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Post by kerrygold on Jan 6, 2015 20:27:57 GMT
Dublin are self funding at this stage. It is surely time to take from the rich and give to the poor around the rural out-backs of the country..........................
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Post by Mickmack on Jan 6, 2015 20:39:15 GMT
This was written by a Patrick Carroll in 1973. Con Houlihan was living at home at the time.
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200 Feet of Posterity
A Profile of Tom Munnelly
“Your immortality is assured,” wrote B.H. Bronson to Tom Munnelly upon the inclusion of another of Tom’s finds in Bronson’s Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads. Tom’s comment: “I still can’t afford a copy of the damn thing.”
Tom Munnelly is employed by the Irish Department of Education as a folk song collector. He is the only fulltime collector working in the Republic. He is a short, fair, teddy-bearish young man with radical opinions, a ginger beard and a slowly-dwindling stock of corduroy in his wardrobe. He is one of the earnest, rumpled pint-drinkers with hair that looked long in 1960, who made up the backbone of the late folk revival. These people differed from previous generations of enthusiasts in their general preference for beer to sherry, their frank and humorous acceptance of bawdry, and an easy and un-patronising intercourse with the folk themselves. Tom is unique among the breed however. He approaches what is a pastime and an amusement to many with a quietly devotional passion that is distinctly vocational. Many of the young people who came into contact with various forms of ethnic music during the boom period of the ‘50s and ‘60s became conversant with this or that aspect of a given tradition, but few have pursued wider knowledge and deeper understanding of source, variant and innovation with Tom Munnelly’s Holy Grail spirit.
For some years Tom worked at two fulltime jobs: one, of irksome drudgery in a knitting factory in order to support his family, and the other an exhaustive and apparently gratuitous apprenticeship in folklore generally and Anglo-Irish balladry in particular. It is virtually impossible for a Dublin working-class person, with minimal formal education and no saleable talent as a performer, to try making a living out of folksong scholarship. However, Tom’s reputation, even as an amateur collector, was such that when, in September 1971, after several years of bureaucratic wheeling and dealing, financial provision for the employment of a fulltime field collector was finally pushed through the Department of Education budget, Tom was offered the post.
On the last day of April, 1973 I set off to accompany Tom on a week of collecting in North Kerry. “We’re very scientific in the Department and the pin stuck in Castleisland,” said Tom as he drove his Renault 4L van out of Dublin and along the main Dublin-Limerick road.
At Newcastle West, Co. Limerick, in a dingy back street public house that served even dingier beer, Tom enquired for a settled traveller named Paddy Quilligan, from whom he had previously recorded successfully; getting, among other songs, a good version of Lord Bateman. It transpired that the whole Quilligan clan had been barred from the premises for being too uproarious in their relaxations.
There was laundry boiling on a rusty iron stove and grimy blonde child asleep on a lopsided settee in Paddy Quilligan’s side alley cottage. Mrs. Quilligan, a large, – knobbly-faced, matriarchal-looking woman, said that her husband was away selling a horse in Castleisland and wouldn’t be back until evening. As Castleisiand was to be the base for the week, Tom decided to press on to there directly.
“I can almost always count on getting something from the tinkers, except for some of the nouveau-riche ones with Ford Capris,” said Tom as we headed out on the Abbeyfeale road. And, in fact, he does get a good deal of material from travelling people; both settled and still on the road. What first brought Tom’s work to the attention of international ethnomusicologists was his discovery of a version of The Maid and the Palmer (Child #21), a song that had not been recorded in oral tradition since 1801. This version, called The Well Below the Valley, can be heard on the Planxty LP of the same name, and the tune is used by Bronson. The singer from whom Tom collected this and many other valuable songs – his most satisfactory informant yet in fact – was the tragic John Reilly. This man was a settled traveller living an outcast and hermit-like life in Boyle, Co. Roscommon, when Tom found him. He was a fine and sensitive singer, and Tom estimates his probable repertoire at between two and three hundred songs, mainly ballads. Tom had recorded him quite extensively, getting about 40 songs, and was returning for a further session accompanied by the American folklorist D.K. Wilgus, only to find Mr. Reilly very ill. The two collectors rushed him to hospital where this shy and gifted man died, more or less of old age. He was 43.
From the top of a rise of ground near Gloonsharoon Hill, one can look down on almost the whole of Kerry spreading out below. The view stretches beyond Killarney and Tralee to Dingle and the Atlantic. It is a fine sight. From this point the road sidles downhill and becomes a side-street feeding into the main street of the Kerry market town of Castleisland. Prendeville, McCarthy, Tangney and O’Connor are some of the common names of the area, reflected on the shop and pub fronts that line a long, broad central thoroughfare that divides at its southern end into the main Killarney and Tralee roads. At the start of the Killarney fork is Hussy’s public house, where Tom decided to stop and enquire after Paddy Quilligan. Mr. Patrick Hussy, the publican, is a sprightly, balding man of 57 with a stray eye. He can vault his own bar with ease and subsists mainly on his sisters’ homemade bread. Mr. Hussy and his pub and his sisters and their bread are all so congenial and hospitable that the house became an office, rendezvous and local-away-from-home during the stay in Castleisland. When told that Tom was in the area to collect old songs, Mr. Hussy immediately asked – as people all over Ireland do when the subject comes up – did we know Seamus Ennis? Of course, we did, and after recalling with relish the great musician-collector’s visits to the neighbourhood (particularly in connection with the legendary fiddle-master, Padraic O’Keefe, a name that we would hear constantly during the week) Mr. Hussy suggested a caravan site a bit out on the Killarney road where Tom might ask for Paddy Quilligan. He further recommended contacting a man name Con Houlihan, who, although he didn’t sing himself, knew everyone in the locality who did and who was, in any case, a scholarly and knowledgeable character in every way.
At the caravan site Tom was told that no one there knew Paddy Quilligan, but that if he called to another caravan on the Scartaglen road they might know him there. At this caravan Paddy Quilligan was known but his whereabouts were not. Tom, they said, could try a house near the Pitch and Putt Club where cousins of Quilligan’s lived. Here there was no one at home. At each of the locations Tom asked if there were any singers in the family, of if anyone knew of any in the neighbourhood. He received a couple of names and noted them.
“Sometimes I’ll go through this sort of thing for two solid days and wind up with some ould one singing I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen,” observed Tom.
After checking into Castleisland’s only hotel, and fighting the first skirmish in a week-long losing battle with the local cuisine, we went to call on Con Houlihan. He greeted us, a large-featured man of six-foot four or five, with long, grey, haystack hair, wearing wellingtons, cords and a holey yellow gansey. The parlour, dim in the gathering dusk, lit only by a small turf fire, was very mellow and restful after the long drive and the legwork of the afternoon. Con, a great mass of tics and erudition, speaking like a mellifluous machine gun, proved to be a silo of local lore. After an hour of most entertaining chat, Con said that he would ponder awhile and come to meet us later in Hussy’s and furnish Tom with the names of some possible informants. He duly arrived and after a space indicated that he was ready and began to rattle off names and addresses; his huge right hand stroking up and down from mouth to nose to eyes and back again, his Kerry accent becoming beautifully incomprehensible in the pronunciation of the local townlands and the incidental biographical information supplied with each name. Eventually a more than adequate list was compiled and we settled down to listen to Con’s tales of his work as a turf-cutter, as tutor giving ‘grinds’ in Latin and maths to Leaving Certificate students, and in journalism, and drank enough of Paddy Hussy’s excellent beer, both bottled and draught, to be going along with.
