Messages

A terrible shock. I didn't think he was that old but the '83 final is almost 25 yrs ago now. This is taken from an interview Tom Humphries did with Heffo back in 2004



Bobby Doyle recalls a Leinster championship game against Laois where he enjoyed a fine first half. At half-time Heffernan made a point of asking was Doyle on the field. When was he going to do something.

Spitting fire, Doyle went out and destroyed Laois for the second half. Coming off the field, still furious, he made a beeline for Heffernan intending to ask if he'd noticed that.

He found Heffernan smiling.

"Well Bobby. That worked!" And then there was Mick Holden.

"How could you not love a rogue like Holden!" Heffernan exclaims when you raise the name with him. "He got away with things because he played the way he did."

They remember the dishevelment of Holden as he would arrive. Legendary, he had 22 sets of lights to come through between Dun Laoghaire and Parnell Park. This wasn't counting a stop at McDonalds in O'Connell Street where he would buy two quarter-pounders with cheese. One for the remainder of the journey. One to eat before training.

The Nissan hut in Parnell Park would smell of Holden's fag, brandished in one hand and his burger clasped in the other. The air would be thick with Holden's stories from the night before. And 29 other players would be glancing nervously towards the door, waiting for Heffernan. They knew Holden was a hurler on his holidays in football.

They knew he could walk away happily at any time.

Heffernan cut him enough slack to keep him interested. He did his job and was never found wanting.

This is Hayes from last Sunday


Kerry's 'great' expectations rest on the final outcome;
If Kerry win this All Ireland, they will have a team worthy of sharing the same status as the outstanding teams of the past 20 years

Liam Hayes

There was one lingering moment of extremely light relief over the last seven days, when my two 'interrogators' on a Radio Kerry programme vehemently condemned me for suggesting that their county has not produced many Gaelic football 'giants' over the last 20 years.

I had readily ceded to them that Darragh O Se fitted that description, but, even over the telephone, I could sense that they were 'locking, and loading', and aiming in my direction. And what about Seamus Moynihan, they asked? And what about Maurice Fitzgerald? And, I waited for them to mention a few more names, but, you know what, the two Kerry lads on the lunchtime programme just kept on talking to me about Seamus Moynihan and Maurice Fitzgerald, and Maurice Fitzgerald and Seamus Moynihan, and Seamus and Maurice, and Maurice and Maurice. In a 20 minute conversation, covering 20 years of Kerry football, my two learned friends, under a bit of pressure admittedly, could only come up with three names.

I would have thrown Colm Cooper's name in as well, for free, but I decided to leave the two lads at it! Of course, as I stated last week in this newspaper, Seamus Moynihan was a very good player, strong and brave. You would think that not too many people would get very upset about that, wouldn't you? I mean, it's not like I said that their beloved 'Pony' of a footballer was really half a donkey.

The last two decades was a blistering period for Gaelic football and during this time we've watched a long line of outstanding teams grip and tantalise the country. We had Meath and Cork in the late 80s, and we had Down and a brilliant Derry team in the early 90s. There was a damn fine Dublin team around the place too at that time. Then we had Galway in the latter half of the 90s, and as we wheeled into a new millennium Tyrone and Armagh brought team performance to an entirely new level of intensity. I wouldn't put the Meath or Kerry teams which each won two All Ireland at the tail-end of the last century on the same big stage as the eight teams just mentioned.

But, I dare you? Go through all of these eight teams and, hand on heart, put your finger on individual footballers who were were real, live 'giants' of the game? When I do this exercise I find myself identifying a significant grouping of footballers who honestly excelled and entertained hugely, but who all came up short of meriting the label 'giant' or 'legend' or call it what you will. Mick Lyons, Larry Tompkins, Mickey Linden, Padraig Joyce, Michael Donnellan, Sean Cavanagh, Steven McDonnell, Kieran McGeeney have all been superior footballers. None of them were true giants of the game.

Colm O'Rourke was a giant, and Peter Canavan was too, but anyone who accepts the exercise I am presenting before you with the utmost seriousness will really, really struggle to put many more names on the same plate as O'Rourke and Canavan.

