Loughnane talks about recent illness

In an interview broadcast on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta last Friday, former Clare senior hurling manager Ger Loughnane spoke candidly of his recent illness and recovery, the rumours he had died, and his opinion on the debate over GAA managers’ pay.
In the interview with Seán Bán Breathnach, Loughnane described the first indications he got that something was not right last March while out hunting, his subsequent diagnosis of acute myeloid leukaemia and his treatment.
He maintained, he said, a positive outlook from the start. “I decided that I would do everything I could to treat this, no matter how hard it was, that’s what I kept repeating to myself all the time, and I put great confidence in the doctors,” he said.
Loughnane talked frankly in the interview about the day he left hospital after his treatment had been completed and the rumours that began circulating that he had died.
“My son Conor was in Australia and he called very early the following morning because someone had called to sympathise with him on my death after another friend had seen the message on Twitter and passed the word on. He spoke to my wife Mary and she told him that it was a rumour and that it wasn’t true, but he didn’t believe her. So she had to wake me at 7.20am so that I could call Conor and he would hear my voice and know that the rumour wasn’t true,” the now retired St Aidan’s National School principal added.
Loughnane said he would find it very difficult to say anything good about the person who started the rumour on Twitter.  
“The person didn’t have the guts to call me to speak to me, they just dialled directly into my voicemail and left a message. There’s no excuse for it. It was just a rumour, and that person should have known better from their own experience and profession. They just wanted to be the one with the story, that’s all they cared about.
“If it had happened while I was in the hospital it mightn’t have been as bad, but that was the day when I was weakest, when I had just left the hospital and was preparing to get back to life outside, and it was extremely difficult. It didn’t help me at all,” he revealed.
In the interview Loughnane, with characteristic candour and good humour, described the idea he got from people that they thought he was a ‘dead man walking’, while he also spoke of the great encouragement he got from the many cards and letters wishing him well, even from GAA rivals, and of his spiritual beliefs.
When asked about the current debate over pay for county managers, he pointed to what he calls the “hypocrisy” of the situation.   
“How much is the GAA paying Christy Cooney for the last three years, or the full-time county secretaries all over the country, why don’t the GAA give us that information? This is the question. Why are these people, and people who make a living from talking about hurling, like some broadcasters and print journalists, why are they saying that managers shouldn’t be paid? It’s a type of hypocrisy,” Loughnane claimed.