The next day was a fine first of May. After an extraordinary breakfast that was rendered edible by the device of placing a folded napkin under one side of the plate so that the watery grease could collect in one place and thus be segregated from the food, and during which Tom speculated on the possible survival of May Day customs in the area, we started off in search of one of the names collected during the previous afternoon’s round of caravans. Having drawn a blank, we drove toward Headley’s Bridge, about nine miles away, in search of a man named Jacky Griffin, highly recommended by Con Houlihan as a good singer with many songs. Moynihan’s pub is the only one among the cluster of buildings near a lovely mossy bridge that gives the village its name. It was then a small, dim, single-roomed country pub, with imitation knotty-pine Contac on the walls. A fiddle-case hung behind the counter amid an array of bar-humour placards. A television sat at one end of the bar with a raffish-looking melodeon perched on top of it. There eight or ten stools along the bar standing on an old, ragged Double Diamond darts mat. In the corner under the only window were three steel-framed benches with black leatherette padding that looked softer than it was. The pub does a steady local trade that used to be augmented by farmers calling to a creamery in the village. This had closed down some time previously and a large bar extension was in the process of being built in the hope of developing a roadhouse trade among motorists on their way to the resort towns of Kerry and Cork. Tom glanced at the clock, shuddered at the hour, and ordered pints of Smithwick’s, enquiring of the woman of the house if she knew Jacky Griffin. She did, and hearing Tom’s business, observed that while it was true that Mr. Griffin had many songs, she felt that his voice had seen better days. Tom indicated that this didn’t matter especially as the songs were the important thing and then asked if the woman knew any other singers round about. She said that there was a man lived nearby named Jack Horan who had a good few songs, but that he was over 80 and his voice also wasn’t what it had been. The woman’s directions to both men’s houses were typically vague and two more people had to be consulted before we finally fetched up at a pale blue and pink cottage, roofed half with thatch and half with corrugated iron. A passerby told us that that was Jacky Griffin’s house all right and that, no, he was not Jacky Griffin. Having found the door locked and no one at home, Tom asked did the man know where Jack Horan lived? He nodded and pointed to a house a distance away down the gently sloping vale below the main road. To reach this it was necessary to double back through Headley’s Bridge, and we weren’t quite sure when we got down to the general area which house the man had meant. The one we called to was a grey, square, two-storey dilapidation at the end of an overgrown path lined with fir trees. The doors and window frames were newly and sketchily painted bright red. Knocking at what appeared to be the front door produced no response. Just as we were about to move off some movement was seen inside the house and six mongrel dogs came tearing around the corner, yelping riotously. We went round to the back of the house and looked into a room that was a midden of rough furniture, old farm implements and chipped, rusty cooking utensils. In the middle of the room was a man of indeterminate age. He was unshaven and had grizzled hair that looked as though he had cut it himself while in a bad temper. He had a squint, a huge goitre on his neck, seemed slightly drunk, a bit manic and, as he stood holding a large saucepan that contained what might have been either a stew or his spare trousers, he was quite fairly gothic looking. When asked, the man said he was not Jack Horan and waved his pot at a clump of bushes, indicating that somewhere beyond them Jack Horan might be found. He didn’t seem surprised at Tom’s business or particularly interested and, with another wave of his pot, said, “Songs? Jack Horan? Over beyond.” Tom thanked him and, as we went, the man told the dogs to give over their row and repeated, “Songs? Over beyond.”
There were two dwellings in the general direction of ‘over beyond’, on opposite sides of a crossroad. One was empty. The other was a small, crumbling stone shed, partitioned with pieces of torn plasterboard. The dim figure who had been sitting motionlessly gazing out of a polythene-sheeted window came to the door in answer to Tom’s “Hello”. He was a small, wizened image, wearing a venerable dark suit that had safety-pins doing point duty at strategic places. He also wore a soiled, striped shirt with no collar and the inevitable flat cap. He had gnarled hands that were disproportionately large and no teeth. Tom asked if he was John Horan and the man said he was.
“My name is Tom Munnelly. I’m from the Department of Education and I’m in the area collecting old songs and I was told that you were a man who had a few.”
“I have a mill’n,” said the old man.
Mr. Horan readily agreed to Tom’s invitation to go up to Moynihan’s and sing some of his songs for the tape recorder. On the way to the pub Tom delivered the more or less set patter that gives to most of his prospective informants. He points out how the old songs are disappearing quickly, instancing the number that have gone in the singer’s own lifetime. He assures them that the songs are not intended for broadcast or publication, and they remain the singer’s property and will never be reproduced without permission. Tom is not happy about referring to the songs as property, but he has been unable to come up with a better formula. In any case, he finds that singers are quite possessive about their songs. Generally among Irish traditional musicians a song or a tune is ‘had’ rather than known, as it is ‘put together’ rather than remembered, and is always ‘made’ not written or composed. Mr. Horan took no interest whatsoever in what happened to his songs after he sang them.
The handful of customers in Moynihan’s greeted Mr. Horan warmly, and he included them all in a vague general salutation. Tom bought a round, and kept up a stream of unspecific rabbit, assuring Mr. Horan that there was no hurry and that he should relax himself. A friend of the old man’s who was sitting at the table became included in the conversation. He was a well-kept man in his 60s, of the type known in Ireland as a “returned Yank”. A native of Headley’s Bridge, he had spent 40 years in New York and had come home to spend his retirement. His accent was quietly Brooklynized, and his spectacles, windbreaker and cap were obviously American. He was not weather-beaten, as were most of the other drinkers, but his features were of an unmistakeably Irish cast to be seen around Gaelic Park in the Bronx, and among older New York City police and firemen. He had a managing way with him, and was anxious for Mr. Horan to show up to his best advantage, but when he perceived that Tom was not especially interested in post-1922 rebel songs or drawing room ballads, he was most helpful and sympathetic.
Toward the bottom of the first pints, Tom asked if Mr. Horan was in humour to sing and the old man said he certainly was. At this, Tom slipped out to the van and returned with the Uher portable tape recorder that is the main tool of his trade, and a briefcase filled with five-inch reels of BASF standard play recording tape. Tom records at 7-1/2ips on one side of each reel and gets about ten minutes per tape. Having decided that the noise of the lounge construction would not interfere with his recording, Tom was testing for a sound level when the old man started singing and he had to cut him short in order to get the machine running properly and to observe some preliminaries. When the tape was going the singer, in answer to Tom’s questions, said that his name was John Horan; that he was a retired farm labourer; and lived at Knockeencrean, Headley’s Bridge, Co. Kerry. He declined to give his age, but later Mrs. Moynihan reckoned it to be 84, and the ‘Yank’ agreed he must be well over 80. Mr. Horan then recommenced The Maid of Rooska Hill, a pleasant but undistinguished song by a local balladeer named Jim Griffin, who, Mr. Horan said, had been dead this long time and was not, as far as he knew, related to Jacky Griffin. The men at the bar were taking a jokey but respectful interest in the proceedings and one of them asked Mr. Horan to sing a song, the title of which sounded to non-Kerry ears like The Yat. This song had been mentioned in passing the night before and appeared to be a local favourite. It turned out to be a mildly amusing satiric ditty about a broken-down old scow called The Mary Jane, its actual title being The Yacht. Two more Jim Griffin songs followed: Julie Roone and The Boys of ’23 (What a Promise Can Do). Neither had much to recommend it. While putting on a new tape Tom tried to probe for ritual or seasonal songs, using the fact of its being May Day as a starting point. The only thing this produced was a fragment of the traditional Kerry song The Dingle Puck Goat. This was followed by a version, also incomplete, of The Palmerstown Fleas, one of the family of songs about filthy lodgings that includes The Kilkenny Lousehouse and Rothsea-o.
Between songs Mr. Horan applied himself to his pints with greedless concentration and occasionally shaved slivers off a half-ounce of Black Condor, rubbing the rough tobacco between his yellow palms and packing it into his small corn-cob, the brass-bound mouthpiece coming and going from his stubbly, lipless mouth as he answered Tom’s questions about the origins of his songs as well as his memory allowed. Most of the songs up to this point had been fragmentary or garbled and none had been of much interest, but, in response to a direct request from the ‘Yank’, Mr. Horan settled into a fine, full version of The Dawning of the Day. Tom perked up visibly and, after complimenting Mr. Horan on his rendering, observed that young people today didn’t seem willing to take the trouble to learn a song of such length, despite its beauty. They only wanted a song they could learn in five minutes and sing in three. Mr. Horan agreed, his manner indicating that he took little interest in young people today, and none in what they sang.