I hadn't mentioned Maurice Fitzgerald last week in my column at all, but since I'm now being invited to comment on his candidacy for 'giant-hood', I've got to say, lads, ladies, I don't think so! Maurice Fitzgerald was one of the most magnificently stylish footballers I have ever had the pleasure of watching, but if you ask me, or a jury of any group of county footballers over the last 20 years, you'll find that the judgement on Maurice is one that he under-performed to reach that dizzy mantle.

And, hey, nobody should take this personally. It happens! As I've written before - maybe a dozen times - I was fortunate enough to be on a Meath team which won two All Irelands, five Leinster titles and two National Leagues, and I was fortunate enough to be on a Leinster team which won three Railway Cups, and I was fortunate enough to play for Ireland a few times (actually, that was unfortunate!) and win an All Star (should have been two!), and I, Liam Hayes, was one of Gaelic football's greatest under-performers. A 'true giant' amongst under-performers, if you like. But still, to this day, if I am at an official function or if I am being introduced in public, it will usually be said that I am a 'legend', or that I was one of the 'greatest midfielders' ever seen in Croke Park. One or the other, nearly all the time!

This is not true, of course, and I more than anybody know that a thorough inspection of my performances over 12 years on the Meath team would, quickly enough, make me unworthy of either comment. Just because people say it, does not make it truthful or in any way factual. Trust me, I'd love to believe some of the things I've heard people say about me since I retired. And just because Kerry folk tell themselves that the 'Pony' and Maurice and a rake of others were the greatest of all time, does not add up to 'diddly' amongst the nation's Gaelic football fans, who really know, and live and breathe, the game. In short, what I am saying is that we have devalued the term 'great' by over-usage and incorrect application.

Anyhow, it was an interesting week, and very entertaining in parts, but also enlightening. I didn't know before writing last week's column that it was against the rules to write a critical analysis of the Kerry football team.

Sure, only a few years ago (five or six summers ago) Kerry GAA people were noisily eating their own (such as two-time All Ireland winning manager Paidi O Se) and a great Kerry footballer (we're still talking about Paidi here, folks!) was calling Kerry football fans 'animals'.

Kerry had won a couple of All Irelands at this time, but after well over a decade of great frustration and immense self-doubt - O Se was not the only manager who was hounded up and down the streets, and out of a job after Mick O'Dwyer's departure - nobody appeared very happy with the immediate past, or what the immediate future held for Kerry football. The county was in deep, deep trouble.

One county official in Kerry, over the last seven days, actually called me 'scurrilous' on more than one occasion. He had his great, big, chairman's knickers in an awful twist altogether, and I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and suggest, here and now, that the poor man was in such pain that he didn't really know what he was saying.

When Portuguese journalists write that Madeleine McCann's parents might know more about her disappearance than they are saying - that's 'scurrilous'!

Writing that the Kerry football teams of the past two decades have been second-rate by Kerry's own enormously high standards is not close - not even in the same parish - as being 'scurrilous'. I'll have a few more short words to say about this at the very end of this article, but let's get away from last Sunday morning (and my article in the Tribune) and let's get into the middle of last Sunday's All Ireland semi-final.

Of course, Dublin, as I suggested, did not win the game by seven or eight points. Dublin played poorly enough by their own high 2007 standards and their performance over the full 70 minutes was wildly inconsistent.

It was a game which Dublin might have drawn, but which Kerry did deserve to win. It was not a thriller, and will be left in the tuppence-halfpenny department when compared to the great, rough 'n' tough, manly contests between the two counties in the past. Pat O'Shea made all the right, astute changes to his game-plan between the quarter-final and semi-final, and by taking Kieran Donaghy into a deeper role on the team and leaving Colm Cooper in more of a stand-alone target-man position, he allowed his entire team to break free from the rigours of 'kick and hope' football which has dominated the mind-set of this team for almost 12 months.

