WHEN the final whistle blew last Saturday, Andy Moloney decided he was going to take on a major challenge, to walk from Shannon to Dublin for the All Ireland Final.
Now based in Edinburgh, Andy will be taking on the challenge to raise funds for autism.
“I’m going to start it on Wednesday, July 17, it’ll be Shannon to Nenagh on day one. I’ll finish in Dublin on the Saturday, day two is Nenagh to Mountrath, then it’s Mountrath to Portlaoise and Portlaoise to Croke Park,” he says.
“There will be about ten to 12 hours of walking each day, and I should be there at around 5pm on the Saturday.”
While the walk was on his mind prior to Saturday’s victory, it wouldn’t have happened if Kilkenny had won.
“I had the idea, I was saying to family and friends that I’d love to do another fundraiser, and that a walk to Croke Park would be interesting,” he said.
“But it was all depending on Clare winning. When Kilkenny got the second goal I thought it was back to the drawing board! But Clare managed to pull it out of the bag.”
Andy has done two other quite extreme fundraisers already, and he is delighted that he has already got some sponsorship arranged.
“I’ve had to start my planning, getting my tops done, arrange my sponsorship,” he said.
“Lucky enough I have a friend called Eddie Dunne who has a company called Complete Attics, he’s going to sponsor me and pay for hotels and stuff which is brilliant.
“He sponsored my last two events, five years ago I cycled from Edinburgh to Shannon, and two years ago I climbed the three highest peaks in the UK and then went home and did the highest in the North and in Carrauntoohil in a day. Also Paul O’Rourke was part of the 1995 panel and he has a company R&R construction and he said he’ll sponsor me as well.”
While he may be able to raise some funds at short notice, he doesn’t have much time to work on fitness. Is he in fairly good condition anyway?
“No, I weigh 18 stone. If it was something I was planning I’d be looking at dropping two stone, but I won’t be dropping two stone in the time between when I start and when Clare won the semi final,” he said.
The motivation for the challenge is his son Ellis, who is 12 years old and has Autism.
“He’ll never live independently, he’ll probably never work if we are being realistic about it,” said Andy.
“His speech would be very like what he hears on Youtube or what he hears me saying. But he’s happy, he’s healthy, he’s very active, he likes to go up mountains and long walks and stuff.”
The funds raised will go to provide autism facilities at Ellis’ school and at schools in the Shannon area.
Undoubtedly things will get hard on the back roads he will take from Shannon to Dublin, but he says that the degree of difficulty is relative and Ellis’ wellbeing will be enough motivation.
“I see my son struggle in some capacity every single day of his life. The way I see it, I’m putting myself through four days of it,” he said.
“He’s my motivation. Any time that the going got tough on my previous ones, I just looked at my phone and saw his picture. That gives you your second, third, fourth, fifth wind and you go again.”
His training only began on Monday, which is exceptionally late for something so extreme.
“Myself and Ellis went on a 25km walk around Edinburgh. Today [Tuesday] we’re just about to go up the Pentland Hills, it’ll be about ten miles of a walk,” he said.
“The distance we do every day of the walk, I’ll be getting nowhere near that in training.
“I was stiff enough this morning to be honest, I had come off night shift at 7am and we were out walking at 11.30. I still had the night shift head on me and then straight into a long walk.”
While he worked for years in bars, he is now a policeman in Edinburgh.
“It’s very demanding. I’m in response policing so we just attend 999 calls and you don’t know what you’re going into. Probably seven out of ten calls that we go to are mental health related. There could be a suicide concern, or drugs overdoses or things like this,” he said.
A passionate Clare hurling fan, he hopes to have a ticket for the All Ireland but he missed out on the Munster final.
“I was back for the Limerick match in Ennis. I’d go to two or three games a year. I never made the Munster final because I couldn’t get the time off work. I was at the Taylor Swift concert. There was no coverage with the crowd, a message finally got through from my mother around 11.30 at night to say Limerick had won,” he said.
It was an ideal game to miss as it turned out, and he hopes to be celebrating his mammoth walk and Clare’s fifth All Ireland the weekend after next. Donations to Andy’s fundraiser can be made on gofund.me/ae4acd2c.
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked with a number of other publications in Limerick, Cork and Galway. His first book will be published in December 2024.