The Long Stretch

It looks like we’ve turned the corner for the current year. When you get to the age I am you look upon experiencing The Long Stretch in the evening as an achievement. The cold hard winter just past was one of the worst I’ve experienced in terms of basic survival. On a couple of occasions it looked like my goose was cooked. After training a couple of squads undercover in December, given the ban on collective get-togethers, I’d return home to find the heat off because of frozen pipes or the wife’s forgetfulness. It got so bad one evening that by the time the stout left my glass and entered my mouth, it had frozen solid. We were barely lasting the night out on a few occasions. In order to survive it took cute thinking. I said to herself, what would a polar bear do as they seem to be content in the cold? We took it upon ourselves to not shave for a month and eat fish raw like the bear itself, no hands used. We survived. And no better sight than a hairy woman to keep the blood pumping around your veins.

The Long Stretch also allows managers to have a good, close look at their troops. By wearing multiple layers of clothes during the January training and the lack of showers in the changing rooms because of the frozen pipes, the boss doesn’t have the chance to see who has wintered well. From experience, you need to do that from the off; catch them on the hop. My first training session would see the lads strip naked and standing in front of me. Some were dubious about my intentions but it gave me a fool-proof assessment of who was eating like a gluttonous sow over the festive period. I’ve nothing against gorging on all manner of stuff over the off-season but it gives me a better insight into who needed a few more laps at the end of the first few sessions.

But my methods and techniques would have you up before the magistrate in today’s world. Asking a group of grown lads to strip to the bone seems to be frowned upon now. That makes the job of the trainer a doubly hard one. It’s only when they pull on their match day jersey that managers get to see if the 36 lb turkey was eaten, bones and all, during Christmas week. Last week’s televised Monaghan and Tyrone game was a case in point. I’m sure McEnaney couldn’t believe his eyes when his side kicked about before the game. A couple of his charges looked like they devoured a weighty relative or two as a Christmas party dare. Mickey didn’t get off lightly too. I wouldn’t be one for looking at players’ arses but a couple of his old hands had backsides on them that wouldn’t look out of place at a Weightwatcher’s convention.

Boys like Corkery and McGonigle had a naturally beefy structure to them, no matter how hard they trained. But these lads were exceptionally talented and that compensated for the excess luggage. The vast majority of us are hindered by it. That’s why the long stretch in the evening lays bare the secret they’ve been hiding over the last couple of months. The showers are hot and there’s no need for the extra layers of clothing on the field. Shaming the players who didn’t admit to the extra indulgence since October was a common tactic in my day. My brother suffered for his sins one season, having loaded on 3 stone in two months. When his belly fell out over his trunks during a bout of sit ups, our manager acted with the speed of a bullfrog’s tongue. He got the brother to stand against the wire mesh, tied him to a pole and told the rest of us to tease him with ‘fatso’, ‘gulpen-head and ‘three-bellies’. He then brought out a selection of cakes and creamy buns and told us to feast on them with gusto in front of his very eyes. The mental torture was unbearable, even to watch, and from that moment on, the ‘long stretch’ was feared by every man who had let himself go over the winter.

As well as the weighty issue described above, the longer nights put paid to the soap-watching. As soon as the clocks go forward, you’d kiss goodbye to a twice-weekly doses of Fair City or Emmerdale. You started later and finished later. I once caught a goalkeeper of mine who had been sneaking a miniature black and white portable and chargeable TV into the back of the net. He’d been getting away with it for a couple of months until Dirty Den met his maker in a whodunit affair. Unable to bear the suspense, he refused to take a kick out until the episode had finished. There are some boys who suffer withdrawal symptoms from the TV worse than the drink or smoking. They’d become accustomed to slouching down on the settee over yuletide every evening and taking in the goings-on in Albert Square or Ballykissangel.

So you’d understand why manys a club player doesn’t share in your enthusiastic embracement of The Long Stretch. It might mean a bit of extra gardening or throwing the children outside for an hour or two for you, but for the reserve left-corner back, it signals a physical humiliation in the shower and going cold turkey on the box in the corner of the living room at the same time. Bear that in mind the next time you make fish-supper remarks directed at the burly corner-forward.

Women!