But we'd all been telling Pat, for weeks and weeks, that this was exactly what he had to do, so there's no top marks for the Kerry coach for this tactical performance. However, he does get ten out of ten for having his team mentally on 'red alert' for the contest - and for having his team back on the field before Dublin for the start of the second-half, and for having them get stuck into Dublin on the re-start and fighting like demons for every single ball. Like all Kerry teams, these lads like to play good football - and they did that at times last Sunday. Cooper was excellent, and this is the level of superior performance which people expect of him every single time he togs out. The level of expectation is higher for him than possibly any other 'footballer' in any sport in the country - with the exception of Brian O'Driscoll, maybe. The bar is that high for Colm Cooper. But, y'know what, truly great players have to live and suffer that constant expectation. They live with a ridiculously high level of adulation and, correspondingly, they have got to live with a little bit of criticism too at times. Cooper has not been half the footballer he is supposed to be these last two years, admittedly through sad circumstances for himself and his family. But, now, in the All Ireland final, he must finish off the season with an equally perfect performance, if he is to get his career firmly back on track - and if he is to safely book his place alongside Colm O'Rourke and Peter Canavan at the very top table.

It was the raw energy of the Kerry players which was the single most impressive part of their performance last Sunday. On the ball, and off the ball, they were 'burning' it up, and in the circumstances things got a little bit nasty at times... and 'girly' at times too.

The Kerry team before us today is perilously close to winning three All Irelands in four years. And that would be a fantastic achievement in its own right. Nobody's arguing with the maths. But in pure pedigree, where does this Kerry team sit overall within this 20 years period? Remember, Kerry struggled to win one All Ireland in the whole of the 90s, and don't forget that the last two All Ireland victories over Mayo were embarrassingly awful non-events, admittedly thanks entirely to Mayo.

The last two titles, when measured up against the 30-something Kerry have claimed over the last 100 years, would find themselves probably closer to the bottom of the pile.

What I'm saying here is that there were eight outstanding All Ireland champions over the last 20 years and, apart from going toe-to-toe with Galway, Kerry teams seldom got really close enough to any one of the others when those teams reigned.

And now we have a Kerry team who are No.1 in Ireland again. And clearly No.1 after physially and psychologically demolishing Dublin last Sunday afternoon. They are facing into an All Ireland final which could be a death-trap for them, with all the perils of a Munster final now presenting themselves in the month of September. Everyone expects Kerry to win. Me too! And Kerry are going to find themselves in a dangerous place on the morning and afternoon of that game. It could be the greatest moment in Kerry football in 20 years, or it could become something else entirely.

If Kerry do lose, maybe then the people of the county will look back over their shoulders at two decades, and feel dramatically short-changed by everything they have experienced and everything they have achieved. Then they will certainly share my perspective of the last two Sundays - at least in the privacy of their own homes and their own quiet conversations.

If Kerry win this All Ireland, they will have a team worthy of sharing the same status as the outstanding teams of the last 20 years. A lot rests on the next 70 minutes. Nearly everything, in my opinion.

I actually enjoyed "Keys of the Kingdom", although it's been a while since I read it. A few you might enjoy..

The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hlasek
The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
Invitation to a Beheading by Vladimir Nabokov
The Prince of West End Avenue by Alan Isler
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

August 19, 2007

A triumph over adversity;
The loss of a brother, cousin and best friend have only emboldened Noel O'Leary to approach football as life - with fearless resolve

Kieran Shannon


For a moment Noel O'Leary was sure he'd got away with it. It was down in Tralee on a shitty wet Saturday night, Kerry had just beaten them, and towards the end he'd snapped. The Kerry boys had been winding him up all night and then Tomas O Se kicked the ball at him and O'Leary had gone and eyeballed him, lashed out, and picked up his second yellow card for his troubles. As he was walking into the dressing room tunnel, Billy Morgan tapped him on the back and half-grinned, "Well done, Noel!" At that, inwardly, O'Leary smiled too. Someone understood. If anyone could, it was Billy. The sight of that green and gold jersey, the passion, the fury; sure he knew all about it himself.

And then? Well then when they were inside, Morgan closed the door and proceeded to give his wing back, as O'Leary so eloquently puts it, "an unmerciful fecking". In front of everyone. He shakes his head and grimaces bashfully at the memory, thought and accusation. Too fiery and volatile - even by Morgan standards. "But he was dead right too," says O'Leary. "I was a bit mad that night. A rush of blood to the head."

