This is an exciting day for the hurlers from Cushendall. Win or lose the AIB All-Ireland final they’ve already come a long way from the glens of Antrim to get to Croke Park, actor Liam Neeson among those to recognise the journey in the video campaign supporting the club better known as Ruairí Óg.
Midfielder Shane McNaughton says nothing will ever top it, although win or lose he's about to embark on another journey that may well see him follow in Neeson's tracks. At 28 it will likely be his last game for Cushendall for quite a while, as he pursues his acting career, beginning with a play in New York about the 1916 Rising, then an appearance in series three of The Fall alongside Jamie Dornan and Gillian Anderson.
Club mentor
“I was saying to my brother the other day in passing,” says McNaughton, “that no matter what you do in your life, it doesn’t matter if you went on and did something great in some other field, whenever you experience something like this, playing in an All-Ireland final, and you get to share it with the people you have grown up playing with and your best friends and family, nothing will ever top that.”
McNaughton doesn’t say this lightly: his father is long-serving club mentor and former Antrim manager Terence “Sambo” McNaughton; younger brother Christy, still only 18, plays corner forward.
As a club they’ve also lost eight All-Ireland semi-finals in the past. Just being in Croke Park on St Patrick’s Day really does feel as good as it gets.
“I remember Sambo saying years ago in an article that the best thing you could ever want would be seeing your father’s face after winning an All-Ireland final or something. Having him involved, and my wee brother is on the team too, adds to it even more.
“To be honest with you, I thought maybe we had missed the boat. But then I saw the younger players that were coming through from our minor team. I knew if we hung on for a few more years there would be a team there that could challenge for an All-Ireland.”
Indeed they way they beat Galway champions Sarsfields in the semi-final – 3-12 to 1-6 – suggests they’ll be ample match for Na Piarsaigh. McNaughton agrees that confidence is soaring since that game, the fact fellow Antrim club Loughgiel Shamrocks won the title just a few years ago offering further hope.
“Yeah, someone from across the mountain, exactly. They are only about 14 or 15 miles away and I suppose we would have played with all those boys on the Antrim team. There’s no difference in the hurlers in Loughgiel and Cushendall really so seeing them go on and win an All-Ireland really did give us a bit of confidence.”
His interest in acting has always been there, yet only flourished in recent years, helped in ways by the experience of hurling: “I’ve been doing that since I was 16. I was going to school to study it in New York, and then obviously the minor county and that, and then I got more involved with hurling and just went straight playing hurling since then, and it’s something I’ve been kind of dabbling in.
“You don’t have much time with county hurling as I say, it’s all or nothing. It really is. Then I got injured two years ago, and got back into the acting, because I had about a year to myself, so I started just auditioning again. ‘Training and rehearsing’ “Even there before Christmas it was a nightmare, because obviously I couldn’t foresee us winning the Ulster championship and I’d already accepted a part in a play, we were training and rehearsing, I didn’t realise the rehearsals took up so much of your time.
“So I’m off to New York, in two weeks, to give it a full go. If you could set your life out until you are 28 or 30, I’d play hurling to that age and then I’ll go and explore this.
“There are more nerves in the acting. The whole curtain thing. Do you know when you go and do a gym session and you feel a new muscle you’ve never felt before, I felt a new feeling, just pure and utter fear.”
No fear, however, of the stage at Croke Park.