Surely there is no one who can deny that Ladies football is a fine spectacle. It’s normally a free-flowing affair with spectacular goals and mesmerising solo-runs the length of the field. The lack of a third man (woman) tackle and the ability to pick the ball straight off the ground makes it a much more watchable sport than the men’s football. The big attendance at Sunday’s game between Dublin and Tyrone must also validate my assessment. The performance of the Dublin full forward, Sinead Ahern, was something I haven’t witnessed since Peter Canavan in the early to mid 1990s. She stirred emotions in me that haven’t surfaced since the 70s I think.

Many moons ago I had spotted the marketing potential of this version long before it became a game shown live on TV. I was living in Derry City at the time and by putting messages in the bulletin and fliers in pubs, I managed to round up 30 players who would represent the first Derry side. They came from all parts of the Oak Leaf with the females from Ballinderry, Loup and Maghera being the heartiest built, matched with a ferocious temper and attitude on the field. Matches were hard to come by but the likes of Monaghan and Waterford would play us in friendlies until we found our feet. Soon we were the talk of the province and Monaghan, who’d had it all their own way for years, were delighted to see decent competition at last, just up the road.

Now you may say it was a dream job and at times it was. There was no masculine ego to massage or hangovers to contend with. No broken jaws or legs from dirty tackles in training. No backchat or attempts to overthrow you. The girls were very well behaved and eager to learn at first. Yet gradually, things began to turn sour such was my inexperience at this type of management. The first major incident occurred at the worst possible time, before the Ulster Final versus Monaghan. I had the girls well primed and actually fancied my chances of lifting the damn thing. My captain, Susan Doherty, was the jewel in the crown. She was as good as Brolly, in fact, even better as she never hid in any game at all, even against Tyrone. Susan was a strongly built girl, about 12 stone, very hairy eyebrows with a low voice. Once she was on the ball and had built up a head of steam there was no stopping her. The best in the country she had been for at least two years. I knew she would get taunted the odd time by opposing players who were making out that she was really a man from Moneymore because of the odd appearance of a hairy chin. I wasn’t sure her own team wound her up too but I had my suspicions.

Before the game I gave a rousing speech about being the first Derry side to win it and that it shouldn’t be left up to Doherty to win it; it was to be a collective effort. The error I made was in my concluding sentence. I told them that they need to match every thing Susan does, “because if there’s one thing Susan has, it’s a great big set of balls”. Unfortunately, the whole shebang broke out in fits of laughter and Doherty took to the hills. In floods of tears, she bailed up the road before the game, never to return to the area again. We lost the match by 15 points.

It was a tragic misjudgement and I told myself that from then on I’d watch everything I said in the heat of a contest so that I wouldn’t offend anyone. That didn’t last long. The following year we were in a similar situation. Susan Doherty’s presence wasn’t too harmful as a young minor made the breakthrough in sensational style during the National League. Her name was Alice Campbell. Again, she had unusual traits. Alice was a heavy-set girl in the region of 16 stone – a Geoffrey McGonigle type Ladies footballer. But no full back could handle her skill. I was told that she constantly battled with weight since her early teens and was rather sensitive about the issue. I knew to watch my turns of phrases in her company. But again, I lost the run of myself before the big game. I was giving out individual instructions on the field before the game. I wasn’t going to say anything to Alice at all as she was a natural star anyway. For some reason I did though. I told her to “throw your weight about in the full forward line. Use your weight to intimidate the full back.” I meant nothing by that but the consequences were, dire akin to Doherty’s response. The opposing players as well as our own overheard that remark and began guffawing loudly. Humiliated, Alice headed back to the changing rooms, and that was that. She never darkened my door again unfortunately. Her husband did. He was a bouncer up in Dormans. Put it like this, I couldn’t eat solid food for three weeks after his ‘visit’ I resigned immediately, out of my depth. We lost by twenty points.

So you see, managing the Ladies team is much more than getting the girls to run around a field and kick a ball as is the norm for men. Women are sensitive beings and one loose word could set off a chain reaction of tears and tantrums. It’s a frightening prospect before every big game. Crossed wires can result in an overnight stay in the hospital.

