By Daragh Ó Conchúir
When Laura Hayes was a youngster, her mother used to shove her out the door in the morning and lock it behind her.
Well, maybe, not quite to that extent. But dealing with a ball of energy, particularly when there are three younger siblings to attend to also, was exhausting. There was no end to Laura and nothing has changed in that regard.
Her mind never stops searching for things to do. The farm and camogie have been the constants. In those early days, being outdoors wasn’t a form of banishment – she adored mucking in with her father and as we all know, the work is never done on a farm.
Playing camogie is similar in that way. Being corner-forward, or corner-back, waiting on the sliotar to come her way, would have driven her demented. It would also have been a waste. Around half-back or midfield is her site and the modern approach of involving runners from deep suits her more than almost any other 5 or 7 in her code.
There is something very instinctive about how the St Catherine’s star operates. Strong, quick, skilful and with an eye for a score, she is always noticeable in a creative context but her destructive capabilities in denying opponents time, space and scores are just as prominent.
That is why she was crowned PwC GPA Camogie senior player of the year. It was a wonderful double, having led Cork out onto Croke Park, with team captain Molly Lynch a sub and the vice-captain, Méabh Cahalane also on the bench, having made an incredible comeback from a hamstring injury to be involved in the match-day squad.
“The first day I was made the captain was for the Down (group) game,” Hayes recalls. “I got such a shock. Ger (Manley) just said it in front of everyone. He didn’t say it to me because it was only going to be for one game at the time, I suppose. I didn’t expect it at all.
Cork’s Laura Hayes leads her team in the Glen Dimplex All-Ireland Final (INPHO/Bryan Keane)
“There’s a big thing in Cork where you develop leaders, the likes of Gemma O’Connor, (St Cats clubmate) Orla Cotter would have developed the likes of Laura Treacy, Amy O’Connor, and then they would have developed the likes of me, Saoirse McCarthy and then we would work on developing likes of Aoife Healy, Orlaith Cahalane, just to make sure that that cycle and that standard stays the same.
“That’s why I’ve been able to hold my own a bit in the dressing room as time’s gone on, I’m not as much of a pup anymore! It definitely was just a huge honour.
“I remember going home, my mam and dad are pure country, you know? ‘Oh, that’s grand.’ They weren’t patting me on the back at all! And I think I just kind of went with it for the whole year. I never really thought about it too much. I wasn’t dismissing the honour, but at the same time, you have a job to do, and that’s the main thing. I just kind of went with the flow.”
Which as we mentioned, is how she tends to play too. With freedom, joie de vivre.
“I’d be a very energetic character in life anyway. And I think I play my best when that kind of comes out in the field. I think if I was too, like, intense about preparation or anything, I don’t think that that suits me.
“I was doing a grad program earlier in the year where I had a bit more time on my hands, and I was able to probably think about the game a bit too much, and it probably wasn’t actually suiting me in hindsight. And then around April, I started setting up a coffee trailer and all of a sudden, I was so busy.
“I remember the week of the Munster final thinking, ‘Jeez, I really need to just get everything organised,’ but that was kind of when my performances also started coming off, because I just wasn’t overthinking things.”
The coffee trailer, set up a fortnight before the All-Ireland final, is called Full Of Beans, a clever play on the core business, but also the proprietor’s tendencies. It is going down a bomb, with the people of Conna hugely supportive and only mad to chat camogie. She loved bringing the O’Duffy Cup back around and seeing how proud people were.
This is Jimmy Mangan country, where posters of Monty’s Pass, trained by Mangan to win the Grand National at Aintree in April 2003, are still hanging. Mangan now has Spillane’s Tower, the dual Grade 1-winning novice chaser of last season, owned by JP McManus and making his senior debut in a deep John Durkan Memorial Chase tomorrow at Punchestown.
They have a new hero now though, in camogie’s player of the year.
The thing about Hayes’ make-up is that she wants new mountains to climb.
“I said I’d go over to Thailand and kind of find myself but no answers yet! I’d love to expand the coffee business, and go further with it. I wish I could just be happy with it and just say, ‘That’s what I’m happy with.’ But within a month I was like, ‘Okay, what’s next?’ I loved the challenge of getting it up and running, and then, thank God, the community has been so good. But we’ll see what’s next.”
She was watching Love Island in the house in Cork she shares with friends earlier in the year when the club chairperson called to tell her she’d won their Lotto. That funded some of the aforementioned travelling to Thailand and she’s off to Vietnam in a few weeks.
“I had a tough year last year, just in a lot of ways. And then this year is just, like, such a complete polar opposite. It makes you take it all in.
“When it is tough, there’s so many positives to camogie. It’s such an escape and if there’s things going on outside of it, it’s always another purpose. When I’m playing camogie, I don’t really think about anything else. I can really, really switch off from it. I’m just in that kind of happy place, you know? I’m around all my best friends.
“ And I really enjoyed the of analysis side of it and understanding the game. If we had a tactics board, and Liam (Cronin) wanted to show us, ‘This is the way we want to play,’ I would see it straight away, whereas, if you put algebra on the board, I wouldn’t see it. You get me?
“Last year, I lost two of my grandparents, and camogie gives you a purpose to play for them and you and for your family.”
Laura Hayes certainly did that, then and now, and undoubtedly in the future.
Full of beans, indeed.
