Captaining Waterford to the All Ireland minor title in 2013 was a life changing experience for Kevin Daly.
“The whole thing was just a bit crazy to be honest. For me, seventeen or eighteen at the time, people that you’d never met before shaking your hand and telling you what a great fella you are. It was a big change in my life at the time. It’s mad to think back on it now. The whole thing was just mental really."
He appeared on RTÉ’s Six One news on Monday evening with Damien Tiernan after the team arrived back on the Mall in Waterford. “You couldn’t prepare for it. Meeting crowds of people and being whisked off to do interviews for the Six One news, I wasn’t expecting any of that. The thing was just so crazy. As captain, I was being dragged left, right and centre to this event and that medal presentation, it was a bit much to be honest. Life is after calming down but looking back, it was a crazy time."
He even marched in the New York St Patrick’s Day parade. It ultimately became too crazy for the Dungarvan defender. “It got to a point where every Saturday night I was throwing on a shirt and tie and heading off to some sort of event with the cup. I knew how lucky I was but I was just sick of it. I was dying to just put it away and get back to my own game.”
Daly was delighted to see Dungarvan club mate Patrick Curran rattle the net in the 56th minute on All Ireland final day against Galway. “I probably owe half of my medals to Patrick! I played with him the whole way up. Himself, Aussie and Stevie were the three that were on a different level to everyone really. At underage, Patrick was untouchable."
Two cruciate knee ligament injuries denied Daly the chance of joining Patrick and company on the journey to the All Ireland under 21 title three years later. His last appearance in a Waterford shirt was in 2014. “If you told me that day it would be the last time I would put on a Waterford jersey, I’d have been fairly shocked. That wasn’t the way I thought the hurling career was going. I went up to UCC then and I was hurling away with the Fresher team. We went down to play WIT. A long free came in, the goalkeeper batted it out and my man got the ball and turned me and I went to turn and I heard the snap. I was in awful pain on the ground. I didn’t know anything about cruciates at the time but I knew instinctively that the cruciate was gone in my knee. I was nine months out after that. I was a first year up in college, cooking for myself, I didn’t know anything about nutrition and I put on the weight fairly easily so it was a challenge to get back fit.”
He recovered successfully from that initial setback. “I came back the following year and actually got myself fit. I’ll never forget it, I was playing a challenge game and one of our selectors told me 'today’s the day to get back to yourself' and wasn’t that the day I did the second cruciate. The same leg. That was a massive setback. After that I was thinking ‘I’m sick of this’ and I lost interest in it. It took me longer to come back from the second one because I just completely lost all interest in it. Eventually I stopped feeling sorry for myself and got on with it and got back."
Listen back to the full interview with Kevin Daly from Lár Na Páirce Hurling In The Years with thanks to PWC Waterford.
https://www.spreaker.com/user/wlrfm/kevindaly2013