Thick Skins

“Francie Bellew is a very ordinary club footballer, lacking in pace. I swear to God, my mother would be faster than most of those three fellows. And, jeez, she has a little bit of arthritis on the knee. They're very ... they're very slow. They're very slow ... and that's being polite.” Pat Spillane 2003. Or maybe try this: “Now he’s against Peadar Andrews who I do not rate as a senior inter-county footballer and is out of his depth at this level.” That was Joe Brolly in 2005. Or back in time again to 2003: “He’s a poor player. I’ll eat my hat if Tyrone win an All-Ireland with Brian Dooher in the team.” Colm O’Rourke of course.

The above quotes flowed directly from the gobs of the three men we are forced to endure week in, week out over the Summer months. And sure isn’t it great craic seeing former players like those three were making complete eejits out of themselves on national TV. It makes us feel better about ourselves. It’s like the Pope calling the main man Joseph during the midnight Mass or Daniel O’Donnell forgetting the words of Mary from Dungloe at the festival itself. Seeing the mighty fall makes us want to return to watch them do it again so we can laugh about them in the pub the next night. It’s the nature of the beast.

Unfortunately, for me, all that has changed over the last week. A man called Eamonn Holmes may have altered the whole nature of slagging someone off on the television or even on printed paper. For those who don’t know, Holmes complained about a comedy sketch which shows Eamonn eating everything in sight on the studio set. It’s a ridiculous depiction but yer man complained anyhow and has been successful in getting an apology from the BBC and a guarantee that they’ll never run sketches about him in that light again. It was a sad day for TV pundits and comedians although I suppose they’re just the same thing.

I’d go even a step further and Holmesgate might even neuter journalists and columnists. This week I was going to write an article on the Monaghan demise using the combined weight of Banty, Grimley and Woods as a possible reason why they disintegrated as a force within six days. I had it on good authority that some players had been complaining about the breakfast being ‘already ate’ by the time they got up on the day of the Ulster Final. A week-long fall-out ensued with boys hiding Mars Bars etc in case the aforementioned trio went scavenging but I can’t write about that now because of Holmes, I think.

I also had great gossip on Mickey Harte’s plans on how to deal with the big Dub full forward O’Gara last year, with Marty Penrose possibly being given the job. My spy tells me Mickey had Penrose climbing lamp-posts like a monkey, roaring and beating his chest on the way up, simulating an approach on how to deal with the big lad who scored two goals against the Wee County at the weekend. But I’m afraid to do so in case Harte fumes about the leak and asks for me to apologise to him and Marty, reveal the mole and to promise never to write about secret tactics again. I’ll never do that but sure God knows where that’d end up.

Then there’s the material I’d gathered up on what Paddy Bradley was doing when Derry lost to Kildare, Kieran McGeeney’s horrible secret regarding his Armaghicisation of the Lily Whites, Joe Kernan’s real reason for being down at Galway, how Jim McGuinness blackmailed the Donegal County Board into giving him the job and so on. This is the time of year when squads are less tight lipped and will run to boys like me who’ll always fight the corner of the good man.

So maybe this week is a time to sit tight and see how things pan out. I’m hoping Brolly, Spillane or O’Rourke will be a bigger man than me and let rip on a player or two this weekend just to see what happens. They’ve some opportunity with Tyrone, Dublin, Kerry and Down all playing on the Saturday. There are a good few men there who’ll annoy one of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in the studio at half time. Then, all we need to do is sit back and wait how the victim responds. When Dooher was attacked by O’Rourke in ’03 he said he’d be more worried if Mickey was saying that. Bellew said nothing and Andrews retired the next year.

Hopefully our players are hardier than Eamonn Holmes. An editor once said to me that in GAA you need to be thick-skinned. That was about five years ago. I pray that it hasn’t changed. London may have softened Holmes up a wee bit but I’m playing it safe for a week at least to see how things turn out. If Spillane goes to town on the losing side in the Dublin/Tyrone game this weekend he’s bound to rake around a few reputations in the process. He’ll love sticking the boot into the Dubs again but if it’s Tyrone on the losing side he’ll rip the players, county and province to shreds. Sit tight lads and take your juice whatever way it turns out, for the love of journalism.

Don't tie the knot.

