Croke Park holds no fears for actor and Cushendall hurler Shane McNaughton

For any hurler heading out to play in the biggest game of their lives, nerves are to be expected.

However for Cushendall’s Shane McNaughton, he feels nothing can compare to the butterflies felt backstage before a curtain call. The 28-year-old Ulster club winner is a keen actor, and has already landed a role in a play based on the 1916 Rising that debuts in New York shortly. The forward is also set for a minor role in the third series of the critically acclaimed TV show ‘The Fall’ alongside Jamie Dornan and Gillian Anderson. Ahead of the All-Ireland club final next month, McNaughton has no doubt what he finds more terrifying.

“Ah, the curtain thing. Do you know when you go and do a gym session and you feel a new muscle you’ve never felt before, I felt a new feeling, just pure and utter fear – sh**ting myself.”

Acting is nothing new to McNaughton as he has been featuring in plays and dramas since he was around 16. In fact, if it hadn’t been for hurling, he may have got to Broadway much sooner than this year.

“I was going to school to study it in New York, and then obviously the minor county and that, and then I got more involved with hurling and just went straight playing hurling since then, and it’s something I’ve been kind of dabbling in.”

The former Antrim hurler is likely to play his last game of 2016 at least with his club on March 17th as the Ulster champions, and first time finalists, play Na Piarsaigh for the right to loft the Tommy Moore trophy in Croke Park. Two weeks after the game win or lose, he heads for Manhattan for what could be along, or short spell, in the Big Apple. The hurler admits that it his detour into full-time acting is a major leap into the unknown, but feels that the time is right for a change, He believes that GAA players need to try and find a better balance to their lives.

"If you could set your life out until you are 28 or 30, I’ll playing hurling to that age and then I’ll go and explore this, do something else, you have a great balance there of two different things.

McNaughton’s two passions in life have not always shared sizzling chemistry. Auditions clashing with hurling training means McNaughton felt the pressure to combine both which was beginning to affect his performances on stage, and on the pitch

“Even there before Christmas it was a nightmare, because obviously I couldn’t foresee us winning the Ulster Championship and I’d already accepted a part in a play, we were training and rehearsing, I didn’t actually realise the rehearsals took up so much of your time. You were actually juggling that for a few months. It’s just not possible.”’

The chance to feature in a play, and even the chance to make it in Hollywood is a distant dream for the forward, as his sole focus at present is on March 17th. Surely the chance to act on stage in front of thousands of people is just as good as playing in Croke Park. Not even close.

“I was saying to my brother the other day in passing, ‘no matter what you do in your life, it doesn’t matter if you went on and did something great in some other field, whenever experience something like this, playing in an All-Ireland final and you get to share it with the people you have grew up playing with and your best friends and family, nothing will ever top that.”

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