DECLAN LAWN is still trying to catch his breath.
On Wednesday the filmmaker’s new movie Rogue Agent was released on Netflix and later that day he won a Junior B hurling title in Antrim with St Brigid’s.
“Oh my God, it’s funny how things in life sometimes come together,” he says.
“I could never have imagined we’d be playing a county final and the film going out on exactly the same day.”
The movie, which stars Gemma Arterton and James Norton, is the true story of a career con-man who impersonated an MI5 agent and is co-directed by Lawn and Adam Patterson.
Together they wrote and directed the highly-acclaimed short film Rough and the pair were also behind the recent hit BBC drama series The Salisbury Poisonings .
Yesterday Rogue Agent was at number four on Netflix’s most-watched movies, but Lawn can’t say which was more important this week.
“That’s the one question I can’t answer,” he says, laughing.
“If I say I’m more excited about the movie, the hurlers will give me a hard time. And if I say I’m more excited about the hurling, the people I made the film with will be raging!”
Lawn worked as a journalist for BBC investigative programmes Spotlight and Panorama before making the switch into film a few years ago with his then-BBC colleague Patterson.
Around the same time he rediscovered hurling.
“I didn’t come back to hurling until my late 30s. I hadn’t picked up a hurl since I was 12,” says Lawn.
“Six or seven years ago, my son started playing at Under-7s (for St Brigid’s). He’s Under-13s now.
“You get into it and I got dragged into helping out, even though I didn’t have enough experience. But I was really enjoying it.
“There’s a fella called Paddy Trainor and I was telling him one night about the hurling coaching and said I wished that I’d played more when I was younger.
“He said: ‘You need to go to Half-Pace Hurling.’ That’s basically socially hurling for lads who have retired and lads who are beginners.
“It was all ages, all abilities and really welcoming.
“At first you’re trying to remember how to flipping hand pass a ball and strike the ball properly and all that. But I loved it.
“That was when I was taking up the screenwriting and I found the hurling to be a great release.”
He never expected to play competitive hurling, never expected it to go any further than a bit of fun.
But when St Brigid’s man Oliver Lennon started putting together a new adult hurling team for the Belfast club he asked Lawn to come along.
“Oliver said to me that numbers were pretty low and would I consider coming to training and maybe pulling on a jersey if they needed me,” he says.
“I was very circumspect about that. I was thinking: ‘I’m not good enough to play senior hurling’, but I did it anyway because I wanted to make sure we had the 15 players every week.
“So I started in earnest at the start of this year and I played my first game at the start of March.”
At 45 years of age, Lawn is realistic about his abilities on the field.
So it seems are his teammates, who have given him the nickname ‘The Lawnmower’.
“That gives you an idea of my style of play,” he says, laughing.
“I either play corner-back or full-forward. I have a pretty industrial style.”
Lennon and his assistant manager Rory Bonnar started putting Lawn and the newly formed St Brigid’s senior team through their paces.
Progress was slow at first.
There were a lot of losses, a lot of big losses, but gradually things started to improve.
“Then just at the start of the Championship it all seemed to gel,” he says. “We started winning and we didn’t stop.
“I’ve only played 30 minutes of this Championship hurling because there are better players than me.
“I’m content and realistic that I’ll be on the bench and come on if need be.
“It’s also very surreal. I’m 45.
“If you’d said two years ago, you’d be playing senior hurling and at the end of your first season you’ll have a Junior B county Championship medal I would’ve laughed at you.
“But that’s what happened.”
At the same time he was filming and editing various projects.
During the edit for Rogue Agent he posted on social media about flying home for an Under-11s match for the team he was coaching.
“Whenever the Under-11s had a big match I would fly home for it and then fly back the next day,” he says.
“It’s a very strange sport, what it does to you, in terms of the passion it elicits from you.
“I was always a hurling fan, but it’s only now that I’m really immersed in it that I start to think just how much it can grab you.
“I read a great quote on Twitter: ‘People who don’t play hurling think that it’s not that important in the scheme of things. But for the people who play hurling, it is the scheme of things.’
“It’s taken over my life. It really has.”
Family comes first for Lawn. After that, it’s a fight out between Hollywood and hurling.
He and his wife Breige McGuckian have four children — Annie, Mary, Patrick and Liam, the latter of whom is just
starting his own hurling journey at six years old.
Last week Breige was at the Antrim Junior B hurling Championship semi-final where Lawn was on the bench for St Brigid’s.
It was also their wedding anniversary.
As it happens, Breige’s brother John McGuckian is also on the team and he scored four goals in 10 minutes as St Brigid’s got past Latharna Óg of Larne and made it to the final.
And so, on Wednesday Lawn was at St Gall’s in Belfast where his St Brigid’s side
were facing Ardoyne Kickham’s for the Antrim Junior B
hurling title.
“It was terrifying to watch,” he says.
“I was on the subs bench, but after the game I felt like I’d played in it because my heart rate was probably at about
140.
“At the end it was just relief. Nails bitten down. But relief quickly turned to total jubilation.”
With the movie having been released that same day it was a double celebration for Lawn and he was still singing well into the early hours of Thursday morning.
His next project with Patterson is a new six-part BBC1 drama called Blue Lights starring Sian Brooke, John Lynch,
Valene Kane and Richard Dormer.
It follows three rookie cops in Belfast and Lawn has even managed to get some small ball action in.
“That has just finished filming, we’re in the edit now and that will be out in January,” he says.
“I can’t say too much, but there’s quite a decent amount of camogie in it.
“We shot the camogie sequence about three months ago and I was there, making sure it all looked accurate.
“A few of the crew from here knew GAA well, but then there was a lot from England who had never seen anything like
it.
“So we had a big sequence we shot with two teams playing each other and it worked out brilliantly.
“There was no way I could set a show in Belfast and not have hurling or camogie in it.”
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