Admit it. It's how you know him, perceive him. There mightn't be a better attacking wing-back left in this year's championship or anyone on the Cork team more adept at playing that ball into Michael Cussen, but to you, he's that serial yellow-carder who keeps getting into scrapes. He'll probably take up Geraghty today and, well, it's hard to see both of them lasting the distance. But, as Dan might say, if you don't know him, don't judge him.

He's from a place called Cill na Martra, the second smallest parish in the biggest county in Ireland, a few miles outside Macroom, off the road to Ballyvourney, but as a kid he developed a passion for west Cork football and west Cork footballers more than 50 miles down the road. There was Castlehaven and Tompkins and Cahalane. And even though they were junior, there was Urhan and Ciaran O'Sullivan too. He remembers going with his father Donal as a 12-year-old to see them play Midleton in a county junior championship replay in 1992 in Ballingeary.

"I'll never forget it. The first day Ciaran was awesome. The second day he was having a brilliant game again when one of the Midleton lads turned round and made shit of his nose. Ciaran was down for three or four minutes, blood pissing out of his nose. Next thing, he gets up, the ball comes in and Ciaran grabs it underneath his own goalpost, goes straight up the centre of the field and shoes the ball straight on the '45 and splits the posts. My father turns round to me and says, 'That man will be playing for Cork next year.'" And at that, his son vowed that's how he'd play for Cork too. Like Cahalane, like Ciaran. Blood and bandages, boy.

And that's how he played for them as a minor. With passion. Raw passion at times but passion, and when the Cork senior hurlers were presented with their 2000 Munster medals the same night as O'Leary and his colleagues were presented with their All-Ireland minor football medals, Diarmuid O'Sullivan, a two-time All Star even then, made a point of going over to O'Leary to tell him how much he loved the way he played the game. A year later they were teammates winning an All-Ireland junior medal together, and a year later, on the senior panel, winning a Munster football championship together. O'Leary had to wait until he was 21 to break onto the starting 15 though. When he did, he did with intent.

"I thought, 'Feck it, a tougher attitude to this setup would be no harm at all. We'll try not to take any prisoners if we can.' I suppose I went a bit bald-headed into it though. Did a lot of stupid things."

Whatever about doing anything stupid, O'Leary managed to do something unique in that 2003 league campaign, picking up a yellow card in each of Cork's seven league games, and just for good measure, picking up two in the last game against Tyrone. But over the years he'd like to think he's tempered down that temper. He's no longer the wild buck of 2003, though, he'll admit, some sort of red mist does seem to descend upon him when he encounters that green and gold.

And on days like that, he's reminded it's only a game, that there's more to life. And he'll agree. Yeah, it's a game, there's more to life, but what you must understand it's that game which has helped him get through the life he's had.

The first to go was Mark. They were cousins but more like twins; the same age, the same humour who'd "more or less lived with each other; him living up in our place or me down in theirs". Then, in January of '99, Mark and his girlfriend broke up and all of a sudden he was dead. Suicide.

"It was an awful shock at the time. Because nothing like that had ever happened to us before. But that was my first year with the Cork minors and the football was a great thing to have. It gave me something to turn back to."

O'Leary and Cork would win that year's Munster final, inspired by a magical display from another dynamic wing back called Tom Kenny, but a few weeks before the following year's Munster final, tragedy struck again. This time it was Benny, his best friend.

"Benny," he smiles, "Benny was a gas man. Strange, he had no interest in football but we had a bit of an old business going there. We bought a quad-bike between us, spraying weeds and spreading manure on farms for farmers. A couple of weeks before we played Kerry, there were about 13 or 14 of us out the back at home. Benny was spinning around on the bike. And feck it, it was a case of the two of us getting too used to that bike; we'd wear no helmets or anything like that, you know. And sure, whatever way he went across this little slope in the field, didn't the bike turn and fall on top of him.

"At the start we were saying to ourselves, 'This man is going to hop up now any second', because he was a bit of a joker, like. But we went over, and Jesus, when we looked at him he had gone blue in the face. Myself and my brother Ciaran tried to clear his mouth but it was no good." By the time the ambulance had hit Macroom, Benny was gone.