Following a fragment of a song called The Tanyard Side, Tom asked if Mr. Horan knew any songs about murders or executions. When the singer grasped what Tom meant, he shook his head, saying no, he’d nothing of that sort. On being prompted by the ‘Yank’, however, he sang a garbled portion of song called P.J. Allman, which had points of interest as an example of the doomed rebel ballad, but was not what Tom had in mind. Another garbled fragment, The Fair at Abbeyfeale, and a comic song, Like a Frog in a Garden, emerged after much patient but discouraging digging during which the old man’s concentration seemed to be straying. However, Tom persevered, feeling that somewhere under this mishmash of local banalities and well-worn commonplaces there might be something really worthwhile. For despite the fact that the singer had but the shadow of a style left, and sang each song to what was essentially the same air, altering only in tempo and metre, there was in the old man’s cracked and incohesive singing the remains of a real musical sensibility. Tom decided to try one more standard ploy and asked Mr. Horan if he sang Barbara Allen. This is, of course, the most widely sung of all the classic ballads and if a singer has any he will usually have this. Mr. Horan did have the song and was three verses through a rather pedestrian version called Barby Ellen when an odd thing happened. Some strange unconscious association – apparently caused by the similarity of name sounds – transported the singer from Barby Ellen into the totally different ballad of Lord Thomas and Fair Elinor. He sang through an outstanding and complete version of the song – possibly broadsheet in origin and featuring an unusual amount of detail in the dialogue between Fair Elinor and the Brown Girl – and then switched back and finished Barby Ellen, seemingly unaware that he had sung two different songs.
It is a recognized technique of folk song collecting to probe an informant’s repertoire in terms of the key lines and verses that recur in most versions of a given song, rather than with titles, which vary enormously. A single phrase can often trigger off a singer’s recollection of an entire song, but the phenomenon of a singer doing it to himself unconsciously is unique in Tom’s experience. At the time he didn’t – and still doesn’t – feel that the facts of Mr. Horan’s age, uncertain memory or comparative insobriety explain the mystery away entirely.
Tom tried to follow the lead of this tandem ballad but the lode seemed to be exhausted. The singer rambled through a nonsense song called Tralee Jail’d Kill the Devil, an incomplete version of There Was A Lady in Her Father’s Garden and finally an incoherent fragment of Morrissey and the Russian Sailor. Mr. Horan’s mind appeared to move further and further from the songs and the company around him. Presently he excused himself, saying he would be back shortly, and went off toward the Gents. A few moments later Tom looked out the window and saw the old man ambling away down the road towards his hovel. He said a word in passing to the workmen on the road, sucked away at his cramped old pipe and was gone, having said everything he had to say for that day.
While Tom packed up his machine and made sure that the five tapes were correctly numbered and labelled, we became more aware of the men at the bar. They were of varying sizes, but all of them wore muddy dark suits, wellingtons and flat caps. They had close-cropped black, grey or sandy hair, and necks like dried-up creek beds. They drank pints or large bottles of Guinness, and smoked straight or roll-up cigarettes, holding them between index and middle-fingers, butt outwards and flicking at the ash with their thumbs. Their conversation was practical and philosophical.
“Can ‘oo tell me,” asked a slight man who the ‘Yank’ called Mickey Mouse, “why it is that a rooster has no hands?”
“I cannot, John Joe. Why is that?” said a man who looked like Wallace Berry’s older brother.
“Because a hen has no knickers.”
This observation began a discussion of poultry, underwear, love and the mysteries of Providence, during which we left.
“You know,” said Tom as we got into the van, “that ballad has never been collected from oral tradition in Ireland before. There was a manuscript version turned up in Cork in 1928, but aside from that, no evidence that the song existed in this country.”
We were now heading off towards Knocknagashal, a small town about five miles away up the Glanaruddery Mountains in search of a publican named Neilus O’Connor, another of Con Houlihan’s recommendations. On the way we called at Jacky Griffin’s house, as we did on the way back to Castleisland after finding that Mr. O’Connor was away for the day. Mr. Griffin was not at home on either occasion.
We arrived back at the dreaded hour when it became necessary to eat. Following another wrestle with the ubiquitous shrunken sausage, peas and chips and a rest for digestion and paperwork, we wandered down to Hussy’s to spend the evening recounting the day’s adventures, and in turn, listening to Con relate the history of the local paper he had edited until it had been put out of business by a successful lawsuit. We could well believe this, Con being no particular respecter of persons. He remarked ruefully that The Kerryman , for which he now writes a weekly column, is insured against such contingencies. Ten minutes before closing time this extraordinary man hustled us out and own to the Pitch and Putt Club, where the bar was open late. The woman at the door remonstrated mildly with Con, saying he never came near the place, bar to drink after hours, which sounded plausible as Con is not such a man as you would suspect of golf. However, he blustered in, saying that it was a special occasion as he had a visiting professor from Harvard University with him who required entertainment. The supposed academic was the present writer, a professional high school dropout who has never been anywhere near Harvard University in his life.
So, two days in the life of a folk song collector. Not exactly average, for even Tom does not discover an unrecorded Child Ballad every day. And no matter what line of work you’re in you don’t encounter characters like Con Houlihan or the Man-in-the-Grey House very often. But while travelling with Tom during the rest of the week I saw him encounter the same kinds of satisfactions and frustrations, and deal with them using the same combination of expertise, energetic patience and amazingly chameleon accent. The next day took us to Killarney where Tom recorded a portly young publican named Jimmy O’Brien: a man with all the reserved geniality of his trade, and an expert singer with a fine repertoire of songs, many of them local and many learned from his uncle, Patrick Coakley, himself a fine singer and a man of great natural dignity. From Mr. Coakley Tom recorded a first-rate, if slightly lurid, version of the ballad known variously as Bruton Town, The Pot of Basil, &c, and in his version as The Steward in the Laurel Tree. In the afternoon, after recording Mr. O’Brien and prior to going to Mr. Coakley’s house, Tom taped a strange, haunting and highly detailed version of Blackwater Side from an old travelling woman near Fossa who had the heartbreaking remnant of what once must have been a beautiful voice. The day after that found Tom recording Sheila Tangney, a young matron of Gurteen, near Scartaglen, who sang while she baked bread and her mother quieted the baby. Later, in an immaculate farmhouse kitchen, we listed to Dan Casey sing comic songs to the boundless amusement of himself and his wife, and also heard some of the family’s collection of American-made Irish race records. We finished the day in Lyracrompane, between Castleisland and Listowel, listening to an extraordinarily self-possessed seventeen year-old schoolgirl named Peg Sweeney practising to become a legend. On the Friday I found that a week of enforced (and unenforced) conviviality and dire food had taken its toll, but Tom spent the morning recording two settled travellers in Listowel before beginning the 127 mile drive back to Dublin, where he would spend the next week transcribing and indexing the 71 songs that he had collected during the week.
It will have become apparent from this narrative that there is one central dilemma with which Tom has constantly to deal: quantity versus depth. His brief from the Department of Education is to create an archive of Anglo-Irish folk songs, and they think he ought to be able to do it in five years. This is idiotic on the face of it, but civil servants are like that. Having spent five days collecting within a seventeen mile radius of Castleisland, Tom knows that he could spend six months there and not begin to exhaust the material that survives in the area. But he is the only fulltime collector in the country and the singers are dying and the songs die with them. Tom reflects wistfully on the fact that Seamus Ennis, while working variously for the Irish Folklore Commission, RTE and the BBC, could spend two months at a stretch with someone like Padraic O’Keefe, taking down songs, tunes, tales and sayings, as well as finding out the kind of things about the man that might explain to Tom why a John Horan should move without thought from Barbara Allen to Lord Thomas and Fair Elinor and back, and why he sang either song in the first place.
Tom sometimes feels that he is somehow stealing something when he takes a song with no reference to the personality of the singer, but he consoles himself with the thought that every song he records gives the singer about 200 feet of posterity.
