Much Ado

Sometimes you need to get away from the TV in order to get a bit of perspective. If you had tuned in after the match last Sunday and only heard the reaction from the pundits, you’d have thought a savage brawl lasting seventy minutes had just been played out in Derry with the casualties lying up in Altnagelvin on Sunday night. I understand their interpretation though. Don’t forget, if those boys turn a blind eye to a wee bit of pushing, their wage packet may have been in doubt. But I had to ask the wife if we’d watched the same match they had been. When she replied in the affirmative, I turned the TV off and reminisced with herself about the good old days of my time in Monaghan in the early 60s, looking over the damned photographs the locals took of my escapades at the time. Boys like Dick Clerkin and Vinny Corey wouldn’t have lasted even a couple of minutes in my day.

Back in ’62 I was a bit of a wanderer. I had been unfortunately sacked as a chicken catcher in the Moy for using a shovel to stun them before the catch. With that being the third sacking in three months (was sacked as a pig slaughterer in Lisburn for getting the pigs drunk before the deed and as a plasterer in Ballinascreem for plastering my boss whilst he slept) I decided to travel the province on the bike. It was a sort of a year out. I thought it would be a great chance to see the ways of the world in all corners of Ulster . I’d take in a few games, drink in a few dens and court a few of the women. After a few months I found myself in Monaghan, gradually making my way across to Donegal before the year was out. Around that time, Castleblaney Faughs were the main attraction and that was where I decided to down the bike for a week or so.

Unfortunately I soon fell for a young maiden by the name of Duffy. She was a strong woman for the times that were in it and my first sighting of her witnessed her neutering a bull with no utensils at all. It was hard not to fall for such a fair dame. It didn’t take me long to win her affections by regaling tales of the chicken and spade, pig and alcohol escapades. She seemed to like that rawness. Anyway, it turned out that she was the daughter of the Faugh’s manager at the time. He saw in me that same rawness and seemed to take a shine to my ignorant ways. Any way, after a feed of porter the night before the league was due to start, he convinced me to turn out as a ringer for the Faughs as they needed that extra steel, having been ridiculed for possessing a ‘soft belly’ by the rest of the county in previous years, even though the rest of the clubs in the county were nationally regarded as timid and easy to roll over.

I signed no papers and was simply given the directions to ‘do what was necessary’ if I thought a match was going the wrong way. Sure enough, with twenty minutes to go in the first match we found ourselves six points down and heading towards the inevitable opening defeat. I got the wink from the sidelines and from then on the game was a blur. Whenever I saw an opposing man with the ball I’d steam straight at him, through him, over him and out the other end. Sometimes I’d have the ball by chance in my arms. At other times the ball was trampled into the ground with the player still under it. What amazed me was that the ref always played on. No free kick or even a lecture. Referees weren’t used to that type of brutality and with no cameras or extra security, he had no option but to turn a blind eye to my approach.

Castleblaney couldn’t believe their luck. Young Maisie Duffy would be swooning in the crowd. From then on I didn’t wait until I had been given the nod. From the first whistle I’d bull around the field untamed, tramping over any man who dared to get in my road or even show an inclination of wanting possession of the ball. My diet of bacon, steak, eggs and porter was the perfect concoction for my style of play. Thousands flocked to see my performances from across the country. Monaghan football had been revolutionised. They were no longer seen as the soft touch even though I never played for the county such was the illegal nature of my appearances. Their club football was now feared from Malin to Mizen as other clubs in the county knew that to counteract me they had to find other hallions of a similar build and approach. Farmers and tradesmen were being pulled directly into sides with no football skill at all in order to stand up to me. To this day, Monaghan football remains the same. Take a scoot around the Farney County some Sunday and you’ll see any amount of clifts running around the pitch, milling in to opposition players with limbs flailing in all directions. You’ll hear the slap of a collision long before you get out of your car. That was all down to me. Only for stunning the chickens with the shovel, Monaghan football would never be as feared as it is now. McCague would never have built that team in the 80s and maybe never have ended up president.

I moved on halfway though that season onto Bundoran. The authorities had caught up with me in Castleblaney and I had to whip myself away in the middle of the night. Poor Maisie Duffy never knew why. The last I heard she was dehorning in Scotstown at the grand old age of 69.