Damien's not ‘winging it' any longer

For many sportsmen, the medals they accumulate over their careers are cherished as tangible reminders of former glories, but not so for Damien Healy.The Rochfortbridge man, who recently called time on a 14 year inter-county career that spanned three decades, won't be rushing to build a trophy cabinet in home. In fact, he admits that not only is he unsure of the location of many of the honours he's picked up over the years, he's also unsure of how many titles he's won. This one fact tells you a lot about Damien and the type of footballer he is. It's the contest that matters; trying your hardest to be the best you can.“I haven't a clue what medals I have. I don't even know where my Leinster medal is. I wouldn't be sentimental in that way to be honest. People tell me that I'll be looking back and wishing I had those things, but what about it. There's guys out there that know all the stats and if I need to know anything I'll ask them.”Damien (34), who describes his time with Westmeath as a series of “humps and hallows”, made his debut for the senior team in a league mathch against Antrim in 1996 and, after dedicating almost half his life to the cause, he admits that he may feel a tinge of regret when his erstwhile team-mates take to the field against Offaly or Wexford in next year's Leinster championship. Despite this, he is adamant that, after one premature retirement, he has finally called time on his intercounty career. This time around, however, he he had hoped to slip quietly away.Unlike his first offical and quite public “retirement” - which came in the aftermath of the senior football team's comprehensive championship defeat to Dublin in 2006. “When Pat (Flanagan) came in first, I told him that I wanted to finish up then. I told him that I wasn't able for it any more, but given the upheaval at the time, I didn't want to cause too much disruption. He knew by then though that I wasn't coming back this year. Somebody sent me a link last week to the “annoucements” last week I had to laugh. You have to wonder where these announcements come from.”The Railway Cup's winner's longevity is all the more remarkable considering that he has lived in Galway for almost all of his inter-county career. While friends were out enjoying Galway's many charms, Damien spent his youth on the then N6 driving to and from training and jokes that the motorway “came 10 years too late.” Although he doesn't regret a minute of it, the computer technician admits that he won't miss this side of things.“You get a lot miles under your belt and you don't realise that when you're in the midst of it. When I took a year off to go travelling in 2008, I began to realise how much time I put into it. When you're in the middle of it, you can't see the woods from the trees. It was only when you stop the routine that you realise how hard it is. When I came back from travelling it was just too hard to get into it again. You realise that there is more to life than running around a football pitch. You have to enjoy it. When you're hitting 34 and you're running after a 19 year old it's not that enjoyable.”The one part of a county footballer's life that Damien really loved, bar playing, was the intense training. Renowned for his versatility and attacking forays from his wing back spot, Damien's first sporting love was athletics and he believes this was the perfect preparation for the direction that football has gone in.“I loved the training side of things. Some players hate it. I think some are suited to it and some aren't. With my background, it was brownbread to me. If it made me fitter and stronger, bring it on.”Dublin legend Barney Rock was the man who gave Damien his debut for the county senior team and, while he acknowledges the impact that Barney and the other managers he played under had on his career, the man who had the biggest influence on him was the All Ireland winner Brendan Lowry from Offaly, who was at helm between 1997 and 2000.“Each manager had a different approach to things, but the manager that had a profound effect on me was Brendan Lowry. If Brendan had been around when the back door came in god knows what would have happened. The back door came in a year after Brendan left. We all the know the success we had with Luke and Paidi, but Brendan is probably one of those managers that has been forgotten about.”Unlike many of his teammates who would have represented the county from under-16 up, Damien “never got a look in” until minor level.After making the breakthrough, his rise through the ranks was rapid and within a few years he was turning out for the senior team.With athletics his main priority as a sports mad youngster, he didn't watch a lot of football and today he acknowledges that this may have actually been an advantage as he was never overrawed by either teammates' or opponents' reputations.“I wasn't one of those young fellas that grew up hoping that I would play for the senior county team. Apart from my cousin, Jack Cooney, I didn't actually know any of the senior county players. Jack was one of the big men on the team and only for him I wouldn't have had a clue who was who and what was what. I remember we had a game up in Croke Park against Laois in the championship and it was the first time I saw some of the older players nervous. I couldn't understand why. I still can't understand it. I suppose I was a cocky young fella who just wanted to play the game.”By the time the summer of 2004 came around Damien was a seasoned campaigner on the intercounty scene and although he admits that nothing compares to be being part of the team that brought the Delaney Cup to Westmeath for the first and, up to now, only time, he believes that the team of 2001, which narrowly lost to Meath twice over the course of a memorable summer, was the finest he ever played on.Coached by Luke Dempsey, they began the summer with an agonising one point defeat to Sean Boylan's side. However, the team regrouped and following victories over Wexford, Limerick, Louth and Mayo in the first ever qualifer series, they were given the chance to exact revenge on the men for the Royal County in the quarter finals.“We were winning by a point with only a minute remaining. I was marking Ollie Murphy and we had boxed the head off each other all match, but in a good way. Meath were on the attack and I left Ollie for one second to try and block Graham Geraghty. Graham passed it to Ollie and he scored a goal. One second, just that one second. I was talking about the game to someone at the weekend and it still makes me feel sick to the stomach. If you ask anyone from the 2001 team I'd say they'd all still be sickened by that result.”Fast forward to the present day and after a few disappointing Leinster championships and the retirements of Damien and his fellow stalwarts Martin Flanagan and Derek Heavin, many commentators are predicting a less than rosy future for Westmeath football, but the now former county star sees things differently.“It's not going to happen over night, but I would have no worries about the future. There are a lot of good footballers coming through. Division Three is a good place to be when you're rebuilding. Look at Down, they were in Divsion Three. Sometimes you have to go back to rebuild.”On the divisive topic of play and pay, Damien says that its amateur staus is an integral part of what make's the GAA great.“From my perspective nobody twisted my arm to play. I did what I wanted to do. If you came for another reason, quit. These days players are looked after very well and I always had a great relationship with the members of the county board."If the current generation of Westmeath footballers coming through display half the dedication Damien displayed over his inter-county career, then Westmeath's quest for a second Leinster crown may be shorter than anticipated.