You can’t open a paper these days without having to look at a young GAA inter-county player tying the knot with some decent looking cailin from a neighbouring county. It’s the happiest day of their lives apparently, the caption states. That is probably true as it is all downhill from there on in. We’re not at the level of selling the wedding photos to Hello magazine yet for a seven figure sum but we mightn’t be too far away. There are very few high profile players nowadays who can get away with a quiet wedding. If they make money from the occasion, more power to them. I’m not a jealous guy. What I am though is a practical one and as soon as I cast my eye over that picture I shake my head each time. For that is the beginning of the end.

After Tyrone won their third All-Ireland there was a rash of marriages in the squad. I knew there and then that they’d not be adding to that tally as soon as the first young one arrives. Recently a couple of Derry players got hitched, probably signalling the end of their days in the GAA sun although they’ll not know it til they kick a ball in anger next year. It’s a well known tale that when Mick O’Dwyer was building his majestic Kerry side of the 70s, he made sure they were bachelors. If any player even courted the same woman twice he was threatened with expulsion. It wasn’t until the lads could hold out any longer and started the wedding bells clinging that their era was at an end. The same scenario seems to have occurred in the Tyrone camp.

For me, Down is the next big thing. If McCartan sticks it out, the Mourne lads could lift a couple of the big ones. In order to do that, he needs to monitor his players’ romantic tendencies, even if it means sitting outside the Canal Court in a darkened jeep on a Saturday night. That should be the height of his control over these talented lads, maybe with a few spies around the other side of the county too. The reason for this restrained advice is that Wee James could be unfortunate enough to make the same mistake I did.

I was in charge of a north Antrim hurling side in the early 80s. I had closely monitored their progress since their early teens. They won the league and championship double every year since they were U12s. By the time they were ripe for senior hurling, I was sure that I had assembled potentially the greatest hurling club side in the country, of all time. Having blooded them all into the senior team at the one time, we won the first five league games by no less than ten points on each occasion and sure we hadn’t started training yet. I was also aware that one of my star players, Jaz McKillop, was to marry at the age of 19 to his childhood sweetheart, who was with child. Thinking nothing of it, I attended the big day and had no reservations about returning him to the side after the honeymoon and the birth of young Jaz. The effect was tragic. The young lad had lost the ability to even connect sliotar with caman. He had also developed a bow-leggedness. It was a tragic and fantastically speedy decline. Fatherhood was to blame. At the same time I had been observing the worsening of the great Kerry side due to the influence of women and preganacy.

I decided to act, and drastically. The neutering of bulls and cats had been something that always interested me as a tactic to avoid multiple litters. Although the link had no scientific approach, I introduced the idea to the squad of a mass castration in order for these lads to achieve the greatness I knew they were capable of. We discussed it sensibly and I had to concede that it was a rather extreme measure. Some of the lads were farmers themselves and couldn’t get the excruciating idea of the clampers being used out of their heads. We agreed to look into the whole area of getting the snip in a more modern way, in the hope that a few years down the line they’d find a way to reverse the process and have sons or daughters.

After numerous and heated meetings on the subjects, we decided to head to an hotel for a weekend, get fairly drunk and before they hit the sack, I’d call the doctor in to do the needy. That way it’d be relatively pain-free and they’d be in good spirits during the whole event. I just told the medic the name of the hotel floor and he’d do the business in an hour. Things were going to plan and the lads were in great spirits that night. Also staying in the hotel was a famous country singer, now in his 50s and a great favourite with the ladies. A group of priests on retreat were also letting their hair down at the bar. It was a night of tremendous singing and dancing. The bar was dry by midnight. As the lads headed up the stairs, the doctor followed, bag in hand.

The next morning, all hell broke loose. The doc had lost himself in the whole thing and neutered two corridors, including the furious womanising singer and a collection of clergy who weren’t too bothered really. On top of that, my plan backfired. The lads lost their bite. Before the next game the bickered over the colours of their clothes and spent hours on their hair before entering the field. Lads cried uncontrollably when they lost the game, or even conceded a point. Masculinity had been obliterated. I’d gone too far and left the country for a couple of years. Wee James would do well to nip the romance in the bud but through words of wisdom only.