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Post by glengael on Jan 7, 2015 9:19:48 GMT
Galway boss Anthony Cunningham says reducing red card sanction could invite more fouling Proposal to substitute a player sent off for two yellow cards queried by former All-Ireland winner
Wed, Jan 7, 2015, 08:40
The GAA’s 2020 Hurling review committee’s proposal to allow a player who would traditionally be sent off for receiving a second yellow card be substituted because “we don’t have cynical fouling in hurling” has raised many eyebrows – including those of Anthony Cunningham.
Former Tipperary manager Liam Sheedy headed the 11 -person committee that revealed their 15 proposals to help improve the game yesterday. But Galway manager Cunningham said that particular rule change may just “invite more fouling”.
“We’re delighted that we don’t have cynical fouling in hurling; our game is very clean but we think it’s best served 15 on 15 and we think it’s definitely worth looking at,” said Sheedy during the committee’s presentation.
But Cunningham said: “It’s not that easy. That might just invite more fouling, it mightn’t work out because definitely if you have a defender on a yellow card and now if they know they can be substituted and there’s ten minutes left, of course they’re going to take one for the team won’t they?
“If there’s a few minutes left and Richie Power is running through then you’re going to take him out.”
“In the league semi-final this year we had a man going through and he would have scored a goal, there’s no doubt, but he was just taken down on the 21.
“If you have a smart defender it’s going to introduce cynicism in the last ten or 15 minutes of matches.”
However Sheedy said: “If there is cynicism creeping into the game, it would be on the edge of the square – and we feel the best way to address that is the one-on-one penalty.”
This is a notion supported by Limerick’s All Star defender Séamus Hickey. He feels the proposal is “a positive thing because in 2013 and 2014 a lot of these decisions about certain sendings off had a big effect on games.
“It’s no harm trialling it and I don’t think it will result in heavy cynicism. Most cynical fouls this year were a result of the penalty rule.
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Post by donegalman on Jan 7, 2015 12:03:22 GMT
The elephant in the room as regards wasting money by the GAA has to be pairc ui caoimh. It is a spectacular flush down the toilet. We should make sure that the 70 million that is being wasted here, doesnt turn into 100 million. Birmingham City proposed a 25 million development of their stadium, to increase in exact same proportions as PUC. this is almost a third the price that is going to be spent in Cork.
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Post by Mickmack on Jan 7, 2015 13:25:01 GMT
we don’t have cynical fouling in hurling
Well, the cynical fouling by Kilkenny in last years minor final was so bad that it looked like a well planned tactic. That game alone merits the introduction of the black card in hurling.
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Post by Dermot on Jan 8, 2015 11:27:34 GMT
I didn't know we'd be using this term in Kerry. We generally don't use the term Freestaters either but that is what we are looked upon and usually In denigrating fashion, just ask any Crokes supporters who have had experience in their past liaisons with Crossmaglen, anyway it was petty of me to use that term, I was just aghast at mcnulty's piece. Has any "Nordie" on here ever called you a freestater FG? ... I know I certainly havent !! p.s. Dont think anyone from Armagh would ever suggest they should have won 9 AI's .... McNulty must have been on the drink when he said that
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Post by Dermot on Jan 8, 2015 11:36:47 GMT
Mr Rashers, I think that u are spot on about armagh in 2005, that game was armaghs until tyrone scored 2 late points to pip them. Some game. 2003 i would disagree with you, I think that tyrone should have beaten them by more than 3 points in the final. completely agree .. 2005 could have went either way and only McGeeny was called ashore I'm fairly sure they would have beaten us (Kernans biggest mistake) .. was sooo glad to see him going off .. couldnt believe it actually but thank God for it. 2003 was ours all the way and we really should have won by a lot more than we did, we missed a lot of easy chances that day, and only for Gormleys block at the end we could have been beat.... Theres usually a fine line between success and failure !!
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Post by Dermot on Jan 8, 2015 11:40:49 GMT
armagh beat kerry x1, lostx2 and drew x1 armagh beat tyronex3, lostx3 and drew x1 in the knock out stages of the competition, tyrone beat armagh twice, with armagh beating tyrone once in 2000 at the same stage (ulster before the back door). Very close record. The difference between Armagh & Tyrone was that we we lucky enough to win the ones that really counted!
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Post by Dermot on Jan 8, 2015 11:46:18 GMT
Conor Gormley was a class player and a great warrior and leader for Tyrone. He was also quite a bowsy and a scut on the field. People outside Tyrone can think what they like about Gormley but we all know that Tyrone wouldnt have won any AI without him .. the most underrated player in Ireland during the naughties .. He'll be sadly missed .. by us anyway
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Post by Dermot on Jan 8, 2015 11:49:53 GMT
Oh btw .. Happy New Year folks !!
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Jan 8, 2015 12:07:11 GMT
www.limerickpost.ie/2015/01/08/exclusive-limericks-john-galvin-calls-time-on-career/Exclusive: Limerick’s John Galvin calls time on career Donn O'Sullivan | January 8, 2015 LIMERICK footballer John Galvin has called time on his inter county career. Speaking exclusively to the Limerick Post this week, the midfielder confirmed his intention to retire from inter county football. Galvin starred for Limerick in a 15 year career, which started back in 1999. In that season, the Croom man made his debut against Cork in Pairc Ui Rinn in the Munster Championship as a teenager. The following seasons saw the midfielder become a mainstay of Limerick football, playing in five Munster finals, (one a replay) winning two National League Division, four medals and a GPA Award in 2010. Galvin now feels that the time is right to leave the Limerick inter county set up. “The time is right for me now I think. This has not been an easy decision, but I know that I have made the right call to move on. I informed John Brudair of my retirement this week and I want to thank him, first off, for his patience and time he gave me, to make up my mind.” Galvin, who played club football this season with Cratloe of Clare (where he now lives), is not done yet with football altogether however. A defence of the Clare county title is firmly in his mind for the 2015 season. “The demands on time and more importantly, a person’s body are huge these days for inter county players. I know I could have given it one more year, but I feel it is best for me and for Limerick that I move on. I’ll continue to play with Cratloe for the coming season alright. I have always been the kind of player who commits to something 100 per cent, so once I knew I could not give that to Limerick anymore, the decision was made for me.” Looking back on his career, Galvin attributes the skills he learned playing basketball as being a huge boost to his GAA career. “Playing basketball with Árd Scoil Rís really developed my ball skills. I have to thank Tommy Hehir, our coach at the time, for that. Winning the All Ireland Schools basketball title in 1998 gave me the ability and confidence to be more aggressive and involved in games on the football field.” Indeed a year later Galvin was to make his senior debut under Liam Kearns against the aforementioned Cork. The year 2000 saw the number 9 captain the Limerick under21s to a Munster title, before losing the All Ireland final to Tyrone. “Those were the golden days of Limerick football,” Galvin recalls. “I have to thank all those people who helped me along the way with Limerick. My entire family and my wife Liane have been my biggest supporters over the years. I have been lucky too, to have played under managers and coaches who have added something to my game every step of the way, from Liam Kearns, to Mickey Ned O’Sullivan, to Maurice Horan, Donie Buckley and of course, John Brudair in the last two seasons. I don’t want to leave anyone out, but people sometimes forget the work that goes into a senior football set up and I only wish I could have repaid them and the fans of Limerick with more silverware over the years.” Galvin, a national basketball cup winner in 2002 with Burger King Limerick, was the focal point of the teams that went toe to toe with Kerry and Cork in the Munster finals of 2003, 2004, 2009 and 2010. “For me, those are the ones that got away. I suppose in time I’ll look back on the career and fondly remember the wins and the trophies we did manage to win, but those four Munster finals are games which will stay with me for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I have no regrets, but I often wonder what might have been.” Galvin, who has suffered two cruciate knee injuries in the last two seasons, has no interest “just yet” in coaching, but the Croom clubman is not ruling it out. “This is the time to walk away from Limerick in terms of playing. I’m going to enjoy 2015 with the club and who knows what the future holds. All I can say is ‘thank you’ to everyone I played with and against over the years. Luimneach abú”
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Jigz84
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Post by Jigz84 on Jan 9, 2015 12:40:06 GMT
John Galvin was a serious operator and would've walked on to any Inter-County team in the last 15 years.
