21s together and now the senior.
“This is an unreal experience but it’s even better to be able to share it with him and Diarmuid.”
And as regards to Cian Lynch’s first touch, the very best in the country. Gillane admits to being a tad jealous of his club-man’s ability to stop a ball dead no matter what pace or what direction it’s travelling at.
“I don’t know how! The ball just gets glued to his hand and his hurley. I don’t know how he does it half the time and I don’t think he does either,” he said.
Amazingly, Gillane claims
“He doesn’t practice it at all, I don’t know where it comes out of – it’s kind of natural. I’m kind of jealous to be honest.”
Sometimes, lads are just born with it.
It certainly helps if they’re from Patrickswell.
Aaron Gillane of Limerick, was on hand to help launch the new PwC All Stars App and pick up his All-Ireland final man-of-the-match award.
The event took place at PwC on Spencer Dock in Dublin.
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