Take A Break

Times have definitely changed. You only have to avail of newspaper archives to understand the peculiarities of a few decades ago. I was browsing one such organ and came across a story about a man who was jailed for kicking a dog. On the other side of the page, another man had been arrested for ‘roaring his head off’, in Greencastle. There have also been some peculiar rules in the GAA. A good few years ago you might have scored 0-20 with the opposition scoring 1-0 and they won. That was simply because at one time games were decided on the amount of goals scored, with points only counting if that was equal. Another was the red card rule in December and January in that you could get the line as often as you wanted then and there’d be no further punishment. I remember looking forward to games at that time of the year knowing that you could take the head off anyone without fear of discipline. Matches at that time of the year were great score settlers. Men were decapitated before the ball was even thrown up. Thousands would flock to see mass brawls between parishes. But it was part of the game, all within the rules supposedly.

Not all of the oddities within the general rulebook of the GAA have been addressed. One such bizarre regulation is the ruling regarding the training of sides in December. Apparently there should be no get-togethers on the field of play for any squad. They’re prepared to have back doors, front doors, cups, inter-provincials, club competitions for every level, U10, U11, U12, U13 and so on throughout the season, but under no circumstances should there be any laps done in December. Have you ever heard the like?

Last year I was contacted by a high profile inter-county manager who was sweating about the season ahead. In 2008 they had underachieved slightly and he was keen to have a head start on the chasing pack by getting a few fitness and bonding activities out of the way before Christmas. He gathered his troops in Mid-Ulster for a one-hour lapping session. Within two minutes a car load of Ulster officials landed on the field and chased them. It was clear then that The Powers are randomly roaming the streets and backroads of Ulster every day looking for anyone who is breaking the rule. It’s cat and mouse time.

I had to think on my feet. I knew that one of the national papers had advertised a drive-in cinema whereby punters simply drove there in their motors and watched the picture. Soon myself and the manager in question were thinking along the same lines. He advertised a drive-in at a farm in the remotest of locations although he made sure all his squad knew about it. In the meantime, he put together a motivational film for his men, with tactics and training regimes discussed in great details, to be shown on the big screen. On the day of the viewing things seemed to be going to plan as the projector was set-up against the gable wall and the first few motors arrived, all members of his squad. Soon things turned pear-shaped. Word had got out about the venture and all manner of farmer attended in their Masseys, Combines and horse. They then caused havoc when it dawned on them that this film wasn’t all that good and soon started hurling abuse and manure at the screen, eventually smashing the projector in an ether-fuelled frenzy.

After that disaster, I concocted another plan. I had once read about a teacher in the 1700s educating his pupils in the fields of Donegal whilst picking spuds. The pupils just stood around in the drills listening to him speak Latin and learning it that way. Well, the county I was dealing with had bogs a-plenty and in no time the boss had his side out in mid-December cutting and stooling the turf. It was a tough number as the ground was rather frozen as the spades rattled their bones every time they made contact with the bog. All the while, the manager rallied his troops with tactics and motivational speeches for the coming year. Unfortunately, conditions worsened and three men were laid down with the frost bite and another got stuck in a half-frozen sheugh. Before long, the officials were on the scene, probably tipped off by a rival county’s housewife.

Further schemes were invented: Meeting upstairs in the gallery during Mass; running around the church during Mass; training at midnight with no floodlights; dressing up as women and pretending they were just happy girls skipping around a field with gay abandon – all ideas were attempted at least once. However, every time that car load of Ulster Officials would land within minutes to spoil the party. You have to give it to the Ulster Council. When they are given a directive, they carry it out to its extremity.

It then dawned on me that perhaps the Council were right after all. December is a time for family, for rest and for attending dinner dances, getting full and taking part in fist fights afterwards or menacing stick-wielding battles. Years ago, men and women used to get nicked for ‘roaring their head off’ at this time of the year and not worrying about running around a field 12 months a year. What have we become if we’re thinking about 2010 before the year that’s in it has been properly celebrated and reviewed. Take a break, lads, and kick a dog.