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kerryexile
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Whether you believe that you can, or that you can't, you are right anyway.
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Post by kerryexile on Jan 9, 2015 22:22:04 GMT
This was written by a Patrick Carroll in 1973. Con Houlihan was living at home at the time. 200 Feet of Posterity A Profile of Tom Munnelly “Your immortality is assured,” wrote B.H. Bronson .......... Great post Mick. Perfect for the long January nights.
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Post by MrRasherstoyou on Jan 10, 2015 1:44:55 GMT
Great piece MM, really enjoyed that.
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fitz
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Post by fitz on Jan 10, 2015 5:57:33 GMT
John Galvin was a serious operator and would've walked on to any Inter-County team in the last 15 years. World class. Always near the top of any fantasy transfer list.
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Post by Mickmack on Jan 13, 2015 22:15:40 GMT
By Kieran Shannon
When reflecting the other day on the fact that we’ve just passed the halfway point of the football decade, the mind soon turned to the journey home from the heart-stopping, Croker-packed 2010 All-Ireland semi-final between Cork and Dublin.
In the car we did what many GAA followers do after such a rollercoaster of a game: we turned on the radio, wanting more of it and to make more sense of it.
A lot of the points made on the post-match show concurred with our own observations. The Cork bench, especially Colm O’Neill, had turned and won the game. Donncha O’Connor had shown remarkable poise and concentration in putting away a penalty that had been delayed as Ross McConnell was treated for an injury. And Dublin, for all their progress that season under Pat Gilroy, should really have made it through to the All-Ireland final. Instead Alan Brogan and Stephen Cluxton were for a fourth time after losing an All-Ireland semi-final by a kick of a ball.
Then there was a curious text in from a listener. Did the panel know that this loss meant this was the first decade since the 30s that Dublin had gone without winning Sam Maguire?
They’d won it in 1942, 1958, 1963, three titles in the 70s, then again in ’83 and ’95. But there had been nothing in the noughties, not even a final appearance, and now Dublin’s last game in that decade had just passed.
It seemed to escape the listener, presenter and analysts — one of whom was Tommy Carr, we can recall — that the noughties had expired the previous year. They were now in 2010, a different decade.
But now at this remove that 2010 season does indeed seem to belong to another decade and era.
Forget how much Dublin have progressed since then and Cork have regressed.
Louth that year almost won Leinster. Meath — amazingly, controversially, wrongly — did win it, blitzing Dublin for five goals en route.
Limerick very nearly won Munster, being level with Kerry with five minutes to go. They also very nearly beat Cork in the qualifiers, taking them to extra time. Roscommon would win the Connacht title. The previous month Sligo beat Mayo. In the qualifiers Longford would beat Mayo. The same day Donegal were also dumped out in the first-round of the backdoor, hammered by Armagh.
All four provincial champions were beaten in the All-Ireland quarter-final.
You look at what’s happened since. The following year Donegal, Mayo, Kerry and Dublin would all win their provinces. They would do so again in 2014. Only Cork and Monaghan would upset their provincial dominance in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
Can you picture a Louth now getting within seconds of winning Leinster? A Limerick going so close to winning Munster? Donegal and Mayo being the first two teams dumped out of the championship? All four provincial winners wiped out in the All-Ireland quarter-finals? We all had an idea at the time the 2010 season was a special season, for its romance and novelty. But little did we know that it was less an outlier as a farewell to an era that is now long gone and hardly coming back.
It was more in the keeping of the noughties, an era when a Westmeath won Leinster, a Sligo won Connacht, Limerick were repeatedly close to winning Munster and the Fermanaghs and Wexfords could make All-Ireland semi-finals.
Put it this way. In the first five years of the noughties, 12 different counties reached an All-Ireland football semi-final. In the first five years of this decade, only eight counties have reached that far — and that includes the novel 2010 pairing of Down and Kildare.
Of the last 16 All-Ireland quarter-finals, only once has a provincial champion been beaten — Monaghan in 2013, to Tyrone.
In the 16 quarter-finals previous to those, the provincial champions had been beaten 11 times.
So, as we’re halfway through this decade and we take stock of where football is and how it’s changed in that time, that’s the biggest thing that jumps out.
The dominance of the top four or five counties in their own province and beyond (especially in the All-Ireland quarter-final round).
How uncompetitive the mid-tier counties have been. How pedestrian and predictable the provincial championships and the qualifiers have become.
But a lot else has changed.
Such as...
The massed defence
For as much as Armagh and Tyrone redefined defensive play, Donegal under Jim McGuinness would take it not just a step further but a couple of more beyond, putting not just nine but 11, 12, sometimes 13 men behind the ball. It’s not just a Donegal thing now either. Look at the Ulster club championship just past. Or Oliver Plunkett’s progression to the Dublin county final. Instead of defending like hurling teams, football sides are now more set up like sides in soccer, rugby, basketball: why have men up the field on defence when the opposition can’t score out there? A huge upside of the game in the last 10 years is that corner backs can no longer survive on pulling and dragging (which is why we fundamentally disagree with Joe Brolly’s thesis that a win- at-all-costs attitude is something new to football; didn’t he watch, even face, Boylan’s Meath? Go read Shane Curran’s book, Joe, and its chapter Crime and Punishment for a reminder of how lawless football was back in your own day).
The downside is that it has been offset by the extra — excessive — cover those backs are now provided with. That is how the ruthlessness of managers is manifested now.
The short kick-out
As much as the aforementioned 2010 season was less in line with the decade it initiated but rather the one that preceded it, it did represent and witness some significant change.
That year’s All-Ireland quarter-final between Dublin and Tyrone as not just a watershed in the fortunes of both sides — Tyrone’s farewell as a major All-Ireland force and Dublin’s emergence as one — but it saw both teams take and concede short kick-outs.
It’s been all the more en vogue since. Traditionalists will bemoan the lack of aerial play around midfield but the emphasis on possession has meant goalkeepers’ kick-outs have needed to be more precise, backs have to show for, carry and use more ball, while the game itself has speeded up. But after the International Rules experiment of all kick-outs having to pass the 45, there could be a clamour for something similar in football to preserve/increase aerial midfield play.
Goalkeepers from deadballs
Another example of how Cluxton in 2010 changed the game. Prior to that summer, only Shane Curran at his boldest and maddest would venture upfield to take a long-range free. But in the qualifiers of 2010 Cluxton would make it routine, prompting a string of keepers to follow his
The mobility of midfielders
In Dublin’s last game of the noughties — the day Kerry made them appear like startled earwigs — their starting midfield were the twin towers of Darren Magee and Ross McConnell. The following year Pat Gilroy would go with a runner in Michael Darragh Macauley around the middle, and when they would win the All-Ireland in 2013 his partner would be a former corner back, Cian O’Sullivan. Nowadays when it comes to midfield play, the capacity to go box to box rather than reach for the clouds is a greater prerequisite.
So, based on the above, what changes will we see over the next five years? Or at least what changes would we like to see or that we can possibly anticipate? Some new teams are going to have to emerge to give the provincial championships relevance — and even then that may not be enough to excuse the retention of the current competitive structures and the current, inexcusable doldrums-like state of the likes of Galway and Meath. Some legislation curbing the massed defence has to be considered if, as Sean Cavanagh pointed out in Setanta’s review of the past football year, there is to be a primacy on rewarding skill.
Right now it’s a lot easier and rewarding to coach a massed defence than coach your players how to improve their kicking. Football has been getting by on how the likes of Dublin, Mayo and for the most part Kerry have played such an attacking style, but 2014 taught those teams in one way or another that pleasing the purists isn’t always the best way of going about pleasing yourself.
