Travel broadens the mind.
It opens your eyes. It scratches the itch. It refreshes you.
There’s no real doubting any of those things but what you can maybe roll your eyes at is the idea that everyone who leaves Ireland for whatever length of time has suddenly had an epiphany and ‘found’ themselves.
What people hate most is when their friends go away and shit all over the place that rared them. The place that is their home.
- ‘I could never live in Derry,’ says the man who spent the last 27 years living in Derry.
- ‘You just realise there’s more out there,’ says the girl working a 9-5, but just in a different city.
- ‘I have the travelling bug now,’ says the person back from a three-week holiday (but don’t call it a holiday).
What very few tell you is the real truth. That they missed home. That going away only made them prouder of where they’re from and it made them appreciate the things they once thought they didn’t even like.
"Even the things I thought I hated, those were the things I missed…" https://t.co/pVrZk7a048 #GAA #Armagh
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) January 18, 2017
John Mulhall has covered a fair bit of mileage in his time. The man who won two Liam McCarthys with Kilkenny in 2009 and 2011 was cut from the panel by Brian Cody the following summer but he hasn’t spent the last five years moaning about it.
He’s been getting on with his life and he’s been away – he’s traveled. It’s not like he ever forgot about home though. Not for a second.
Speaking on The GAA Hour hurling podcast, Mulhall gave a few home truths with how he saw this culture of want-away young people.
“When I was away, I’d always be checking KilkennyGAA.ie to see who was playing or what under-14 match was on,” Kildare’s new signing said.
“People are conning themselves when they say they go away and that they are completely disengaged from Ireland, that type of thing. That’s complete and utter nonsense.
“When you’re away, you’re thinking of home and when you’re at home, you’re thinking of being away and travelling. That’s the way life is.
“People come back and they try to make out like travelling is this great thing where you find yourself and this and that. That’s not the way things are.
“You go away, you’re away two weeks and you’re after coming out of a session and you start thinking, ‘I’ll just go home and get the cooking off the mother’.”
What Mulhall saw in most places was people still living the Irish culture. The GAA one. And even for him, a man thinking of home, he’d sometimes be baffled by it.
“People try to sell these things as if they’re great – travelling is brilliant and opens your mind to new cultures, but you could be looking at a match somewhere like New York and thinking, ‘what is the whole point of that?’
“Other days you’d be like, ‘Jesus, I’d love to be in the middle of it’.”
They must be f**king flying in Kildarehttps://t.co/jeHGuMlydt #GAA
— GAA JOE (@GAA__JOE) February 21, 2017
Mulhall still remembers where he was when the call came through from Brian Cody to say he was off the panel.
He was then faced with a choice, to bust his balls in the hope of trying desperately to maybe get back amongst the Kilkenny squad, or he could just get on with his life. He took it in his stride.
“The call only lasted about 30 seconds,” he said.
“You get a call like that and you’re out in the middle of the field farming – you’re just there with yourself, it’s not doom and gloom, you’re not exhilarated, you just get on with life and that’s the way it should be.
“Kilkenny could be playing a match and you might think, ‘Oh, you could be there or you could be this’ but you just move on with life. There’s no point in complaining, you just get on with things.”
A lot of that attitude has come from how he sees the game now. The level it’s getting too is bordering on out of hand.
“If people keep training harder and harder and harder, where does the game go? You have to go professional. And that would be an absolute disaster – that would be the death nail.
“It’s the volunteers, the grass roots, the primary schools, that’s where the money needs to be pumped into.
“I don’t know where the game of hurling and the GAA wants to go – it’s becoming more and more outrageously hard work. Where does the game want to go?
“If you can’t go out and enjoy the thing after an All-Ireland, what is the point?”
Maybe the GAA will find out where it wants to go in the future. Maybe a bit of travelling will help.
Listen to the full, brilliant interview below (from 43:37).
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