Dream big, work hard. For Clare hurler and charity activist Tony Griffin, the secret to success is no mystery
HELLO, my name is Tony Griffin. I have played senior inter-county hurling with Clare since 2000. In that time, team honours have eluded us. However, I have been fortunate enough to be three times nominated for an All Star, achieving a personal goal when I was awarded the No 15 spot in 2006. But that is not what this about - this about something much more important.
Over the course of the last eight years, firstly trying to make the panel, then the team, eventually endeavouring to hold on to my place once I had it, I have learned a few things. Many of which you know already. It is not for me to preach about hard work, commitment, physical fitness, discipline, practice and more practice. They are the fundamentals of playing our great games of hurling and Gaelic football that go without saying. They are the bedrock of performance, without them you will fail to succeed; with their existence in abundance, anything is possible.
No, in these series of articles I am interested in inspiration. What is it that drives us to perform to our highest levels? Can we gain an insight from the stories of others with a view to inspiring our own challenges? How can we go on when all around us seems to have crumbled and you sit defeated in the dressing rooms of Croke Park or Ballybofey asking yourself, what more could I have done?
It is here in the ‘Inspiration Station’ that I hope to inspire you with the stories of others. To ignite in you what they have in me. As Peter Pan, JM Barrie’s most famous fictional character, declared: “Anything is possible when you wish hard enough.”
One of my earliest memories of feeling that unmistakeable buzz of inspiration was a few years ago. It was 1999 and an American on the news who was about to win the Tour de France talked about overcoming cancer and how his dreams were now about to come true. Like so many others, I bought cyclist Lance Armstrong’s book. Amazed and very curious about how he did it (no matter what some might insinuate), I followed his progress. I read all that was written about him, I followed his training. He amazed me. Riding the Tour in the winter months before any of his competitors had even chosen their bikes. In the rain, in the snow, riding those alpine climbs, alone and building resolve. His preparation inspired my own. I told myself: “I may not be as gifted a hurler as Henry Shefflin, as natural a goal-scorer as Eoin Kelly, but I can work harder than both of them. I can be the best I can be”. And that is what I did.
In 2005, on the evening we beat Waterford in a sun-drenched qualifier to bring us back to Croke Park, I boarded a plane for Lyon, rented a little Corsa, too small to mention, and climbed in to the Alps. Waking up in the car the next day, I waited. The Tour’s peloton (main group of cyclists) came, they went and no sign of the Texan. I drove home. It would be many months before I met Lance face to face, it would come in a way I could never have envisaged that day descending that Alp in my sweat box of a Corsa but it came all the same.
“I told myself, I may not be as gifted a hurler as Henry Shefflin, as natural a goal scorer as Eoin Kelly, but I can work harder than both of them. I can be the best I can be.” - Tony Griffin
I know this a very nice story and all, it has sun, sport, and drama and there were even some good-looking women on that mountain, but really what is it all about? Let me continue if you are still with me. Two years from the summer I waited eagerly to meet Lance Armstrong on that mountain side in France, I was standing in his back garden chatting to him. As part of what became known as the 7,000km “Ride for the Cure”, where we raised over a420,000 for his foundation and others with the collective aim of eradicating cancer, many things came to life.
That day, cycling the roads of Texas with Lance, I realised many things. If you are willing to dream a big dream, as if you are creating a movie of your own life that you get to write, then, for God’s sake, dream big. It is as easy to dream big and go after it as it is to dream small.
And remember Michelangelo’s words: “The greatest fear is not that we set our sights too high and do not achieve them, it is that we set them too low and do.” So where am I going with all this? Where I am going is that in this series of articles called the ‘Inspiration Station’, my responsibility is to inspire you. I have many stories that I want to share that will help me do so. They have been given to me by people that have inspired me along the way to dream the big dream and go for it. And I cannot wait to share them with you.
Each of the stories I will share with you are rooted in one thing. There is something inside each one of us that codes us to be successful. Whatever success is to you, it is your business, but call it what you will - drive, determination, self-belief, the will to go on that cannot be overcome - it is in all of us. It is this “something” that drove Thomas Edison to continue to try and discover the right element that would prove to give us light even after having failed thousands of times. When asked about how he kept going when he had failed so many times, he simply replied: “I had not failed, I had just found another way that did not work.” Brilliant.
So to conclude this first instalment of the Inspiration Station, I want to finish with a story. It is about a young 19th century English man called William Ernest Henley struck down by a crippling disease. Left in hospital to die, he wrote a now famous poem called Invictus. I will not reproduce the entire poem, just the first and last verse. They go like this:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pitch from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be,
For my unconquerable soul.
It matters not how straight the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
The poem entitled Invictus means “unconquered, invincible”. This described William Ernest Henley very well. Forced to amputate one leg just below the knee, the doctors said they would have to amputate the other. Henley refused to let this happen and said he would walk out of the hospital. After 18 long months, he did indeed walk away from that hospital, never to return.
For now and till next time,
