Tadhg Byrne - Junior Review

[teknonym 61]

The Republic of Ireland, a country off the coast of Old Blighty herself. Ireland is known in the sports world for its incredible rugby players and incredibly mediocre football players. The Emerald Isle has made its mark in the sports it’s known for and has no intent of changing any time soon.

 

Well, that was until Tadhg Byrne set his mind to hockey.

 

Tadhg Byrne was 8 when he saw his first hockey game. It had been a VHL game between the London United and Moscow Menace. He’d been playing rugby for almost 4 years at that point, but something had always been missing. Watching the speed of the players flying up and down the ice, the rough-and-tough defensemen, the incredible accuracy of the goal scorers. It began to fill the hole in his heart at a rapid pace. Then the camera flicked over to the Moscow goalie, Raymond Bernard, and Tadhg felt the hole become non-existent. It was an incredible save, with technique and athleticism like Tadhg had never seen before.

 

One save, one shot, one camera angle. All of those small, insignificant factors changed the course of Tadhg Byrne’s life. He wanted to be a goaltender.

 

Telling his dad that he wanted to play hockey was one of the toughest things that Tadhg has ever done. What Tadhg will often leave out of a lot of papers is that his dad was the starting fly-half for the Irish rugby squad that dominated the Five Nations during the early 1980s. He was an incredible rugby player, and a stand-up man. Tadhg didn’t want to disappoint him with a dream that even a young Tadhg knew was unrealistic.

 

When Tadhg spilled his guts about his dream to his dad, he grinned back at his son.

 

‘You have the same look in your eyes as I did when I found rugby.’

 

From there, Tadhg was a hockey player. He started working with goalie coaches in Northern Ireland to start his journey from being a kid who’d never even seen hockey skates before to becoming somebody who would, maybe one day, be able to start in net for the best team in the VHL.

 

It was gruelling work, starting hockey almost 3 years after most kids put Tadhg at a disadvantage and he knew it. He worked hard, and if there’s something you can’t beat, it’s work ethic, and Tadhg has that in spades.

 

Tadhg played for the Belfast Giants’ junior team from ages 9-16, playing 256 games and having a stat line of 1.49GAA and .956sv%. Tadhg Byrne is forever grateful to the family he boarded with in Belfast, and will tell you all about how he owes his hockey career to not only his real family, but also his ‘second family’ in the Gallagher’s. Mary and Sean Gallagher were nothing but welcoming and encouraged Tadhg every step of the way, treating him as if he were their own son.

 

Tadhg got his first start for the Belfast Giants of the EIHL when he was 17, playing out of his mind and standing on his head in net. An incredible stat line of 43 saves from 44 shots. He played a further 21 games for the Giants that year, putting up a 3.2GAA and a .899sv% and showing promise as a young goalie in a league that, despite being a subpar league overall, had grown men playing against him.

 

The Belfast Giants and the city of Belfast were the home away from home that fostered and helped Tadhg Byrne become the player he is today and the player he will be tomorrow. When Tadhg signed his contract with the San Diego Marlins of the VHLM, the first people who knew were his family and all of the staff who worked with him in Belfast.

 

If you ask Tadhg Byrne about his hockey career so far, he’ll give you a flashy grin and a laugh.

 

‘This is only the beginning, ain’t it? Ain’t no career yet. Not until the big stage. Not until I’m holding a Continental Cup in my hands, champion of the world. I want to take that cup back to Dublin and Belfast to show everybody that yeah, even a kid from Dublin can be the top of the world. It’s not a career until that happens.’

 

(719 words)