The Ulster Aristocrats

Isn’t it great to see Down in the All-Ireland final exactly fifty years after their first appearance in the final and their initial Sam Maguire? You’d think something like that is written in the stars or was just meant to be. There are a lot of superstitious people around the country who’d buy into this destiny theory. Well I don’t. It’s a load of codswallop. There’s no such thing. You either work hard to get there or you don’t. However, sometimes a little bit of fortune can go a long way. If James McCartan claims all the plaudits for winning this weekend, there’ll be one man massively upset at his scenario. That man is me.

I’m probably breaking some kind of unwritten gentleman’s agreement but if I hadn’t offered my services and advice to wee James this year then Benny Coulter would be lying on a beach in Portugal this weekend. You see, there was some hype over the 1960 team this year. They have been feted the length and breadth of the country since the start of the year. They’re bound to be at the point of exhaustion and maybe even cursing the day they won the damned thing. I’d say Sean O’Neill is desperately hoping that Marty Clarke and his troops win this weekend to take the focus off them for the rest of the year, before they keel over.

I hope he doesn’t mind me saying this but Wee James got a bit caught up in the whole 50 years craic and had a mad idea. I can see where he was coming from. In recent years Down had been getting further and further away from winning anything of note. Embarrassing defeats to Wicklow and their likes was a common way to end their championship year. They hadn’t even shown signs of winning an Ulster. McCartan knew that he was going to be given a couple of years at least to build a new team. However, his plan for 2010 was revealed to be by a close friend in the Down camp. James thought that, in order to honour the team of 1960, he would attempt to field as many of that side as possible during the championship.

Luckily my snake in the Down backroom team filmed a couple of training session James was putting the lads of ’60 though. He sent me the footage via the email. It was extremely hard to watch. Brian McIvor and Paddy Tally had these lads, some of them in their late 70s, doing bleep tests and repetitive press-ups. McIvor seemed to be taking great pleasure in telling Kevin Mussen that he was a ‘hape of dung’ and punishing Dan McCartan for a mistimed block by making him do a dozen laps of the field, which took him 4 hours to complete til 3am. James had arranged a challenge match for the ’60 team against the Abbey MacRory Cup team. It was a horrendous piece of footage. The final score of 8-29 to 0-2 in the Abbey’s favour only begins to describe the horror of the occasion. On nine occasions the ambulance was called for with more than half the Down side having collapsed with either exhaustion or suspected heart complaints, and that was in the first half.

McIvor decided that instead of subjecting Mussen and his men to national humiliation, they would just play two members of the team at corner forward in each game, rotating the players each time so that every member of the ’60 squad got a turn out at some stage. I have it on good authority that Joe Lennon and Paddy Doherty were in serious training for the Donegal game at the start of the campaign. He was then going to roll out Sean O’Neill and his da for the expected game against Tyrone. It was a suicide mission. Imagine what Ricey would be saying to O’Neill? After I got wind of this remarkable plan I jumped straight into the motor and after three days of solid negotiations I managed to convince McCartan to ditch the plan for the sake of the memory of 1960 and the general health of the players themselves. It was hard going. McIvor was reluctant to give in until I mentioned to him some made-up European law against cruelty to over-60s. He soon backed down. Tally was just laughing in the background at the whole shenanigans. I suspect he was behind the mad idea and was taking a hand out of the other two.

Well, it has all turned out for the best. Down now find themselves in the All-Ireland without the help of lads old enough to be their grandfathers. The ’60 squad have been able to attend the rash of celebratory occasions without the aid of wheelchairs, crutches and an individual breathing apparatus. I’m sure the media will hound Wee James after the game if the Mourne men are successful. They’ll be looking for words of wisdom from the latest GAA guru. Just remember, if you see a vacant look in his eye and a pause when asked how he had turned this underachieving side into the best in Ireland, be of no doubt who he’s thinking about.