THE MAKING OF THE MAN

It has taken a quiet week on the football front to allow me to answer the bagful of requests out there. I’m not one for emailing or writing letters but it’s only right that fans and suitors get the low-down on what makes a man like me tick. I read recently that Brian Cody and Mickey Harte are to write their autobiographies, adding to those of McConville, O’Muircheartaigh and O’Connor. I won’t be following their lead as there are stories that need never be told for fear of repercussion before I hit the long stay in the turf. Yet, in order to satisfy the masses, I shall outline the major influences and incidents that made the man.

As a youngster growing up in one of the most rural areas you could imagine, life was rather basic. Days were spent running after dogs around the fields, trying to woo clean-shaven women and dabbling in brewing. The local club, a junior side who hadn’t won silverware since their inception, survived on the amount of stout sold on a Saturday night. Everyone played for them but because of the lack of attractive women in the parish, there’d only be a few recruits to the side every year, leaving us with a team with players aged anything from 12-72. Although resources were stretched, it fostered a great sense of togetherness. It was probably playing with these lads in their 50s and 60s, still wearing long shorts and 9-inch nails hammered into their boots and history dripping from their pores, that instilled in me a great need to keep the games alive throughout the country and encouraged me to pass on the wisdom I unashamedly possess in barrels.

My own playing career was cut short after one prank too far. It was then the done thing for the captain to perform a daring task during his first year as the main man. When it was my turn as captain eventually, I thought it’d be deadly craic to tie a dead and festering trout to our manager’s saddle one night after training. Being pitch dark, he’d launch himself onto the bike before the smell would hit him. All things went to plan and the poor man leapt onto the saddle with the squelch of the fish and the roar of the boss amalgamated with the guffaws from my troops. Unfortunately the poor man contracted a little known disease called ‘Trout Arse’ and had to undergo months of treatment before he could even sit down again. I left the parish a couple of days later.

I spent the following years touring the province, collating old training methods and taking in as many games as possible, trying to implement as much as I could into my extensive managerial experiences. I watched with youthful intrigue as the great Burren side of the 80s would be put through their paces whilst having Mourne rock pelted at them by their trainers as they pounded up and down Slieve Donard. This taught me that you should only apply methods after carefully gauging your players’ temperaments. I had a short stint around that time in charge of an illustrious club on the Derry shore of Lough Neagh. During my first session I decided to utilise the local produces and rained eels, worms and turf at my players as they sat in the changing rooms before my first session. Within ten minutes I had been stripped naked and thrown into the Lough. I now admit that those men were of a different breed to the lads of Burren. That’s why Joe Kernan and Mickey Harte employed different strategies. Could you imagine Bellew’s face if Joe had asked Francie to pick his song for the team bus CD? It was my first lesson and has stood to me, and other managers no doubt, since.

It wasn’t all trial and error though. Sometimes in order to get to the position I’m in now you need a wee bit of luck. I was on a bus-top tour of Dublin one summer’s day with a widow I had befriended from Latvia. I couldn’t really understand her after two months of courting so when we stopped off at the RTE studios I seized my chance and got ‘lost’ in one of their studios. Having dandered in to a live set, I was mistakenly assumed to be the script writer for the Sunday Game. Amazed that such a man existed, I was given two hours to come up with that day’s analysis for the night programme. I threw in a few light-hearted remarks about eating hats if Dooher won an All-Ireland, racing grannies in Kerry and arseboxing. Sure enough, the likes of O’Rourke, Spillane and Lyons were uttering my every word that night and getting well looked after for it. From that day I’ve continued to submit scripts for the nation’s consumption. Do you really think Joe Brolly or Kevin McStay know what a ‘system’ is or ‘diagonal balls’ are?

That small piece of luck with the Latvian has meant that I’m dining with the likes of Lyster and Morrisey more often than not, giving after-dinner speeches abroad whilst still holding onto the cloak of anonymity. We’d tell devilish stories about getting the pundits to read the most ridiculous lines from the autocue. Lyster would hold his sides laughing as I’d write another piece on how Dublin could take the big one this year, usually read out before a live game by O’Rourke.
So there you have it. You need that little bit of fortune to fall into your lap. If you can couple that with making horrible mistakes and learn from it, you’ll arrive somewhere near to being half the man I am. I hope that fills in a few gaps.

