The Trib (50 page)

The next day he was in Ireland. He had been married for ten years to Maria Christina. His daughter Laura was seven. His son Nicholas Jnr was one. Most days here he'd walk to a local post office with a letter in his hand, knowing that it would be intercepted before it ever reached them. Every night he'd be woken by nightmares. By 1998 he had grown into a dark shadow of his former self. A member of the IABA noticed, took Cruz to his house and told him to try and call his wife again. Finally he got through.

‘Nicholas, your sister has been ringing here with messages for you,' she alerted him.

‘What is it?' he asked.

‘Your father, he died. He was in hospital for six days.'

‘He was ninety-six and they were the only six days he spent in hospital. He had to leave the tobacco farm and live in the city and that killed him. I started applying for a visa to go over there and bury him but the reply came back that I had abandoned the mission and therefore couldn't come back. I never found myself in a situation that I thought I was going to take my life but I had that rope ready and was looking at those two trees.'

Cruz is sitting in a pub in Phibsboro, his trademark smile slapped across his face and a thick Irish accent sneaking out with certain words. He's just finished for the night in Mountjoy, teaching prisoners yoga and stress management through boxing. Before, he did it in Spike Island, St Patrick's Institution and Portlaoise Prison. In all of them he used to tell inmates his story and how, while he could walk out the door, he was just like them, in an open prison. They listened and understood.

By 2001 he took on the role with the prison service full-time when his days came to an end with the Irish boxing team. It was that year he finally saw his ban from entering Cuba end but couldn't get there on the salary the IABA were offering him. A young Bernard Dunne asked him one day just how much he made in the role and was taken aback by the answer of €15,000.

His road to mental recovery began soon after his father's funeral. He met a Shaolin monk in Dublin who had little English and was here all alone. He decided the monk was in a far more difficult situation than him and it was time he stopped feeling sorry for himself. The connection between the two went further. Cruz had bought a Buddha some years before for fun but the monk showed him the spiritual side and it helped him in his time of need.

‘The prison work helped me too. I connected with people and felt like I had a purpose. In Portlaoise I met Dessie O'Hare. An amazing man, we did a lot of work together and became great friends. He was such a disciplined man, with that vow of silence. Nearly four years. I couldn't believe. Great charisma. He studied a lot, learned a lot, superbly mastered yoga. I heard from people about things he did and I never asked him and was never concerned about that. I take people in the present time; I don't judge anyone. Maybe he wants to change and needs help to change and I can be there. I feed on that.

‘If I do something for someone and they are happy and I can bring a smile, then I feel great. They called him names, the ‘Border Fox'. I wasn't interested. It was the same in St Patrick's, I realised the help a lot of young people need. They need a friend and I know what that can be like having gone through so much here myself. There were times when I needed someone but I got through it, and I realise there is a plan for me. I used to bring the rope I thought about killing myself with to places like that. I split it and made it longer and used it to help guys learn to bob and weave and it was a reminder to me of where I had been.'

More recently, he lost the rope but there are other reminders. He still has the Buddha and in 2007, fifteen years after helping Ireland feel so proud of itself in Barcelona, he got together enough money to buy a house in Portlaoise. Sometimes he walks around and feels the walls, making sure this is real and this is his. Other times he sits there in the quiet with a smile on his face.

He's learned to deal with the silence. Just as he's learned to accept the difficult path he's chosen in life.

18 July 2010

T
he lowest and most ridiculous point reached in the days immediately following last Sunday's Leinster final was when the lads on the Meath football team were asked publicly if they would offer Louth a replay. Luckily, the whole sorry, ugly episode was immediately grabbed by its collar at that exact same point, and Nigel Crawford and the lads should be congratulated for answering with honesty and courage, and with a very definitive no thank you. It did appear to be more of a ‘No thank you – now feck off!' The Meath team was in no mood to leave anyone in doubt about what was in their heads.

