Classic GAA journalism

[seafoid]

O'Neill seems to have a load of classic GAA board posts saved. Does anyone out there have any timeless GAA journalism handy ? I thought it would be an interesting subject for a thread.  Here is one to get the ball rolling :

Kieran Shannon's article on Frank McGuigan, printed in the Sunday Tribune on 21 September 2003 and reproduced here, has won this year's McNamee award for the best GAA article in a national newspaper.

The rise, fall and rise again of Tyrone's greatest player Brian McGuigan's father Frank is a true legend of the game, despite a career overshadowed by alcoholism A boy goes to a match with his father. It's in Clones, the 1984 Ulster final, his own Tyrone playing Armagh. It leaves him mesmerised. At full-forward for Tyrone is Frank McGuigan, the man just back from America. It's as if he's never been away. Armagh put three men on him and it makes no difference. Eleven times the ball is played into him, 11 times he scores. Five with his right, five with his left, one with his fist. The 13 year-old goes home to Glencull that night. He makes a decision. He wants to be a two-footed player. He wants to be Frank McGuigan. So he hits the local pitch and starts kicking ball after ball over thea posts. A few weeks later, a video of the match is floating around Tyrone. His father gets it for him. The boy studies it "three to 70 times". He keeps going to that pitch in Glencull, working on his left, his right, his dummy solo. Nineteen years later, that same boy kicks 11 points in an Ulster final. He's captain of his team the same day. When he collects the cup, he thanks his father who has just passed away for bringing him to Clones all those years ago. Peter Canavan never played underage club football. He didn't have to. A vision of Frank McGuigan was enough.
"'84, yeah. Ach, I did rightly but I was past my best at that stage. It was a thing I never got too excited about, to be honest, football. I always took it as something that you had or you hadn't. I wasn't prepared to work with it like. I could drink on a Saturday night and go out and play on the Sunday and it wouldn't seem to bother me. I wish I had been about today when I'd have known the importance of winning an All Ireland; I could have made a fortune out of it. In our time winning Ulster was the big thing. Like, f**k it after that. Because we drank and we drank and we drank. Especially me. I try to preach to the young boys now, OEFuck the drink.' I'm five years not drinking now and I'm the happiest I've ever been. I wouldn't have what I have with Brian and the kids if I hadn't done something. But see me there when I was drinking? I wouldn't have cared if the house was on fire. "Looking back, I'll never understand why I drank after the accident. I sometimes wonder if I hadn't got hurtS That's my one regret, that I let myself crash. When Brian and the boys were starting out in that school field back there, I couldn't go down with them. I'm not talking about coaching them like, I mean just kicking around with them. But then I probably would have been too busy drinking anyway. I might go without it for six months, then drink for three weeks. And I mean three weeks of pure f**king drink. Christ, you talk about George Best!S"
In Ulster football, Frank McGuigan is George Best; either the best player you've seen or the best you've never seen. Damien Barton says possibly the greatest privilege in his career was to come on for Derry in a McKenna Cup game in Cookstown and be on the same pitch as Frank McGuigan; Barton has won an All Ireland. Barton's old coach, Eamon Coleman, would cross the county bounds just to see McGuigan play. Only Mick O'Connell and Jim McKeever, Coleman reckons, could catch a ball as well as McGuigan. It was as if he was floating in the air, a skill McGuigan himself puts down to his parents' house in Ardboe; it mightn't have had any electricity, but it had a roof which he'd throw a tennis ball onto time and time again. Noel McGinn, who played with McGuigan in that famous Ulster final in 1984, swears that in one under-21 game against Cavan in Dungannon, a pile of players were around the square waiting for this high ball to come in when McGuigan just hung in the air, took it down with one hand and waltzed out with it. Mickey Harte played with the Tyrone minor team which McGuigan captained to an Ulster title in 1972. McGuigan, he says, was the most versatile and gifted player he has ever seen. He could catch a ball as if he had never left the ground. He could point with either foot. And he had that dummy solo. Harte maintains it should be called the McGuigan dummy. He's seen plenty of players, from Tony McManus to Canavan, perfect it since McGuigan. No one had even tried it before McGuigan. Martin McHugh can appreciate that. He played with McGuigan in the 1984 Railway Cup final. That day McGuigan had his back to goal and made this swivel with his hips which Connacht's Stephen Kinneavy bought completely. That goal won Ulster the Railway Cup. "I'd never seen a move like it before," says McHugh, "and I've never seen anything like it since." In Tyrone, they hadn't seen anything like him either. By the time he was 16, he already had legions of grown men who'd go anywhere in the county just to see him play. One day they went to see Ardboe against Carrickmore in the championship. There was a strong breeze that day. In the first half, Ardboe were playing with it, so they put McGuigan centre-forward where he ran up a big score to give Ardboe a considerable lead. In the second half they moved him to centre-back to defend it. He did. Sixteen year-olds weren't meant to do that against Carrickmore. Seventeen year-olds weren't meant to destroy Bellaghy either. That's what McGuigan did though in one Ulster club championship game. Coleman reckons that it was as good a display from midfield as the one McGuigan gave from full-forward against Armagh in '84. McGuigan himself thinks it was even better.