Who'd Be A Manager

What qualities do you need in order to survive in the hellish world of modern inter-county management? A touch of hard-nosed insanity has to be present in their DNA, especially those who stick it out for over 12 months. Ulster in recent years has been a graveyard for newly-appointed managers. You only have to think of Brian McIvor, Paddy Crozier, Jody Gormley, Peter McDonnell and Ross Carr. Years ago, a manager was the last man you blamed. The likes of Art McCrory and Brian McEniff would’ve taken on the post as a youngster, only stepping down at retirement age. If things weren’t going well on the field, it was the players who faced the abuse and they couldn’t really hear it on the park. The manager was just there to make sure the best players in the county got there on time and togged out. Many a boss would’ve trawled the pubs at midday to get a couple of his key players sobered up for a game three hours later. Now, it’s the man on the sideline who faces the music first and foremost. It wouldn’t matter if you won Sam five years running as manager, if you had a mediocre year on the 6th attempt, they’ll be writing letters and hurling abuse at matches. It’s a lose-lose situation. Today, everyone needs a pantomime villain.

You get the odd strong character like Kernan, Boylan, O’Dwyer, McEniff or Harte who don’t give two hoots about what others say. But they’re the exception. Too many fellas, brave enough to take on the post, are left broken men after 2-3 years of honest yet thankless service. It’s time county boards took into consideration who they appoint into that position. Let’s be honest here. If there was a 5ft 5’’, 10 stone manager prancing up and down the sideline, you’re not going to fear him from behind the fence. You’ll get rid of your anger by directing a few expletives towards the defenceless cratur, knowing he’ll hardly leap over the fence looking for a bit of boxing. McEniff wouldn’t have lasted a month if he was just starting out in the management in the modern era. Kildare made the right move. I’d say McGeeney gets zero verbals from the lily-white faithful. Can you imagine how you’d feel if after shouting, ‘ah away back te Mullaghbawn ye nordie spanner’ as McGeeney stops dead and with the deathly precision of a sniper picks you out from the crowd with a thunderous stare. You’d be out of Newbridge before the sideline ball was taken. Add to that big Grimley hovering beside him just in case you were still breathing after Geezer’d finished mauling the loudmouth.

The Down and Armagh county boards had a big decision to make. Both counties possess a growing band of maniacal followers who will take nothing less than to win every game as remotely acceptable. If Armagh appoint the likes of a McEniff type character in stature, he’ll be gobbled up within minutes of the first throw in. Same with Down – I’d worry about the likes of Linden or a McComiskey-type build taking the reins in front of a baying pack or Mournemen. Big Greg McCartan and Francie Bellew are the lads in my book. Francie’d only have to innocently look in your direction and you’d get slightly nervous wondering can he read your thoughts.

In my final few years as a club player on the Donegal/Sligo border, we had a manager who recognised the road the game was taking. Despite being in charge of a hopeless group of players, the only 15 males in the parish, Big Jemmy was beginning to be on the receiving end of some terrible abuse. It wasn’t his fault that the goalkeeper had a glass eye, our wing half back was riddled with the consumption and two of our forwards were developing serious cases of in-turning legs. He still took flak from the men and women of the parish. After another mauling from our parish neighbours, he cracked after one ‘ye bollocks’ too many was aimed at him from behind the dugout. He jumped over the wall and flailed every punter in sight, even stretching out the visiting Canon from America. The locals thought it was great to see the man eventually crack but after the third consecutive match explosion from Jemmy, the comments soon ceased and gave way to mild applause and ‘hard luck son’.

On my retirement I asked Jemmy for any advice as I was thinking of heading into the coaching side of things. He told me to set my stall out first thing, never to take even one nasty personal comment from the crowd. Unfortunately I took his advice too stringently and laid out an elderly pensioner in my first match when she shouted, ‘I didn’t pay in to see that gobshite’. I should’ve looked around me and made a valued judgement instead of wading in with both fists a blur of frenzied action. It turned out the poor woman was talking about a streaker up the other side of the field. I was sacked before half time and took up the bagging turf.

But you get the general message. The modern supporter can size up a manager within sixty seconds of seeing him on the sideline. If you’ve had a bad day at work or herself had been giving off all morning, you know that all that frustration can be exorcised by a few gulders at the unfortunate man with the bib on. However, county boards can wipe that phenomenon out. Appoint the meanest men in the business and we can go back to barracking the corner forward with the red boots. He’ll not hear half of it on the field with his flowing blonde locks clogging up his earholes. And all is well again.

