THE return of underage training on April 12 is great news. At long last, youngsters can switch off Tic Toc/Fortnite/Roblox/Minecraft, or whatever their preferred screen poison may be, and gallop around their local fields again like herds of young buffalo.
Good luck to coaches trying to settle them down to exploit the intricacies of the new drill they’ve dreamt up over the past... How long has it been again? The wisest step might be to throw the ball in, let the kids run free and have a bit of craic on the first night and take it from there.
Inter-county action will be back by May - fingers crossed – and not a minute too soon.
Without reports, or previews, or follow-up interviews with players standing soaked and foundered on the side of a pitch, people regularly joke: “You must be making the news up by now?”
Not quite (at least not yet) but coming up with stories when there’s no actual, live sport to report on is obviously a challenge. At the same time though it has been a real privilege over the past 12 months to speak with some of the many great players and characters who have played Gaelic Games down the years and forgotten far more about them than most of us will ever know.
From speaking to Gerry O’Neill, Jimmy Smyth, Peter McGinnity, Fr Kevin Cullen, Fran McMahon, PJ O’Mullan senior, Kevin McCabe, Frankie Cassidy, John Rafferty and many, many more, you realise how deep the ocean of untold stories out there actually is.
All of those men played the game for years, in Fr Cullen’s case “busted everything that moved” and lived rich lives after football. When they graciously agree to a chat about their time, you push the ‘record’ button and happily listen for an hour or two. Think about that, an hour is about the length of just one game.
The man you’ve just interviewed had probably played 15 years for their club and 10 for their county. How many games is that? How many scores, wides, tackles, missed tackles, good balls, bad balls, fights, training ground bust-ups, wrong turns taken, night’s out before a match, victories, defeats, trophies won and trophies lost are we talking about here?
A two-page features in the paper is a snapshot of a career that contained a thousand talking points and, for many players, the friendships made and the great stories they can tell are what they treasure most after years of loyal service.
In some cases, that’s all they have.
A few years ago, a former county player asked me to keep an eye out for any pictures of him (and I did come across some) in The Irish News archive because he had nothing – not so much as a pair of socks – left from his playing days when every stitch of clothing had to be accounted for.
Recently Kevin McCabe, the Prince of Tyrone, recalled how he got free boots for the Ulster final and a tracksuit for the All-Ireland but had to buy the rest of his gear himself. Free training gear was an absolute luxury in his day and swapping jerseys after a game would have been a crime punishable by death, or at least by no tae for three months - not that there was much of that going anyway.
“If you were late off the pitch after training, all the biscuits would be gone,” Kevin recalled with a chuckle.
Thankfully, we’ve moved on from fighting over the Digestives but there is still room for further improvement.
Another player asked me recently if the Irish News kept a database of statistics for players. He wondered how many Championship games he had played for his county but hadn’t been able to keep track.
To the best of my knowledge, apart from Kerry where records of players and appearances have been lovingly compiled by the late Weeshie Fogarty’s Terrace Talk website, there is no such database but armed with the date of the player’s debut, I began some research and could say with a degree of certainty that he had played more than 50 Championship matches.
So it was clear that he’d run out for his 50th game without even knowing it. There was no announcement to inform the fans of his remarkable service and no keepsake to mark the achievement. Now, I’m not saying he expected or wanted anything like that but didn’t he deserved it nonetheless?
In so many other sports, debuts are marked with a presentation, as is the 25-game mark and the 50-game mark… We should do the same in GAA.
Many of the youngsters who’ll gallop back onto the fields from April 12, will dream of playing for their county one day and see that as the absolute pinnacle in sport.
Recording the achievements of their heroes will give them a record to break and another reason to reach for the stars.
IT WAS sad to hear of the passing at the weekend of Peter Lorimer, one of the stars of the great Leeds United side of the 1960s and 1970s. I don’t remember Peter playing but many a long day on the dole was brightened by watching hours of footage of him smashing in goals from all over the place via my father’s collection of Leeds United videos.
The man they called ‘Lash’ is the third member of that famous Leeds team to pass away over the past year after Norman Hunter and Jack Charlton and the surviving members of the side – including Ireland’s own Johnny Giles - will also be remembered fondly when their time comes which, hopefully, won’t be for many years.
Giles once joked that when asked what the team was on a particular day he used to reply: “It’s the same as last year”. That would be unheard of in today’s transient global football market when players come and go and managers get sacked for taking the chairman’s spot in the carpark.
The one-club men like Hunter, Charlton and Lorimer (who featured in more than 500 games for Leeds but did play for a few clubs overseas (including UCD) at the end of his career) are an endangered species.
Hunter and Charlton have both had stands named after them at Elland Road since they passed away and fans who return to the ground when it is deemed safe to do so again will pass the statue of Billy Bremner, the captain of that side, before they take their seats. You can be sure that Lorimer (the club’s record goal scorer) will have a permanent memorial too.
The enduring appeal of that Leeds team stems from their individual and collective loyalty and the fact that so many players turned out in that white jersey for season after season at or near the top of the English game made them household names and their service means they will be remembered long after their dying day.
Today’s players enjoy much greater financial rewards but the immortality that some of their predecessors earned will be granted to very few of them.