Yet look out for others and not just legislators coming up with imaginative ways to favour creative attacking play. Sooner or later a Cluxton or some other goalkeeper will further transform the game by playing as an extra attacker; the aforementioned Shane Curran in his pomp would have been ideal.
In a game where all other 14 outfield players can also handle the ball, some coach sooner or later is going to try it out and implement a basketball-style rotation defensive system where one of the full-back line slot back to cover the goals while their unconventional number one is bombing up the field trying to create an overlap.
Curran himself is now a club manager. Will he be the one to try, the way years ago Jimmy was trying out his extreme version and vision of the massed defence with Glenties? Take it, for as much as things remain the same and change in football, the game will continue to fascinate and infuriate over the next five years.
© Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved
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Post by Mickmack on Jan 13, 2015 23:18:58 GMT
"It's not so much that GAA players over-train, it's that they under-recover."
A leading strength and condition coach has said that many of the current training regimes implemented by many GAA county managers go against science and smart methods of training.
Mike McGurn, who has previously worked with the FAI, the Irish rugby team as well as Bernard Dunne and the Armagh and Louth senior footballers, was responding to Joe Brolly's recent comments on the current state of the game.
Brolly last week spoke out about his grave concerns for the welfare of modern GAA stars and the consequences of the commitment they are being forced to give.
The outspoken pundit explained how he feels that drinking bans, extensive training regimes, insatiable managers, a win-at-all-costs ethos and a packed fixture list was putting far too much pressure on inter-county players.
This week Dublin star Bernard Brogan admitted that he picked a finance degree in college on the basis that it was just 12 hours a week and allowed more time for training, something he says looking back on he might do differently.
Speaking on 2FM's Game On, McGurn said that he understood where both men came from.
"I can empathise with what Bernard is saying and I agree with a lot of what Joe says, though not all of what Joe says," he said. "Most of what he says is quite true.
"There is no balance anymore; people are raising the bar every year and other teams are copying.
"There are some teams who have still kept that sensible training pattern but by and large teams are going at it hammer and tongs.
"Why would a dog like it's private parts? Because it can. Why do county managers train players? Because they can because nobody checks them."
The Queens University Strength and Conditioning coach praised the work of DCU's Niall Moyna and his approach to training but laments the fact that he is most likely in the minority.
"If they (county managers) want five sessions a week, they will have that and nobody challenge them why. I think Niall Moyna came out with a very sensible way of training. He no longer makes his DCU students duplicate S&C programmes," he added.
"Some people are sensible and some people aren't and that's a real worry.
"Players are retiring at 28, 29, the likes of Benny Coulter and they are saying 'I can't do it anymore, I have had enough and I want a life'".
According to McGurn, the real issue is not the fact that GAA players over-train as has been put forward by many. The problem is with the lack of recovery.
"It's not so much that GAA players over-train, it's that they under-recover."
"They are mimicking a training regime for professionals, but they have to go to work the next day. They are not recovering. It goes against all science and smart methods of smart training. When you are training you are breaking the muscles down. You develop when you are resting."
"These guys are not resting so they are not developing. What that will lead to is higher counts of injury and spending more time on the physio table. You will end up with more guys on the treatment table than training on the pitch."
"It is going against all the science and the data."
Online Editors
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Post by donegalman on Jan 14, 2015 12:33:10 GMT
Whereas I agree in the spirit of what is written, how do we go back in time re training methods? Never in the history of any sport has there been a case where athletes go back to training methods of older times to compete in the current era? Perhaps we should be looking at paying the players for their efforts now, they train so hard and we expect so much of them at the same time, that we are trapped by expectation.
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Post by givehimaball on Jan 14, 2015 12:34:06 GMT
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Post by Annascaultilidie on Jan 14, 2015 13:40:20 GMT
That is an old interview. He is now Head of the Department of Sport, Leisure, & Childhood in CIT.
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Post by Mickmack on Jan 14, 2015 22:25:40 GMT
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fitz
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Post by fitz on Jan 14, 2015 22:26:30 GMT
The human body is something that hasn't changed a lot over the decades, whereas how it has been treated has, a lot. Much of it for the good, but what McGurn points out is total obvious sense, the great BOD recently quoted "train hard, rest harder". A very obvious example is after weight work, the second day after is usually sorest as the multitude of mini fiber tears are at their most painful. The body is then starting to rebuild the muscle, stronger. Pouring more heavy training in is not helpful to the body. What has changed in the win at all costs era is that players individually or motivated by their coaches are prepared to drive through this pain and more of it, for the prize at the end, but also knowing that if they don't follow the prescription then there's someone else ready to gladly step in. No-one wants to pioneer taking a step back...the fear of being falling behind or losing an iota of advantage is too great a risk. Win at all costs.
Another gem from Old Bawn's (Dublin, near Tallaght) greatest physio, Alan Kelly aka "The great AK"...(self proclaimed)
"Rest is rust"
Brilliant.
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Post by Mickmack on Jan 14, 2015 22:44:54 GMT
Players must be protected from themselves too. Its human to want to get back into the fray asap. Some players came back too soon from cruciate injuries......and did the cruciate again.
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keane
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Post by keane on Jan 15, 2015 12:08:32 GMT
Players must be protected from themselves too. Its human to want to get back into the fray asap. Some players came back too soon from cruciate injuries......and did the cruciate again. If you're talking about David Moran that's 100% inaccurate.
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Post by buck02 on Jan 15, 2015 16:53:33 GMT
Players must be protected from themselves too. Its human to want to get back into the fray asap. Some players came back too soon from cruciate injuries......and did the cruciate again. If you're talking about David Moran that's 100% inaccurate. Exactly Keane we all know the reason that David did the second injury was the sand based pitch it happened on along with the new Predator boots with blades he was wearing that night. And there was also a full moon that night.
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seamo
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Post by seamo on Jan 15, 2015 16:57:27 GMT
Players must be protected from themselves too. Its human to want to get back into the fray asap. Some players came back too soon from cruciate injuries......and did the cruciate again. If you're talking about David Moran that's 100% inaccurate. But he didn't say David Moran! To suggest he did is 100% inaccurate!! Some players have come back too soon from cruciate injuries and did the cruciate again.
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fitz
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Post by fitz on Jan 16, 2015 0:11:15 GMT
If you're talking about David Moran that's 100% inaccurate. Exactly Keane we all know the reason that David did the second injury was the sand based pitch it happened on along with the new Predator boots with blades he was wearing that night. And there was also a full moon that night. Blades should be banned, they're hazardous
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Post by donegalman on Jan 16, 2015 17:04:20 GMT
There is an equally strong argument for poor training methods and physio for injury as there is for over training. Also, the above point about blades is correct, they are lethal on the wrong surface.
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Post by Mickmack on Jan 18, 2015 15:05:26 GMT
By Michael Moynihan
Parts of Donal Óg Cusack’s RTÉ’s documentary make for uncomfortable viewing, writes Michael Moynihan.
The usual opining gambit when you preview a documentary is to isolate a particular sequence and assign it more importance than anyone else, opening its significance stems from the very fact it’s an apparently throwaway line, a nondescript scene.
That may say more about your own exquisite sensitivity than it does about the work you’re describing, of course.
As an approach to Coming Out Of The Curve, which airs on RTÉ One Monday night, it would be fatally reductive, never mind plain wrong. Here’s a show that needs examination in its totality.
The documentary features former Cork hurling goalkeeper and Irish Examiner columnist Donal Óg Cusack looking at gay rights around the world, ranging from Russia to the US and including Ireland, of course.
Cork ladies football star Valerie Mulcahy featured heavily in the media earlier in the week when Cusack mentioned her as the real star of the documentary and her rationale for appearing in the programme is “to help others” who are setting out on a similar journey.
She isn’t the only sportsperson who appears in the documentary, with rugby player Brian Amerlynck also discussing his homosexuality, though Mulcahy’s iconic status within the ladies’ game was always going to attract plenty of headlines.