Fermanagh Pains

So words like chaos and upheaval are now being mentioned in the same breath as Fermanagh GAA. I usually have my ear to the ground on these things but Fermanagh tends to be off the radar for me recently. I was involved in an unsavoury incident a couple of years ago at the Enniskillen bus station which hasn’t been resolved so I have refused to set foot in the county for fear of burnings and a rising. It was just an honest mistake blown all out of proportion. I really did think it was green toilet roll for St Patrick’s Day, not a Fermanagh jersey. But all that is besides the point. Fermanagh is in a terrible state of chassis right now and having experienced manys a revolt in my time, I’m in a good position to advise on a resolution for everyone concerned.

From my understanding there appears to be some form of communication problem. The new management have their way of doing things. The players have been used to a different set up over previous years. Therein probably lies the collision. About twice a year I am faced with a similar scenario. I’d return from the fields only to find that what was once the kitchen is now the spare bathroom. The bedroom is the living room as so on. Herself will take a form of head stagger and swop rooms about. I react badly to change and would maybe not set foot in the house for a week or until there’s a dire need for a shower. After a while though you realise that it’s no big deal and accept the new regime.

A large section of the Fermanagh squad appear to have reacted badly to a change in circumstances and are refusing to return to base. Anyone who knows me will realise the side I’m going to take here. I have no time for the modern way of approaching the game. Sometimes I find myself getting emotional when I witness a player asking for a drink of water from the sidelines during a game. Water? In my time and that of many others water was rationed at home. In a big family, you drew up a rota for having a drink of water. Now, these players expect water in plastic bottles to be hauled at them by some water boy. Fortunately, I once saw Penrose drinking the water, spitting it out and washing his neck with it. I admired that and have it recorded in case I ever get a job in management again. That was resourcefulness.

I don’t want to create any more controversy. But there was one snippet of information that did reach my way during the week. I heard it on dubious authority that the initial ruckus was caused when a senior member of the Fermanagh squad kicked up a fuss that they were getting scrambled eggs for breakfast and not poached. Apparently under Charlie Mulgrew they were introduced to the idea that eggs could be poached. Two of the farmer players were rather concerned about this as they took it that the eggs had been poached from an unsuspecting farmer. When it was fully explained, poached eggs became the norm for pre-match get together. Malachy O’Rourke then proposed the idea of putting a dash of pepper on the poached eggs. Again, this was met with scepticism but after a couple of opinion leaders in the squad tried it and liked it, pepper on poached eggs was all the rage for two solid years, cooked for exactly two minutes and thirty-eight seconds.

I’m told that John O’Neill, like myself, isn’t a big fan of new-fangled ways of eating eggs, preferring the hard-boiled effort or, at a stretch, soft-boiled. He was told in no uncertain terms before he took the job that poached eggs with pepper were important to this squad. O’Neill took this as a bit of light-hearted humour and went with the boiled effort first day out. The reaction was monumental. Players refused to even look at the egg, with shell attached, on the plate. Next day, he tried the scrambled approach. Again, it was no-go. One lad from Lisnaskea ate it anyway but was unceremoniously emptied five times during the training game, which followed the scrambled egg standoff. O’Neill had a choice here: Give the players what they want or stand firm and put his mark on a new era for Fermanagh football. He could have gone one better and produced omelettes, coddled eggs or Chinese steamed eggs. However, being a man of tradition, he reverted to the boiled effort.

The rest is history and an on-going one at that. Fermanagh and egg-eating go way back to the time of the Maguires who believed that the English, “ne’re could stomach an Irish Gael wi’ egg in his blood”. It’s an unfortunate start to O’Neill’s tenure and it could unravel badly for the newcomer. Or there’s just that chink of light that time will heal the sense of loss and change on the players’ mindset. Maybe they need to do what I did and take long walks around the fields and ponder the great mysteries of the universe. Only then will the issues that caused the present chaos seem small and insignificant. Maybe O’Neill will back down and give way to this, on paper, small request. I wouldn’t. Ireland is watching.

