US president Joe Biden’s security teams may have made exhaustive advance searches of manholes and rooftops and buildings where he was going to be travelling in Ireland, but they didn’t factor in a possible concussion to the presidential cranium from a belt of a sliotar.
On Thursday afternoon, during the president’s visit to Farmleigh in Dublin with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Lucy Bourke (11) hit a ball with her camogie stick that passed uncomfortably close to Biden’s person. All manner of cameras, including television ones, captured the sequence of events, which swiftly did the rounds on social media.
“They’re calling her Lee Hurley Oswald,” Willie Bourke, Lucy’s father, revealed over the phone on Friday, in reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, who is believed to have shot then US president John F Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.
An email had come late on Sunday, looking for 14 camogie players under-12, and seven club members from two other Dublin GAA clubs. St Brigid’s, Castleknock and St Oliver Plunkett’s GAA were the clubs who provided the young members for some demonstration play at Farmleigh, to entertain Biden and his entourage. Castleknock and St Oliver Plunkett’s were to play against each other, and the camogie players were doing a demonstration.
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“We had them all into the dressing rooms on Wednesday night to make sure their kit all matched,” Bourke said. A bus was organised for the 24 players, who went to Farmleigh accompanied by two coaches, but no parents. “I think half the excitement about the day was there were no parents around.”
The first Bourke knew about a rogue ball were reports on social media about Biden almost being hit. “I didn’t know who it was first.” It wasn’t long before he found out the ball had been struck by his daughter.
Lucy’s reaction? “I thought everyone was going to be giving out to me because it was such a bad shot, but instead everyone was laughing.”
Biden took it all in good spirits and spent some time after the demonstration chatting to the club members. They had come bearing gifts. He was given a St Brigid’s Cross and a woolly club hat as souvenirs. He was not given the sliotar that could have made the name of St Brigid’s Club internationally infamous.
As for Lucy and the other club members, they were given pastries and fruit for sustenance at Farmleigh. It was survival of the fittest. Willie Bourke reports that his daughter told him with indignation: “The boys got there first, and ate all the pastries.”