Again football offered some measure of solace and that summer Cork went on to claim Munster and then the All Ireland. O'Leary's eyes light up at the memory of it and old teammates. Some of them you've heard of: Masters and McMahon, the latter of whom will play with him in Croke Park today; Conrad Murphy, who was the best of the lot of them; Kieran 'Hero' Murphy from Erins Own. But then there were others who you mightn't have heard of. Paul Deane, Dinny O'Hare; "maybe not the most skilful but hard men and great lads as well." Only in the last year or two with the seniors, has he experienced a team chemistry and bond like the boys of that summer enjoyed. It was the time of their lives and should have been the year of their lives, but before 2000 was out it had been the worst of O'Leary's.

He'll never forget the game that was on the box that day: Glenflesk and Nemo in the Munster club final, and himself and the father watching Moynihan and Johnny Crowley trying to win it nearly on their own. But as the day and game went on, his mother was becoming increasingly anxious. Ciaran, Noel's 17-year-old brother, had yet to come home. There was no word from him or of him. Noel and his younger brother, Donal Og, told her to relax, reminding her that it wouldn't be the first time he'd have stayed over at a friend's. After the game was over though, there was still no word. They'd phoned Ciaran's girlfriend who he'd visited the previous night and she'd said he'd gone home.

"The father was saying then, 'God, maybe he was drunk coming home and fell somewhere. Donal Og, go into the shed and get our wellingtons and we'll go to the fields and look for him.'"

Donal Og went into the shed only to find Ciaran already there. Same story as Mark. Seventeen. Just finished with the girlfriend. Gone.

"Definitely what happened to Benny was a big part of it. Ciaran was there when it happened and he used to get upset about it. He'd always be on about it at home. But in saying that, you wouldn't have taken much notice of it. I mean, it was natural enough he was upset about it.

"I think it was a pure spur-of-the-moment thing. It and drink. In most of these cases that's what it is; a spur-of-the-moment decision brought on by the drink. Looking back, Ciaran wouldn't have been the best to take drink. He was only 17, a bit of a wild lad but a good lad, but you could see that he used to get upset after drink."

That's why he'd tell anyone: know the people who don't react well to it. Be there to tell them the one that's one too many, especially when that one might be the first. Be there to say hang on, everybody hurts, but it passes. It's maybe not the normal message or cause advocated by a GAA player, but O'Leary feels strongly about this. So do his younger brothers, who hardly drink at all.

"A lot of people mightn't like talking about this, shy away from talking about it, but it's happening every day in other homes. People might learn from it. I have no problem talking whatsoever about it. Or Benny or Mark. It was an unbelievable run for us at the time, but it happened. It's a big part of who I am."

There's little O'Leary isn't upfront about. At times he might sound all bashful like Paidi O Se just like he plays like a young Paidi O Se but the 'Yerrah' response is not for him. There is a refreshing honesty as well as affability about him. In the tree surgery business he set up a few years ago, beating around the bush is kept to a minimum. It's the same in conversation. He cuts through the bullshit.

The Cork under 21 team management during what he now calls the lost years, for instance. "It was the worst set-up I've ever seen. Selectors turning up late; poor locations, no tactics before games, no buzz in the camp. For them three years we didn't even threaten to win an All Ireland when we had the players to do it. In 2003 we ended up losing to Waterford. Rightly so. That was the game they parachuted Setanta (O hAilpin) and (John) Gardiner in for before the (senior All-Ireland) hurling final. No disrespect to the two lads but they never trained with us that year while they were taking the places of fellas who'd trained all year. Sure that's not a team."

He'll accept his discipline could be better too. Okay, he doesn't think he should have been suspended for the Louth game this year, because as he showed the guys in Croke Park, that time in the Munster final Paul Galvin was holding and twisting his ankle - "I'm not saying he was doing it intentionally" - and O'Leary was only trying to wriggle his way free. Then you push him on it.

"That was all though, Noel. You were just trying to get him off you."

"That's right."

"Genuinely, Noel."

He smiles. "Well, maybe there was a slight bit of a kickout too."