Leave The Kids Alone

I was talking to a boy who was on his way to the gym earlier in the week. He was a well-known inter-county footballer from Derry and not fond of referees. I enquired as to why he was bothering with something like a gym when this time of year is for resting up after a long season from the year gone by. I can remember from my own playing days that no one ever trained from late August until the following Easter. By the time the end of the summer had arrived, your club was either out of the running for any silverware that there was no point in running around a field twenty times on a Wednesday night, or they were playing enough league and Championship games to keep you naturally fit anyway. Training was only for the early part of the season to trim down the belly and get the lungs at full capacity. Teams still won All-Irelands and county championships back then so it must have been an alright strategy.

Nowadays the pressure is on young lads to train eleven months in the year. The player I was talking to said his individual training was vital as if he didn’t do it, the management would know. He said they take a blood sample, urine sample, hair sample and a photograph of you naked to make sure you’re alcohol and drug free as well as toning up your body. That’s a world gone crazy. I’m led to believe that Canavan is a great man for the drink abstinence of his players at Errigal. I’d say the same boy was living it up rightly in his early twenties running around Omagh or Cookstown at the weekend. These middle-aged managers are some craic, forcing some kind of Chinese military regime on their players when they themselves were half cut at throw-in.

What has happened to the carefree days of seeing how many cowboy suppers you could fit in, in a week, without piling on the weight? It was some feat, back in the day, finding a balance between calorie and alcohol consumption without the manager suspecting an over-indulgence. I know of a few players on the great Monaghan team of the 80s who had the diet of some kind of American Texan oil baron and still managed to make the weight on any given Sunday. I’m told that nowadays that personal gym training you have to do in January is a litmus test for modern managers. They apparently attend secret training sessions that inform them of how to read eye and body language to spot the spoofers in the camp.

I’m also led to believe that Baker Bradley can look at a man from ten paces and tell if he carried out his two-dozen bench presses within the last 24 hours. The likes of Bradley, O’Rourke and McCartan are as good as the mind-readers you get on the television. It’s the first think county boards look at before they appoint a manager; do they have supernatural powers. Chancers haven’t a hope of hoodwinking these lads. I don’t know how true this is but apparently Mickey Moran used to condemn anyone caught neglecting their personal training to his Room of Shame. In there, he’d tie the spoofer to a chair and encourage the locals to berate him with insults regarding his playing ability, manhood and family history dating back centuries. Muldoon subsequently never missed a gym session til Moran headed off to Mayo.

But that’s the way things are and rarely to sports revert back to how it used to be. The fear is that things get worse in terms of preparation and what is expected of our young playing members. I hope we don’t suck the individuality out of them. I fully understand the need to self-assess and improve though. Take the Gaelic Life newspaper for example. It is roundly viewed as a good read on a weekly basis. But editor Bogue should maybe be looking at how to move it to a level of greatness. And how to you do that? – monitor his team. Bench presses and the like are no use to pen-pushers but abstinence from harmful substances can clear the mind and help create moments of great clarity and insight. It wouldn’t be an altogether ridiculous idea to perhaps invest in some kind of physical assessment on a Monday morning with the threat of disciplinary action hanging over their weekend activities. I’d include Brolly, Devenney and Burns in that although the Mullaghbawn man will be a hard one to nail He’s keeping his nose clean for bigger fish. You wouldn’t catch him making disparaging remarks about female lineswomen. There’s a skeleton there somewhere, we all have them, but it’ll take a bit of digging to reel Burns in.

But you see what I’m getting at. Our young lads are often criticised in the media for being self-obsessed, lazy and mannerless. Little do you know what discipline they possess in order to earn a starting jersey every Sunday at all club levels. Whilst you have the Loup’s full forward running a lonely 10k on a Saturday morning for the love of a game, Ronan Scott is ordering a Variety Meal from KFC to soak up his hangover before driving to Keady to watch a MacRory match on soft seat thinking about his hourly wage. There’s something wrong there.