And so it continued. By the time he was 18 he had captained the Tyrone minors to the Ulster title and come on for the seniors the same day. By the time he was 19 he had once again been up the steps in Clones, this time to claim the title for the seniors. By the time he was 23 he had already been a four-time All Star replacement. He was a legend. He was also an alcoholic. The two went hand in hand. Frank McGuigan didn't have to buy a drink. Everyone loved his affable manner and everyone loved to say they bought Frank McGuigan a drink. After a match he'd be having a whiskey, when he'd look around and there would be another 10 glasses around him. Some were concerned. Jody O'Neill, McGuigan's old friend and county coach, says that in 1973, the same year McGuigan inspired Tyrone to the senior and under-21 Ulster titles, the county board told O'Neill to cut McGuigan. O'Neill, the county manager, said that if McGuigan went, so would he. Drink didn't seem to affect McGuigan on the pitch. The Saturday night before an All-Ireland under-21 semi-final in Galway, supporters found McGuigan lying drunk on a pavement; he was Tyrone's best player the next day. He had a habit of that. Johnny Hughes of Galway tells a story about the man he reckons was the greatest player and character he ever came across. One year on an All Star trip, Hughes knocked on McGuigan's door, wondering if he'd be able to play after an hour-and-a-half of sleep. "Frank got up and destroyed Brian Mullins. He was head and shoulders above everyone else that day." Some days he wasn't. McGuigan recalls one Ulster championship against Derry in '76. He had come home loaded at five in the morning. A few hours later the taxi appeared to bring him to the game in Clones. "My father never told me what to do or not to do about football in his life. But that morning he said, OESon, do the team a favour. Don't go to that game.' I was still drunk in the dressing room. I got a point but I can't remember anything about it. Derry won and ended up winning Ulster. We'd have won it if I hadn't been drunk. But again, I never put a pile of thought into it." Then he went to America and became the king of Gaelic Park. "Went." He laughs at that. Makes it sound like a decision. He tells how he "went" to America. In 1977, he was an All Star replacement. They arrived in Kennedy Airport on the Friday night and basically drank until the game that Sunday. After the game they drank some more until the bus came to bring them back to JFK. "Go on to f**k, I'm staying," McGuigan laughed to Sean Doherty. And he did. The next thing he was waking up in an apartment in the Bronx and the lads from Cookstown were away to work. That's how he "went" to America. For six years. He enjoyed it there. Met a girl, Geraldine, got married, had kids. Got a job in construction ("Didn't do a lot, I can assure you. The best job any man could have!"). No one bothered him there. He liked that, the neighbours not knowing who he was. At home, everyone did. Everyone does. Earlier this year Brian went out with his girlfriend and a few clubmates in Cookstown. Some of the clubmates got drunk. The next day Mickey Harte was asking Brian had he drank. Brian hadn't. Why had someone told Mickey he had?
Tyrone flew Frank McGuigan home to help them out in '82 and '83. Then they asked him to move home for good. He did; the kids would soon be starting school. The following July he kicked those 11 points. He hadn't lost it. Other habits hadn't faded either. One Saturday that November, he took a few hours from building his house to play a club league game for Ardboe. It was in the Moy against the Moy; Sean Cavanagh's father, Teddy, marked him. After the game he jumped into his Hiace van and was on the way home when he looked to his right and spotted a few Ardboe cars outside a pub. He turned round and had a few there. When he finally left for Ardboe, it wasn't for the house but for Forbes' bar, the place where he works now. They tell him that they actually had the keys off him but that somehow he got them back. By the time he came round he was in an ambulance on the M2 to Belfast. He couldn't understand why he couldn't walk. Then they told him that he crashed into the local church wall, that his right leg was completely shattered and that he could never play football again. He was just glad to be alive. "I was a very, very lucky boy. I'm able to get around the place, even if one leg is shorter than the other. Like, Matt Connor was in a crash the month after and it left him paralysed. I'd be grateful for things like that. And that I didn't hurt anyone else." He thinks of all the other things he could have been doing. Ireland were having trials for the Compromise Rules series that day but McGuigan had turned down the invite, telling the selectors that he was too busy building his house. "Normally," he laughs, "I wouldn't put work ahead of anything!" As that day turned out, he still put the drink ahead of it. The drink would continue to be put ahead of everything. When the little boy Canavan played in the 1995 All Ireland final, McGuigan didn't even see it; instead he lay in his car in Dublin, drunk. Once he managed to give it up for about a year when he went off to Clare for a golfing weekend. "We were in the clubhouse after our first round when I said, OEOkay, I'll have one of those nice pints of Guinness, no more and go back to the hotel.' I didn't play golf for the rest of the trip. I actually slept on the bus, all the way from Clare to here, and it's a long, long way from Clare to here." A fall-out was inevitable. One day when he finished a lengthy binge, he found Geraldine was gone and had taken the kids with her. He immediately turned to the drink again but realised there were no solutions in it. It was the problem. So he went for help in a clinic in Derry. For six weeks. Not to get Geraldine back, but to get Frank McGuigan back. He hated Frank McGuigan when he drank. All those years, they weren't fun. At times he thought they were, but they weren't. "How can you be having fun if you can't remember?" He's a new man now, this past five years.