A caveat: this observer is fond of quoting Stephen Jay Gould’s observation all you’re owed from a sports star is sporting excellence — anything extra in the form of behaviour fitting a role model, for instance, is literally that: a bonus, something in addition to the basics.
Cusack and Mulcahy are articulate spokespersons, but in general terms, sports stars as avatars of social change don’t have a glowing track record.
Any US sports fan worth his salt, for instance, will instance the arrival of Jackie Robinson into professional white baseball in 1947 as the harbinger of social change and acceptance in America.
Any student of US history will point out it took a good 20 years for events in Selma and Montgomery to advance the cause of African-Americans to any significant degree.
Is anti-LGBT really the last prejudice of our time, as Cusack claims in the programme?
That might come as a surprise to, say, a Muslim going to meet his or her Irish partner’s family for the first time, but the real unhappiness glimpsed in the experiences of some of the youngsters interviewed in the documentary suggests homophobia is as real now as it ever was.
Certainly the contribution of Cork youngster Chris McCarthy would bear that out. In the documentary McCarthy says: “The word * and queer are thrown at you on the pitch sometimes. If the refs could maybe pick up on it …”
When Cusack asks if that’s been said to him, McCarthy’s response is philosophical: “It’s been said to me a few times.
If the refs could take a harder ruling on homophobic bullying on the pitch, well … but I just put that [the abuse] down to frustration [of opponents], to me getting to a ball first or whatever.”
It’s a sequence which will make uncomfortable viewing for those involved in legislation and enforcement in field sports.
In addition, the online reaction to Mulcahy’s news wasn’t one of universal acceptance, and while access to a Twitter account or a comments section is not restricted to the sane or sensible, it’s a barometer of public opinion.
It might not be your version of the public, and it might not be a wholly representative barometer, but there are people who shudder and sneer when homosexuality is mentioned in their company. Chances are you know a few yourself.
Clearly this is a conversation that needs to continue, though in doing so there are a couple of fatal traps it’d be worth avoiding along the way. One is the fool’s pardon offered by comments like, ‘well, a dressing-room can be a homophobic kind of place’. Of course it can. And of course it needn’t be, and it shouldn’t be.
Aspirational? Not if you go by Brian Amerlynck’s experience.
He says in the documentary that while training as a Garda in Templemore he experience casual homophobia, which he describes as “par for the course in any macho working environment, which the Guards can be at times”; yet Amerlynck adds when he came out in Templemore, the reaction was very positive.
He also credits his rugby teammate for their support at difficult times.
Another trap is the last refuge of the reactionary, the hoary old ‘well, considering where we’ve come from’ when discussing any sort of development or innovation; as though the slow pace of change could be justified simply because we no longer believe the sun revolves around the earth.
In that context an unwelcome shadow hanging over this programme is the willingness of a vocal minority of people to be offended by anything in this area, and the likelihood an impending referendum on gay marriage will produce an entirely unsurprising reaction when it’s broadcast.
Or maybe not: a recent documentary on pornography screened on RTÉ was frequently a graphic and uncomfortable viewing experience yet at the time of writing it attracted just the one complaint — a telling detail that some people may have overlooked is that both that documentary and Monday night’s are from RTÉ’s Education slate, by the way.
There’s a certain nostalgia in the air for the recent past, unsurprisingly given the big production on RTÉ, the dramatisation of the life of Charlie Haughey.
That seems to be building for some weeks now to his exit stage left to those well-known words of Othello:
I have done the state some service, and they kno‘t.
No more of that.
Cusack, Mulcahy and the others could claim the same, maybe. Or perhaps it’d be better to move on to what Othello said next — though feel free to delete the word ‘unlucky’.
I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am.
Nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice.
* Coming Out Of The Curve, RTÉ One, Monday January 19th, 9.30pm.
© Irish Examiner Ltd. All rights reserved
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Post by Mickmack on Jan 18, 2015 15:14:44 GMT
By Kieran Shannon
Limerick stalwart John Galvin is thankful for a career that was short of glory but full of honour. He has made peace with the disappointments and is ready to revisit them, writes Kieran Shannon.
HEN John Galvin looks back on it all, the highlight is inseparable from the low point.
Losing the 2010 Munster final may have been devastating but playing in it was intoxicating. The sun blazing down on him and 25,000 others in Fitzgerald Stadium and the buzz which they generated. Gooch at his best and Galvin in his prime too.
Everything about him that day radiated conviction and defiance. From the throw-in, he won the ball and stormed downfield, shaking off multiple Kerrymen to fist the ball over the bar.
Even during the second-half, when Kerry blitzed into a seven-point lead, Galvin kept roaring to his teammates. “One score!” That’s all it would take to break Kerry’s momentum and steady the Limerick boat.
Next thing, in an act of sheer defiance, he stripped Seamus Scanlon off the ball from a short kickout, ran down on Brendan Kealy’s goal and slotted it into the net. Now Limerick were making the charge.
With six minutes to go, they reeled off another score, their fifth on the trot, Galvin again the inspiration and finisher. That brought them level. And that was the moment. In a career that spanned 16 years, that was it.
When that ball is soaring over the bar, the roar of the Limerick crowd is soaring with it and every fibre of Galvin’s body is surging with certainty. At that point it is still possible. At that point, it is still on.
“Running out after that score I just thought: ‘There’s no way we’re going to let this go now. It’s finally going to happen.” It didn’t, of course.
Kerry did what Kerry so often do, rolling off three points, and Limerick did what they tended to do a little too often for Galvin’s liking. They would not score again and they would never get back to a Munster final again. That is why it is the lowest point. And that is why it was the highest point.
“Running onto the field that day. The energy there was in the stadium. How do you ever get those highs again? Can you ever get a high like that again?”
You might think he’s saying all this with a sombre, wistful shake of the head. Instead it’s with one big smile. Days like that one in Killarney, now that was living. Sixteen seasons playing in green, now that was a privilege.
So, instead of looking at all he didn’t win, he looks at all he gained. The friendships, the memories. While by nature he’s a restless spirit, he’s oddly at peace. With his decision to finally walk away from county football. And with the fact that provincial medal that he so valiantly strove for remained elusive.
As someone who has played some form of national team or national league basketball for almost as long as he’s been playing inter-county football, he appreciates the wisdom of that master hoops coach John Wooden.
Truly, it’s who you become in pursuing the goal, not attaining it. Success isn’t silverware; it’s peace of mind knowing you gave it your best to be your best.
“As far back as I remember, there wasn’t a year that I thought we didn’t have a good shot at winning the Munster title that upcoming season. Every year I believed this could be the year, that we had the players to do it. That’s what drove me. I’m shocked that we didn’t win one.
“But no, it doesn’t gnaw at me or keep me up at night. It does disappoint me but I do have that peace of mind. I know I gave it everything. It just didn’t work out for me. But I can’t complain. I had a good career, as good as a Limerick footballer could. I went 12 years without a serious injury. There’s a lot to be thankful for.”
Why did they fall short? Though they wore green they could have done with a rub of it. In the 2004 Munster final they drew with Kerry in Limerick, Darragh Ó Sé’s fingertips denying an Eoin Keating ‘45’ from going over the bar and a county going into ecstasy. In the replay, Limerick would storm into a seven-point lead only for Kerry to come back into the game through an Eoin Brosnan goal and a penalty that never was.
In 2009, Limerick should have beaten Cork in the Munster final instead of losing by a point. While Galvin won’t mention it, again it swung on a dubious penalty for the traditional power.
This writer and others would have a theory that subconsciously, referees had certain beliefs, such as that Limerick weren’t meant to be a couple of goals ahead of a Kerry or Cork. Galvin himself, though, has the theory that mentally Limerick themselves had limiting beliefs.
“It definitely wasn’t lack of work. It definitely was mental. In 2010, we scored 1-4 in 10 minutes.
Then we never scored again. I’ll never understand that. I think players went back into their shell. I’ve never watched the game back but something definitely happened. When we were seven points down, our mindset was we might as well go for it.