Waltzing Matilda

I think the Australians get a raw deal. You get the feeling that the resentment many hold towards that great nation is the result of two things. Firstly, the fact that they have a Union Jack on their flag gets a few goats up as you know flags are deemed important in this part of the globe. Secondly, they live the lifestyle we all aspire to. They play something close to what we do in terms of a national sport, but do so in fine weather all year round. They’re better looking and are naturally stronger and fitter. We may harp on about the hardiness of a bog man or the stamina of a lad who dungs out the yard but these lads from Down Under are born like that before lifting a shovel. Let’s face it – we’re fairly jealous of our cousins from the southern hemisphere even though many of them were rogue ancestors of our own, sent down on a boat for being a bit of an eejit.

I speak with authority here on this subject. It’s not a period of my life that I’m overly proud of but it’s worth the telling if it makes the average yokel change their views on the Aussie nation. Back in 1959 the convict boats were still in use even though it wasn’t common knowledge. The Irish Government turned a blind eye to the Guards turfing a few lads onto a prison ship and pointing it in the direction of Circular Quay. I had been playing a bit of Rugby in Blackrock at the time and living the life of a handsome bachelor. Unfortunately I feel in with a middlin crew and began to ape their mannerisms, turning my back on the hard-working Presbyterian ethos instilled in me by the Northern way.

Missing Mass soon turned into bad language. I togged out for Drumcondra GAC one Sunday morning as a ringer in the Dublin Championship and was torturing the Glasnevin full back with a torrent of verbal abuse in a strong northern twang. I’d never seen a man as intimidated. I was also probably one of the strongest men in Ireland at that time, having spent weeks honing my muscles outside the pubs of Dublin. My job was to lift inebriated women home up to four miles away. I was feared throughout the county and beyond. Unfortunately that sense of infallibility got to me completely and I embarked on a period of complete disregard for anyone I encountered in authority.

It all came to a head when I was lifted by the guards for stealing a bag of Greek spuds and apple tart from a small vendor outside Quinn’s, five minutes after the act. It was 8pm when I was taken. By midnight I was sailing.

I’d rather not go into the details of the journey apart from the fact that everyone on the boat had heard of by feats on the field and I won the bare knuckle competition as I had no willing opponents. By the time the ship docked in Australia , the locals had been well clued in about my arrival and before I had time to draw breath, two contracts were set before me by the now defunct Sydney Swallows and Perth Packers. That apple tart seemed to have awarded me with a ticket to fulfil the dreams of most red-blooded Irishman, getting paid abroad for playing a bit of ball.

The Swallows were my choice and I arrived bright and early next morning for the first training session of the season. The squad seemed a bit stand-offish at the start, perhaps afraid of my fearsome appearance and reputation. I was also quite confident having been the King Dick of Dublin County football for the previous season. To me, the Aussie game seemed a little easier what with points for wides and taking a breather for a few seconds every time I fielded the ball. I thought I would lord it.

In an unprecedented fall from grace, that notion of rugged Irish toughness outperforming beach-toned Australian muscle was shattered when the first ball came my way. I was unceremoniously flattened on the Australian grass with a gentle shoulder by the Swallows’ captain Brett Dinkum. For the next hour the hard man from Ireland was made fun of, humiliated and tortured by every member of his new club. Even the female physio cracked me a swift left-hander when I complained of double vision. I screamed a woman’s scream.

In order to save face and return some pride to the country and association I was representing, I decided to do a bit of slagging off the ball. My ‘your blade’s a glipe’ was met with blank stares. The level of sledging back then wasn’t what it is now. Those were more innocent days.

I never returned to the club and signed up to doing toilet duties at the Grand Opera House for the next three years. Mickey Harte has often lambasted our relationship with their game. He’s right. They’ll only expose us for the white-skinned, freckle-faced, jelly-legged sports men we are. Those fellas are serious. They haven’t wasted years toning useless muscles stooling in the mosses across Ireland . At the age of five they’re in the gym. All we can do is complain of their brutality whilst secretly harbouring a serious resentment that they have it all. Compare Kylie Minogue to Foster and Allen. Barbequed chicken to a plate of beans. Jason Akermanis to Colm Parkinson. I thought I was the GAA’s High King in 1959. Over there I was just a Joker.