*Wolfe Tones captain, John Guilfoyle. Photograph: Gerard O’Neill.
JOHN GUILFOYLE made his senior debut for Wolfe Tones’ hurlers at the age of sixteen, sixteen years on he is sixty minutes away from captaining the club to a successful return back to the top tier.
There’s been ups and downs during his career with the hurlers in Shannon which have included the pain of experiencing relegation from the senior grade on two occasions but the chance to lead his beloved club back to the top tier of the Clare hurling scene is something to savour.
Guilfoyle pulls no punches when admitting that for Wolfe Tones situated in Clare’s second largest town to be an intermediate dual-club is not where they expect or want to be. “With the size of the club and the facilities we have it is a massive stickling point to be an intermediate dual club, the footballers are in a final and hopefully they will win. You could see last year when we became a dual intermediate club that a lot of people began to move behind the scenes to get things in order underage, we have been struggling but we’re starting to come good at the younger years which is good to see, there is a lot of movement to try get our house in order. We expect ourselves to be at a higher level with the skill that is there”.
He is the longest serving member of the Tones team having made his debut versus neighbours Newmarket-on-Fergus back in 2008 at the age of sixteen. “The likes of Frank Lohan and Patsy Keyes were still playing, I came on as a bold sixteen year old and swung back at some older Newmarket man, I can remember James McInerney coming in behind me and throwing me around like a rag doll, thankfully a few of the older lads saved me”.
Going from sharing a dressing room with Frank Lohan in 2008 to his nephews Darragh and Daithí in 2024 has been “a big change, it has changed a lot, this year is strange, the lads that are twenty one or twenty two are a lot more vocal than we were, the likes of Daithí Lohan are well coached and well able to speak compared to when we were growing up, we were hiding in the corner of dressing rooms and being told to do what the likes of Frank Lohan and BOC told us to do, from that point of view has changed”.
Recalling sharing a dressing room with Frank Lohan, John said, “You took hold of every word Frank said, whatever Frank said goes with his status, it was a great learning curve and even BOC who was still playing Junior this year, those lads are unbelievable leaders to have in the club so it was brilliant to share a dressing room with them and learn”.
Leadership roles have “changed so much” within club teams, he noted. “Back in the day there was roaring and shouting with everyone getting psyched, now it is more of a conversation and what your role is, the whole preparation both mental and physical has changed, there is space still for the strong words and that but in the main it is just a general conversation and a few players speak, that is it and out you go”. The job of giving the rousing speech if required is assigned to him or Aaron Cunningham, John admitted.
Getting to line out with his brothers, goalkeeper Oisin and freetaker Cian O’Rourke adds to the significance of representing the club and town for John. “Oisin has been sleeping with his hurley in the bed since he was four or five and loving it, Cian has been brilliant, he’s really come on since being on The Underdogs, this year he has worked really hard, he is living in Dublin and is training up there on his own, he does incredible training on his own and the results have been showing this year, he’s the top scorer in the intermediate championship and in fairness his form has been unreal. There’s a few brothers on it, Darragh and Daithí Lohan, Liam and Brian Murphy, Aaron and Jack Cunningham so there’s a good family connection to the squad. It means more when you’re playing with family and my father is the Chairman as well, there’s another side to it, it would be incredible to win the final and get a few pictures with the brothers, it’s what you’re hoping to do as a young lad”.
A three year stint in Australia is all that has kept him away from representing Wolfe Tones since 2007. “I missed out on the whole COVID period but uninterrupted apart from that, no real injuries, anytime I’ve been here I’ve been available to play, it has been a rollercoaster really with struggling at the start from mass emigration one year when we lost fourteen players so we were scraping to stay up and then we came good and got a good crop of young lads coming up in Aron Shanagher, Rory Hayes, Ben O’Gorman and Dean Devanney, we came good again to win the intermediate, we got to the All-Ireland semi-final, I thought we would challenge for the next few years but we were knocking on the door getting to the quarter-final stages and then we petered off and ended up back down intermediate, there’s been many ups and downs”.
His time with the Tones has coincided with senior relegation in 2014 and 2023, ironically it was St Joseph’s Doora/Barefield that sent them down on both occasions. Injuries and a bad run of form are the two common traits with both seasons, he outlined.
Buy-in from the players following last year’s disappointment has set the standard for their run to the intermediate final, the Eli Lilly engineer maintained. “It was late October when a lot of lads just circled the wagons like Rory Hayes, Liam Murphy, Aron Shanagher and myself were searching for a management, in fairness Barry Keane was plotting his own management team in the background and came to us, the management team he came with we were delighted to hear they were putting their names in the hat. I think we were back training in mid to late November, we had the bones of 130 sessions done this year, the buy-in has been incredible”.
Central to Keane’s management has been Alan Cunningham, a highly respected coach in the GAA scene but an equally respected figure in Shannon. “Luckily for myself, I’ve had Alan coaching myself every year pretty much give or take since I was fourteen, the majority of years Alan has coached us, he was with us in 2021 and 2022, he took a year away and he’s been with Limerick and what he has done with them is incredible, what he is picking up in that environment and passing onto ourselves we’re lucky to have and he’s one of the best coaches around”. Cunningham was also in charge when Guilfoyle was midfield on the first and only St Caimin’s team to contest the Dr Harty Cup final in 2009.
Finishing the Clare Cup on a high plus the return of Rory Hayes, Darragh Lohan and Aron Shanagher with All-Ireland medals in their arse pockets served as a timely lift for their championship challenge, he believed. “For ourselves when we play the league a lot of times it can be a struggle but it is great in one sense because a lot of young lads get a chance but then they get ten games in the group stages, we took a few beatings and it can be tough but towards the end of the league, we drew with Ballyea and won the last three games so we had good form and then the county lads came back to really kick it on, Daithí Lohan came back following his hamstring surgery before the first round of the championship so we had a third of our team back before the group stages which really drove it on, the confidence was high with the lads after winning the All-Ireland and there was a pep in their step”.
From the outside they have been classed as one of the favourites to lift the Paddy Browne Cup before a ball was hit but such a tag was not difficult to carry, John said. “In our eyes Clarecastle were probably better. We were playing the league and we were losing most of our game whereas they were top in Division 1B so we didn’t see ourselves as favourites in the group stages. It is hard for us because you don’t see yourself as the favourites if you’re losing games in the league, in the championship we were maybe beginning to see ourselves as favourites but we got brought back down to earth in the quarter-final stage and we were very lucky to get over that game”.
Clarecastle’s involvement in the race ended at the quarter-final stage with defeat to Tubber and Wolfe Tones themselves survived an almighty scare against Parteen/Meelick. “We didn’t take for one second take Parteen/Meelick for granted, they really had us to the pin of our collar and they were leading with a few minutes to go. We were more disappointed with our own game and how we played, our style of play”.
All eyes for the club are on the next challenge which pits them against Tubber. “There’s nothing else to focus on but completely on Tubber, we know how good they are, there’s nothing else in our eyes apart from Saturday, getting over the line with sixty minutes to go”.
Having shared a dressing room with outstanding leaders, Guilfoyle doesn’t have too far to look for inspiration but a return to the senior ranks on the back of a special year for many club personnel will certainly leave Wolfe Tones hitting the high notes.