Everyone else, it appeared, was running around in circles, in quite a dither. Half the GAA community was in an idiotic frenzy. The other half was speechless. And, in between, there seemed to be a large gathering of GAA officials, at national level and Leinster council level, who were making it quite clear that they needed a few good nights of sleep before getting their heads around what had to be done. Thankfully, the Meath team was quite clearcut about where they stood! And, in my mind at least, they had three very good reasons for deciding that they wanted to hold onto the trophy that they had just received.

1. Some of the lads on the Meath team had been punched and kicked after the final whistle.

2. The Meath team, according to the officials on the field, had won the game and therefore the Leinster Championship, fairly and squarely during the full course of the game.

3. This bunch of footballers who make up the Meath team have spent the larger part of their adult lives, to date, working their backsides off to reach a Leinster final and actually win a Leinster title.

They've fought long and hard all those years, most of which ended in failure, and massive frustration in losing so often to Dublin. Ten years, in Meath's case, may not seem very long when compared to Louth's wait of over fifty years, but over half of the footballers on the Meath team had dedicated each of those years to winning a Leinster title. In comparison, Louth football teams, in decades past, and over the last ten years, have mostly been talking and dreaming of a Leinster title and not a whole lot more than that. It would be foolish to conclude that Meath's ten years' wait should, for one second, be left second in line to Louth's fifty years' wait.

The honest verdict of the Meath team brought everyone to their senses, and directed the controversial and damning episode to a fast-enough conclusion. There's no doubt about it, this group of Meath footballers are worthy Leinster champions.

Now, about Louth! They would have been even worthier Leinster champions, sure they would. They were extremely plucky for short periods of last Sunday's game, and they also played some brilliant football for short periods of time. JP Rooney's goal was breathtaking, and it truly deserved to be the crowning moment on a hugely historic day for every last man, woman and child living in Louth.

Before Rooney's goal, Louth should already have had the Leinster title fully wrapped up. Their defence, individually and collectively, had performed at a higher level than anyone had expected, and the manner in which O'Rourke, Ward, Bray and Sheridan were effectively shut down was exceptional for a group of defenders who also had to contend with the almighty pressure of their first Leinster final.

Equally, in the middle of the field, after a poor enough opening twenty minutes, Louth settled and took control thereafter. The defensive and midfield platform, therefore, was in place for Louth to win. They should have won. They should have been well out of sight, once Rooney side-footed his goal from the edge of the large square. That was indeed the goal of the last decade, and if Brian White had taken even 50 per cent of the easy chances that came his way from play and free-kicks in that second-half before Rooney's goal, then that magnificent shot would have had Louth five or six points in front with the finish line well in sight.

There was never going to be a replay. And the very question of a replay should have been shot down by the Leinster Council by late last Sunday evening. The opening of that door and the granting of a replay to Louth in such a high-profile game would have turned every disputed game in the future, at club and county level, into ridiculous tug-of-war contests which ultimately might be uncontrollable for the association.

In the great frenzy, in the days immediately following the game, people were forgetting themselves completely. All sorts of foolish arguments were presented on behalf of the Louth team. One of the dumbest of all was the call for the CCC to get stuck into the Leinster final and rule on what happened in the same manner as they would retrospectively rule on foul acts by individual players during games. The CCC operates itself in order to stop individual players getting away with blue murder in games. That body is there to nail down filthy acts of play, in particular, or actions which amount to cheating in extreme cases. The only person the CCC could have called up to explain himself, after this Leinster final, was the poor referee.

The CCC could never have said ‘boo' to the Meath team or any member of the team, and any question of Joe Sheridan acting in a malicious or disgraceful manner by scoring the winning goal would be laughed out of the GAA's court or any other court in the land. Sheridan acted spontaneously and instinctively, and properly for a forward, and should never have to explain himself or his actions to anyone.

And, if there had been a replay?

Who'd have won it? That is an insensitive question to ask but let's ask it all the same.

In a replay, in my opinion, the odds would have swung back heavily in Meath's favour. They had vastly underperformed in winning and they would have fully realised that they needed to make a giant-sized statement in the replay. Would this Louth team have been able to stand up to the massive pressure of a replay and a pumped-up, more intent Meath team? I don't think so.