A happy man, bursting with his life. Brian, Tommy and the youngest lad, 11 year-old Shay, are all back with him. It's a different life; when they come home at five o'clock, he's there. Gerry and himself are still friends. So are all the kids. When he sees fellas who he knows are drinking too much, he tells them they won't believe the benefits of coming off it. He's been to America twice, Portugal three times, golfing. He plans to go to Australia sometime. Things he'd never have been interested in if he were drinking. That's why he's not afraid to tell his story. People must know how lethal drink can be. He's concerned with the culture that goes with the GAA. Ardboe have a match two weeks after the All Ireland. Last week they had a team meeting where they agreed that if Tyrone won the All Ireland, they'd be off the drink by the Thursday. "It's very bad saying you're going to drink from Sunday to Wednesday. Why not just say, OEWe'll quit on Wednesday if we drink that length of time at all?'" McGuigan is coaching that Ardboe team. It's his first year involved and it's going well; that's a county semi-final they're playing in a fortnight's time. He says it's not him helping out Ardboe; it's Ardboe helping him. His sons Brian, Tommy and Frank all play for the club. It's another way of making up for lost time. "When I was drinking, I hurt people. Especially the kids. I had no patience when I drank. I wouldn't have gone to parent-teacher meetings, things like that. It's the least I owe them." The young lads are generating some folklore themselves. Last year Ardboe scored a goal that featured seven passes. Only the McGuigans were involved in it; no one else was on their wavelength. Twenty-five year-old Frank is on the senior panel. Nineteen year-old Tommy won a minor All Ireland two years ago and is on the county under-21 team; he'll be something else, maintains Frank Senior, if they can come up with a way to pay for the operation needed to sort out his knee once and for all. And then there's 23 year-old Brian. Frank says he doesn't give him any advice, that's what Mickey Harte is for. Harte maintains he has to say very little either; only Peter Canavan, the Tyrone manager reckons, has the same footballing brain. Art McRory once said it was impossible to give Frank McGuigan a bad pass; the current Tyrone team say it's impossible for Brian McGuigan to give one. "I've never seen him have a bad game this year," says his own father. "One pass and he can turn a game. He turned the Ulster final on it's head. For people to even say that the man-of-the-match that day was anyone else angers me. He should be recognised for the player he is. He's not and it's not fair. Like, the last day in Croke Park they announced him as OEBrian McGuigan, son of Frank McGuigan.'" Neither of them should take any offence that he was described as Frank's son. As Canavan would agree, in a way, every Tyrone footballer is.

[5 Sams]

David Walsh did a great piece many moons ago on the Dubs called "Return to the Hill".

It's included here in an anthology of stuff on Glenelly's website.


http://www.glenellygfc.com/downloads/files/GAA%20-%20requiredreading.pdf

[Hardy]

Dublin better watch out for the Meathies

KEITH DUGGAN

The Irish Times - Sat, Jun 06, 2009

SIDELINE CUT : DUBLIN AGAINST Meath has been the archetypal clash of city and country and has provided great national entertainment for the past 20 years. For the burghers of Ulster, Connacht and Munster, there is nothing better than settling back to see what kind of mischief and dark sorcery the hardy and unknowable men from Meath will inflict on the GAA's Showtime team.

Meath defy all handy categorisation. It has sacred heritage in the Hill of Tara. It has the River Slane and legendary rock festivals. It has townie-towns but is resolutely of the country. It seems to produce a freakish number of successful comedians. The sprawling Dublin metropolis has swallowed parts of the county, yet when you are bombing along the motorway, you instinctively know when you hit Meath: something feels different.

Let's face it: all football counties are a bit frightened of Meath and it is a private relief whenever the poor Dubs have to test their mood first. The Meathies will, as the cliche goes "invade the capital" tomorrow in their own sunny and boisterous way, in denims and retro Kepak jerseys signed by Gerrys McEntee and Harnan – in their own blood.