He'll be straight up about the support of the current senior team as well, or lack of it, to be precise. Last week Waterford lost their fourth All-Ireland semi-final in the Justin McCarthy era and a country, let alone, county, nearly went into mourning. Lose today and the Cork footballers will likewise have lost four semi-finals in six years, and yet the masses on Leeside will be indifferent to their plight. O'Leary is close friends with some of the hurlers, especially O'Sullivan, but as much as he wishes them well, at times he can't help but be envious of them.

"It's unbelievably disappointing, our support, even if we're long over it now. The hurlers get caught in a sticky situation and are down three points and the crowd roars them on which is a huge help to a team. We go three down and people just turn their asses to us. That's when we need them. There's absolutely no doubt about it, if we win this All Ireland, it'll be for this panel of players and management team. I honestly think there's only about two or three hundred genuine Cork football supporters out there."

He'd love to win it for Morgan ("His head for the game is unbelievable. And his passion. Even watching him giving speeches and seeing the veins start to pop; you'd be proud to play for a man like him"). For old teammates like Ciaran O'Sullivan who was probably as good as Moynihan but never seen as such because he never won that Celtic Cross. But as he says, mostly for the men around him each night in training. That's what it's about.

Right now, they're near and yet so far. They're only one game away from a final but the way they've been playing they seem a lot further away than that. Maybe the hurling snobs have a point; the team hasn't played with any flair; it's yet to cast off its inhibitions. He'll admit that. But the 2000 minors should have lost in the first round to Clare. They went on and won the All Ireland. That team and this team have a lot in common. This crowd could go all the way too.

"Look, there's no doubt that if we play like we did the last day against Sligo there's no hope for us against Meath. They're playing a nice brand of football and seem to be able to find space all the time while we seem to be getting clogged up an awful lot. But we know the football we're capable of and the football we've played. It's going to come out some time again, hopefully on Sunday. (James) Masters is going to be a loss alright but the man himself, pure gentleman, said it openly in the papers that his injury gives lads like (Daniel) Goulding a chance and they might burn up Croke Park."

He'll feel for Masters today. This is about the only year O'Leary himself has been free of injury. A week after his championship debut against Limerick in 2003, his old buddy Diarmuid O'Sullivan gave him a clatter in a county championship game. O'Leary played on but he had taken the Ciaran O'Sullivan spirit to extremes - his ribs had been cracked, something that kept him out of the qualifier defeat to Roscommon. The following year in Killarney his medial ligament gave way; the following year against the old enemy in Croke Park himself and Conor McCarthy collided and he had to be taken off, and then last year, a viral infection from a very costly half-hour of sunbathing in La Manga kept him out of the starting line-up for the summer.

But he kept coming back, kept bouncing back up, kept walking on.

He knows no other way.

Hoping to go to Krakow in July as well. Anyone got pointers on transport to Auschwitz? I was also hoping to go to Lublin and Warsaw and any information on those spots would be gratefully received.

It's been obvious for a while that Pillar doesn't fancy Ryan too much. He was in the forwards in 2002, scored a couple of goals and then went back to his usual standard of shooting. He's not a forward. I'd put him in full back to be honest. A good fielder, strong and can tackle. He's a better option than McConnell albeit McConnell has the few extra games there to get used to the position. I'd also put O'Shaugnessy in the corner and move Dave Henry out to the wing instead of Casey.

Every cloud....

Oh, sorry. That destroys my argument.  
[/quote]

Well, perhaps you might like to expand your argument. How many teams would you see in Dublin? How would you divide the county, population, amount of clubs, local authority boundaries etc? Should Cork, for instance, be similarily divided?

A small point in the general argument but the population of Dublin is 1.18 million, not 1.5 million (2006 census).

Fantastic. That would have been something else to see live.

Yes, pay in at the gate.

The answer to 75 will make interesting reading. As it stands, it could include most pubs in the country let alone in the vicinity of Croker itself.

Q26 Clarecastle are known as Magpies but so too are Doonbeg.

 1918 - Gaelic Sunday - GAA orders matches played all over the country in protest at the government's plans to tax receipts. The plans were dropped.

Michael Bond taking over the Offaly hurlers from Babs in 98. Went from also rans to champions.

Brought a team out to play a match under lights against Ballymun on their pitch. Our lads spent most of the match completely misreading the flight of the ball while Ballymun were far more at ease, obviously.