Michael Fitzsimons of Cuala is tackled by Robbie Bolger, left, and Eamon Hill of Ballymun Kickhams during the Dublin County Senior Club Football Championship semi-final match between Ballymun Kickhams and Cuala at Parnell Park in Dublin. Photo by Ben McShane/Sportsfile.
By John Harrington
Retirement talk is a very active sub-genre of GAA chat at this time of the year.
Will that player now inching towards their mid-thirties play on for another year, hang up their boots, or maybe have the decision made for them by management?
Where does this fascination with a player’s lifecycle come from?
Most of us tend to navel-gaze a bit too much about the passage of time, so maybe the sight of GAA players driving on past the average retirement age tends to inspire or cause pangs of guilt depending on our own lifestyle choices.
Rather than wonder when a veteran footballer or hurler will finally shuffle off their playing coil we should just enjoy them for as long as we can, but we just can’t help ourselves.
Just ask Michael Fitzsimons. He’s been a metronome of consistency with the Dublin footballers for the past 15 years and has excelled during Cuala’s run to Sunday’s Go Ahead Ireland Dublin SFC Final against Kilmacud Crokes, so there’s no sign of any visible decline.
But he’ll turn 36 next year so the question he’s now most often asked is when he'll call time on his career.
“Yeah, well I got asked within a couple of hours last year, didn’t I?,” says Fitzsimons with a wry smile. “On TV (after Dublin's All-Ireland SFC quarter-final defeat to Galway).
"But no, once the club season comes about, you’re just focusing on that. I haven’t really…like I thought about the Galway game in the immediate aftermath but I haven’t thought about it since then.
“Your focus shifts and you go with the club and we’ve been really fortunate that we’ve gone on a run that occupies your time outside of work.
“It’s just an easy thing to ask. If you run out of questions, you can just ask. The same as if you bump into me. If you bump into me and you don’t know what to say, just ask me about football.
“Socially, it’s just an easy thing to do. No, I don’t know. It’s maybe…if people keep asking you your plans for the future, in any aspect of life, it’s like I don’t know, I’m just living day to day. You just have shrug your shoulders. People think you’re being coy but you’re actually not.”
Michael Fitzsimons of Dublin leaves the pitch following his side's defeat in the GAA Football All-Ireland Senior Championship quarter-final match between Dublin and Galway at Croke Park in Dublin. Photo by Stephen McCarthy/Sportsfile.
If we simply put our faith in the eye-test then there’s no reason why Fitzsimons shouldn’t play on with Dublin for a 16th year because he’s been outstanding throughout Cuala’s run to Sunday’s Final.
It’s been billed as a South Dublin derby, but the reality is that they and Crokes have little shared recent history.
That’s because a Kilmacud Crokes team seeking a fourth Dublin title in a row are serial contenders for honours whereas Cuala have only once previously reached the final and that was all of 36 years ago.
“Cuala as a football club got to a final in ’88 but a lot of the time it’s just being kept together,” says Fitzsimons. “It’s one of those things where if a few players stepped away or went to hurling, we could have been much further back.
“So, a lot of credit to a lot of people who stuck with football in Cuala. For a long time we’ve been the…I don’t know the correct phrase...poor something? We’ve been like that for a while but it’s credit to people who put so much into it.
“We were probably thinking we’d like to get somewhere like this back when we were in the intermediate championship. That was always the goal. We were always stating it.
“Some people were…I remember we did a meeting we were saying our goal should be to win a senior championship and people were like, ‘does Jim Gavin not say stick to the process?’
“I was just like, ‘I think you’re taking that out of context.’ Everyone who played with Dublin understood what their goal was. You have to mention it at some stage and then you can start sticking to the process.
“But we’re a long time on the road – a lot of the team. We wanted to plant that idea early that if we got our act together…it’s probably taken longer that we would have liked.
“We’ve had ups and downs; being in Senior B, the championship format changing, the Covid year as well. Then we lost to Round Towers, Lusk in a tough game after extra-time.
“So yeah, we’ve improved little by little.”
Michael Fitzsimons of Cuala during the Dublin County Senior Club Football Championship semi-final match between Ballymun Kickhams and Cuala at Parnell Park in Dublin. Photo by Ben McShane/Sportsfile.
If Dublin Bay is the mouth of the capital, imagine Cuala GAA club’s sprawling catchment area as the pouting lower lip.
They are one of the so-called ‘super-clubs’ of south Dublin that have benefited from the explosion in popularity of Gaelic Games in the county in the last 20 years and the club now has a much greater presence in its local community than it once did.
“The numbers have grown, definitely,” says Fitzsimons. “Damien Byrne was behind the nursery and the academy. It got started when I was there. I think the numbers are massive. The issue then is getting coaches at all levels and training them up.
“But there is a great community feel around the club. You could see that with the hurlers when they were on their run. But it’s been like that the whole time. That’s kind of what draws you to the GAA.
“I would have played soccer underage but when you see the warmth and the connection and people really giving their time and volunteering, which is sort of the core of the GAA growing up. I felt that growing up in Cuala.”
A nine-time All-Ireland winner with Dublin, what would it mean to Fitzsimons if he could finally add a Dublin championship medal to his collection at this point in his career?
“It would mean a huge amount,” he says. “The club is where you really get so much enjoyment. I'm fortunate enough to be still playing with lads I grew up with.
“My brother is on the team, Luke Keating who I would have played all the way up with and James Power, who would have been or two years above me as well.”