All Aboard The Showboat

I know it’s frowned upon but I refuse to make any apologies for being repetitive. Many diehard Gaels shudder at the word ‘soccer’. It probably harks back to times when that sport was banned amongst members of the Association. Any GAA man or woman caught playing soccer was immediately barred from playing Gaelic Games. Even if you attended a match you were ostracised. A great Aunt of mine once courted an ex-soccer player from Wales. When word got out she was chased around the local playing fields by a herd of nuns with camogie sticks. I was in agreement with that ruling at the time as it preserved our national games at a time when England were winning World Cups on our TVs. However, to return to my opening gambit, we have to keep looking over our shoulders at what them boys are doing as they have a great knack of winning the attention wars of our teenagers. Just walk down Andersonstown and ask any random lad who their hero is.

Last year, one of these heroes scored an overhead kick. His name was Wayne Rooney. I understand that he has Irish origins, probably from Louth or Westmeath. The English, and Irish, media jumped all over this event and made a whole week of stories out of it. I went walking on the Tuesday morning and wiped my eyes again after I witnessed my 72-year old neighbour attempting several bicycle kicks in succession on her front lawn. She was missing the ball each time and in serious danger of breaking the hip so I turned on my heels before I heard the crack. That’s the power of the newspapers and TV. They took one average passage of play and magnified it so well that even pensioners had their grandchildren crossing balls for them before breakfast. It’s quite a powerful phenomenon, the media.

But yet again, the soccer has stolen a march on the hearts and minds of our future members. The key now is to respond immediately. I written before about the social networking side of promoting our younger stars and I’m glad to see a rash of new accounts. Now, it’s time to perform feats on the field that will be repeated ad nauseum on the news and discussed in every columnist’s weekly out-pourings. Almost six years ago Owen Mulligan won over a generation of potential soccerites with his double dummy against the Dubs in Croke Park. I remember that evening having a pint in my local and the barman dummied taking my order twice in an obvious nod to Mugsy’s moment of brilliance hours earlier. A week later the PP tried the same thing when dishing out the communion and winked at me after the third dummy, always trying to go one better. That’s the impact one piece of individualism can have on all generations.

A couple of years ago, Paddy Bradley toe-tapped the ball a few times without catching it in order to rile Tyrone who were well beaten at the time. It was a wonderful piece of showmanship which had all the young lads nattering afterwards and I’m sure practicing it at some stage that evening with golf balls in Down or spuds in Fermanagh. Yet those incidents are few and far between and even when they happen we appear to be embarrassed by it, like as if a wee bit of talent means you’re an incurable show-off. We’re more likely to verbally abuse anyone who tries something different.

That needs to change, starting this weekend. Steven McDonnell is a fine footballer. For a while he used to point to his number on the back of his shirt when he scored a goal. The Armagh fans weren’t too sure what to make of that and when the Killeavy man went through a barren spell, they let rip on him. It’s in our nature to want to see the man who’s a bit different fall from grace. That’s driving our young lads away. They’re allowed to have any manner of haircut, piercings, tattoos or clothes but as soon as he pulls on the jersey he must revert to being some type of 1950s modest gentleman. Enough’s enough. McDonnell, you’re the man who can start a trend. During the NFL, when Charlie Vernon plays the ball in from the left for you to catch, turn and shoot, don’t do it. Gauge the flight of the ball and head it in, soaring through the cold February air at full pelt.

Quigley of Fermanagh – you have the capacity to be a cult hero. Division four is the place to try things a bit risky and get away with it. Round the keeper, round him again, drop the ball and back-heel it in, moon-walking in celebration. It’s time to turn the collar up and ride the initial scathing criticism from the crowd. We need GAA scores on YouTube, being viewed by families in Cambodia or Greenland. Let’s be honest, a Marty Penrose free from the 21 hardly stirs the blood. It’d be more in Penrose’s line to score a decent point from play and from his socks pull a water pistol, spraying the management in jubilation.

Rooney has shown us the way. Let us not sit back and gaze at his supposed wonderment in papers and on the television. We can outdo a boy like that with a bit of planning and youthful bravery.

Why Bother?

I just cannot excite myself with the idea of an Ulster Championship draw as I used to. Back then, probably circa 2004, you did build up a personal head of steam. It meant something. Now, well, who cares really? Antrim might beat Monaghan in Clones but the Oriel County might return the favour two months later. Antrim will lick their wounds in the Bot whilst Monaghan march on. It leaves you wondering, what was the point in the first game?