But when we got level, it was almost like; ‘Jesus, we’re here now, we’ve got a chance, we better sit back a bit now.’” There was no doubting or mistaking Kerry’s belief. It wasn’t even a confidence, more a cockiness, that they exuded in everything.
“Even when we were on top of them, I don’t think they ever believed they were going to lose to us. They weren’t going to be fazed by it. The only time I saw them rattled against us was the 2004 replay in Killarney.
We went five, six, seven points up and it was the first time I thought we had them broken because it was the first time I saw them cursing and blaming one another. But then Eoin Brosnan came through for a goal and that settled them.”
Looking back, that was a fine Limerick team they brought to Killarney that day. The 2010 team were better footballers but, in Galvin’s view, the 2004 side were greater warriors. Or as Galvin puts it with a smile, they were “dementedly driven”.
A lot of that stemmed from their manager. When Liam Kearns took over, he inherited a senior side that might have had only eight or nine training but also a group of youngsters such as Galvin that had beaten Cork in the 1998 Munster minor championship.
In 2000, they would reach the U21 All-Ireland final. By 2003, they were beating Cork in Cork by 10 points in the senior championship. He made them believe because he made them work. He made them work because he made them run.
“We could do two hours of a running session. It was laps and sprints and just when you thought you were finished on the pitch he’d take you to a hill and have you run up and down it for another half-hour. Nowadays, people would be shocked.
Everything is done with stopwatches and is so scientific. But it was those sessions with Liam that bonded that team together. He really tried to break us down but he couldn’t. Fellas were pushing other lads up the hill so he wouldn’t break us. I’d have no problem if there was a bit more of that today.”
He’s been following the burnout debate. Last Sunday he was on Radio One with Joe Brolly giving another lecture to the nation.
Galvin does accept some of the barrister’s case. Players should be able to have a drink after a couple of league games without incurring the wrath of their management or the public. Players might be togging out one night too many a week.
Back when Donie Buckley was coaching the team five years ago, the side would have a football session for maybe 75 minutes before he’d bring out some sandbags to get their strength work in there; no need to go to the gym the next night and pack the gear bag again.
Maybe Donie’s a little old-school and Galvin is too but Galvin would stop short of seeking a return to an era Brolly recalls and romanticises. Back in the 90s, Limerick footballers might have had careers but they didn’t have football careers.
They might have only eight or nine at training, not 38 or 39 as they had under Kearns. In his time, Gavin felt no slave. He had a life. And the game enhanced it.
“I’d have no idea where I’d be today or who I’d be today if I didn’t play county football,” he again beams.
“Like, I feel now I could talk to anyone or the wall. I wouldn’t have been naturally sociable or confident but that came from football. All the friends I made from it, the confidence it gave me. I’d like to think I’m a decent fella and football had a part to play in that.”
Truth is, The Sunday Game boys have always been ‘catastrophising’ a tad. Pat Spillane was concerned 25 years ago that no farmer was on the Kerry football panel because of the commitments both involved.
Galvin is a farmer and played for 16 years, more than any other footballer who played in last year’s championship. If anything, the job proved a help not a hindrance to his football.
“I found that it was better for my recovery to be working on a farm the day after a game because I’d be moving all the time. By the afternoon, I’d have loosened up while the lad sitting in an office is tightening up.
"The only thing was the hours here would be longer. At times I’d be heading into training thinking ‘I don’t have the energy for this!’ But I’d always have some gels or caffeine sachets in the car and whether it was placebo or not, taking one of those would always do the trick for me.”
He could only go on for so long though. He turned 34 last year. He did his cruciate in 2011 and again in 2013. He met team manager John Brudair before Christmas and Brudair was more than willing to offer him flexibility; if he could only train so often or start so late, that would be fine.
Galvin knew though that he was already pushing it.
“After 2010 I took it year by year. After the cruciates, I wanted to know for myself that my knee was alright for later life, whether it was playing basketball or indoor soccer that I could play away.
“I was very disappointed with 2014 on a personal level. I was nowhere near where I was in 2010. Not even 50 percent. It was hard to take. A younger guy, 21, 22, could be soloing the ball and you’d be chasing him and not gaining any ground on him.
"Before, I’d have caught up with him; Stephen Kelly would have been one of the few in the country that I wouldn’t have. I just lost my speed and speed of turn. The two cruciates definitely affected it. And age. Age just gets the better of you.”
SINCE announcing the decision 10 days ago, he’s felt a weight off his shoulders; for sure it was the right call. He was moved by all the plaudits and well-wishes.
He’s not on Twitter himself but he heard about what Tomás Ó Sé put out there: ‘John Galvin has strong links in Kerry. The one player outside of Kerry I would love to have been from Kerry.’
All his time playing the old enemy, Galvin doubted Kerry footballers respected any Limerick footballer. It was nice to hear at least one Kerry player did.
He’ll be fine without the game. For one, he’ll still be playing a bit of it. He now lives in Cratloe, in the nearest house to the local pitch, and last year fell in with Colm and Podge Collins and co to win the Clare county championship.
He’s still playing some basketball, though only local league with the Limerick Celtics, having finished up with Castleisland last spring. He plays a bit of squash. A few friends are talking about doing some leg of a triathlon involving kayaking.
He and his wife Liane are building a new house. And there’s always the parents’ farm that he works on back home near Croom. There’s no fear of him wondering what to do with his time.
“Liane says the reason I never have problems and always seem happy is because I’m always on the go. I never have time to stop and think.”
Inevitably, there will be times when he will. Even in recent years he was already a member of an ‘Old or Retired Limerick Footballers’ WhatsApp group.
Just there at Christmas he met up for a meal and a few drinks with the likes of Stephen Lavin, Jim O’Donovan, Pa Ranahan and Stephen Lucey, his old Croom clubmate who has signed up for a 16th season. Naturally, they talked a little about the old times.
And some day Gavin expects to talk about them and show them to someone much younger. Though he has never watched any of those Munster finals back, he plans to track them down – RTÉ or Marty might be able to help him out – then sit down. Not to agonise about the run never made or the score never taken. Not that at all.
“You know when you say: ‘My father done that?’ Well, I’d like it to be there down the line for my kids.”
That he did that. That he was there. That even when he’s dead that they can see that he was once so alive.
John Galvin: On ...
The direct opponents he respected most.
“I always enjoyed playing Nicholas Murphy and Darragh Ó Sé but if I was to pick one player where I thought ‘God, I have to go out and play him today, he’s going to do my nut’, it would be Ger Quinlan from Clare.
He reminded me a bit of John Quane. Strong. Old school. Just a tough f***er.”
Fielding and the mark
“I’d be disappointed that kickouts have gone the way they have. Even watching a game on telly, seeing a fella leaping into the air and catching it looks fantastic. That’s what people want to see.
In the early 2000s, you always knew whoever you were playing against that the first objective for all of us was to try to outfield the other. Now it’s more or less just break the ball.
“They brought in a mark (for the 2010 league) but made a right bags of it. They blew the whistle and the ball had to be kicked from that spot. I remember in one game my man was in front of me, the ball went over his head, I caught it and turned to go and the referee blew.
There was 40 yards of space in front of me but I had to come back to where I had caught it.
They should definitely bring in a mark from a kickout, only do it like in Aussie Rules and let you have the option of playing on.”
Limerick football’s future
“There are still good players there. Some terrific forwards in Ian Ryan and Ger Collins. The physicality might not be there compared to previous teams but that’s inevitable when you go with younger fellas.
There’s definitely still a pride in the jersey and a desire to get Limerick back to where we were. But, to be honest, there’s not enough players coming through.
The likes of Paul Kinnerk, Conor Fitzgerald, Stephen Lavin and Diarmuid Sheehy have started taking underage teams from U14 on but it’s going to be a few years before we see the fruits.
It’s a pity it wasn’t done 10 years ago. I think Tipp are at the stage where we once were in that they’ve put in the work underage and are about to really trouble Kerry and Cork.
I just hope Limerick can stay competitive so there’s something to build on when players start coming through.”
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