In gait, they have a take-me-as-you-find me swagger reminiscent of Burt Reynolds in his heyday. The hoors are built like Sherman tanks. Walk up Jones' Road when Meath teams are entertaining at "headquarters" and you will see it. It may be they have some secret ancient charter in the Royal County that any man standing under 6ft and not at least as broad as the narrowest oak tree in Trim just packs his bags and seeks fortune in America. Only the Meathies have the chutzpah to behave as if they genuinely "own" Croke Park. I remember seeing Meath playing Donegal in a pulverising All-Ireland semi-final back in 1990 on a big screen in the Hammersmith Odeon. Afterwards, the doorman, who was visibly impressed, told me this was the most intense crowd he had seen since the night in '73 when Bowie killed off Ziggy Stardust.

Meath have never fielded a player named "Ziggy", but you wouldn't put it past them. Think of the Meath roll call of honour: at random – Graham, Trevor, Nigel, Bill Halfpenny, Ollie, Red Collier, Bernard, Jodie, Hank, Robbie. These are not the names we see on bog-standard match day programmes. They serve to illustrate that Meath has a past and a heritage that runs slightly deeper than the scrabbling for potatoes and fishing that the rest of the population got on with.

All that history and those venerable monuments have given a druidic dimension to Meath. It was no great surprise their greatest ever manager was also a shaman of herbal medicine. I saw Seán Boylan not so long ago bounding up the steps of Croke Park, taking about five at a time.

They say around the time Meath won the Centenary Cup in 1984, a night of terrific lightning burst over the Hill of Tara and during the flashes you could see the silhouette of a small, energetic man circling a cauldron. He was wearing Dunboyne club shorts and waving a hurley in the sky and tossing various items – the famous black and white picture of the '77 Dublin team, a Cork jersey, Kildare shorts and so on – into the pot.

It probably isn't true but who knows? Boylan was – and is – the most courteous man who has ever answered a telephone. There were a few years when he was simultaneously training All-Ireland winning football teams who were like crack commando units and healing half the county of aches and sores and chestiness so he must have been busy but he gave the impression he was glad you had called.

He always thanked the Lord ("the Man Above") after one of Meath's (suspiciously frequent) "miracle" victories. His faith mattered deeply to him and he was a traditional Irish man but it was no real surprise (crazy, but not surprising) when he spoke with Dave Fanning about his lifelong friendship with Tony Wilson, the iconic music impresario and TV host from Manchester.

It is hard to imagine what the man behind Joy Division and the man behind the Murphy-Geraghty division had in common but they were like brothers. One All-Ireland Sunday, Alan Erasmus, who ran Manchester's fabled Hacienda club showed up at Boylan's house in Dunboyne. They weren't playing Cork until three. Boylan most likely took the clubbing man to mass. He probably gave him a run in the back garden to see if he might slot in at half-back. Boylan's combination of bonhomie and iron will were borne out by the attitude of his teams. They were remorseless and unrepentant.

In 1996, the Mayo folks found them unbearable in victory but, like Churchill, the Meathies were unbeatable in defeat. When they were beaten, they never complained. They were always busy men. I once suggested meeting a well-known Meath man for "lunch" and he was genuinely mystified by the idea. They just disappeared for the summer.

We knew that what we saw – the big bridge at Navan or the gorgeous walk on the way to see Dylan or the Boss at Slane Castle – was not the real Meath. We knew there was another place just out of sight, dark and majestic and that on some field or other, their prized football teams were going through bone-shuddering training sessions. As Dustin sang in his classic Charlene cover: I've Been To Paradise But I've Never Been to Meath.

It is no coincidence Meath have not won an All-Ireland final since the back-door system was implemented. I think once the knock-out days of old were abolished, football lost much of its life and death romance for the Meath men. They thrilled to the life-on-the-tightrope sensation. You know Philippe Petit, the genius who walked the wire between the World Trade Centre Towers in 1974? Well, he was French all right but they say he has Nobber blood in him.

The Meath psyche does not have the patience for the forgiveness – the softness – permitted by the back-door system. To Meathies, the back-door system makes as much sense as non-alcoholic beer.

But they will make an exception for Dublin.

© 2009 The Irish Times

[thejuice]

Thats great stuff Hardy. It reads like its much older than it is unfortunately.

[ONeill]

I've a mountain of brilliant articles on the GAA compiled by the defunct Gaelic Gazette as a PDF. I emailed it to a quare few on this board about 2-3 years ago. If anyone else wants it let me know.

[5 Sams]

I've a mountain of brilliant articles on the GAA compiled by the defunct Gaelic Gazette as a PDF. I emailed it to a quare few on this board about 2-3 years ago. If anyone else wants it let me know.

See link above in my last post O'Neill...I take it it's the same stuff??