Slice of the Cake

With the news that the GPA can now go to the end-of-year ball without sneaking in, the penny is starting to drop for many recession-hit families across the country. Now I don’t really follow GAA politics nor does it affect me in my every day volunteering at the clubs who plead for my advice and input. I couldn’t care less if Paddy Cunningham or Karl Lacey are earning a million pounds a year playing for their county. It doesn’t bother me nor does it dominate my thoughts. I’m happy throwing a slap into me before heading out on two wheels to whoever is in the direst straits. There’ll always be that call no matter what’s happening down at Croke Park or Congress. Some young Ahoghill lad will be needing the secrets of selling a dummy or a Ballinascreen boy wondering if hitting off the ball is ok. The pleasure I get from seeing the same fellows a couple of weeks later jinking here and there or nailing some horse of a man on the sly, and getting away with it, is immeasurable.

The above is what you’d like to believe. Well, if you suck that in then you’ll end up on the scrapheap like the rest who are too romantic to know what’s good for them. Let’s be honest, the country has couped. It’s a fiver for a pint of stout in Dublin and you now have to pay to go on a road. Houses are half built and corner shops are a thing of the past. Up around Lurgan there are lads roaming the streets looking for edible berries. And the GAA are to give county players over a million pounds. That’s how I read it anyway. A million pounds.

There are two options here if you want to get a piece of this windfall. The first one is unattainable to many due to their present condition but not impossible. Spend the winter training. Every night in the dark go for a few miles of a run. In the dark no one will know you’re up to something. Rain, hail or snow makes no difference. Just keep thinking of the mortgage or paying off the Christmas presents. Also, these days you need to be strong in order to play county football. Lift everything you can get your hands on at home: TVs, cupboards, beds and people. It’s too expensive buying weights and the like. Use what’s around you and in no time, when everyone else is worrying about their midriff after devouring a few fowl over the festive season, you’ll stand out like a sore thumb with your healthy jaws and toned waist.

The next stage is tog out and head to the first McKenna game. This competition is famous for trying out lads, be it county or university. It’s also wet, dark and often foggy in January. I’d say if you somehow make your way into the dug out for a game, no one will bat an eyelid. The likes of Harte or Bradley would be too embarrassed to ask you who you are for fear of offending you. When you get the nod, run around for a while with the added fitness you accumulated over the winter and then strike someone in a blatant manner in full view of the ref. Hit him again when he’s down to make sure. Pretend to slap the ref. You’re guaranteed a mention in the papers the next day. It’s probably dawn on Mickey or Baker what has happened but it’s too late for them. At the end of the year, head down to Croker to collect your share of the million pounds as a county player that year.

The easier option is to find an inter-county manager who’s a distant relative and ask him to give you a run-out. It’s unlikely if you put a poor enough mouth on as well as having the wife and children in the car looking hungry that they’ll turn their back on you. Sure look at Joe Kernan, Mickey Harte, PJ O’Hare and Ross Carr. Expect to see sons of county managers popping up all over the joint. There could be up to 10 McCartans in Mourne colours by the time they take on Derry

Finally, the swine flu. It’s going to get worse. Sources tell me that it’s travelling in convoy and will be hitting the likes of Fermanagh, Cavan and Donegal after the New Year. Again, pre-empt this by training with a Fermanagh club side for a few weeks in January but don’t shower with, touch, or even talk to if you can, the other players. Jump into the car after every session, apply the anti-flu gel and head the blazes out of the county. Them boys wouldn’t be into using the soap at all, never mind the hand-gel. Before long the whole camp will be spluttering over each other and the county manager has a dilemma on his hands. Give him a call and let him know you’re training with Lisnaskea or Devenish and are available to dig him out against UUJ in Brewster. Even if you don’t touch leather and get horrible abuse from the crowd, just keep thinking about the Euros you’ll be pocketing next September.

The Irish aren’t slow when it comes to exploiting loopholes. The GAA have signed their name to it and the money cannot be denied to anyone who even togs out and remains on the bench. Last night I ran six miles.

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.