Jack and Cha would get on famously I suspect.
Ah I’d disagree. The impact Christie had on fellas like philly and Davy boorden is unreal. Well away from the spotlight and looking for no thanks either. Boylan is a great man too but similar to mickey harte his teams were filthy.
Meath filthy !!! When or where was this?. I always thought they were simply “robust”.
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Fair point they weren’t sneakily filthy by today’s standards. Always thought seans lovely guy routine must be a little bit of an act or else he didn’t have as much impact on the team as is made out. Their ruthlessness defined them.
Oh aye, Philly McMahon is a saint 
I watched the Boylan doc there a fortnight ago and Colm O’Rourke was adamant that Boylan never encouraged nasty practices. He did reinforce, vehemently, that irrespective of the severity of the belt you’d gotten, rule 1 was to get up and get on with it.
Secretly, that’s a trait I found endearing about them.
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Far from a ‘saint’ and either is Davy burden. philly has 7 all ireland medals a University degree and owns his own business, Davy played for Dublin and has a masters from dcu. Not too many fellas from the flats in ballymun achieving that and both men largely credit paddy for the influence he had on them as footballers and men. I’d say neither were easy to handle as kids either. Most would have given up on them.
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Paddy is a lovely chap. Many of those fellas owe him their lives, let alone their success.
As epitomised by Mick Lyons
Meath were a colourful team to play against. They would leave you black and blue.
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Cork got every bit of it they deserved back then and gave pucks of it too. Some hatred. Took John Kerins passing in 2001 to break the ice between the sides.
There was a fair bit of aul guff in that programme.
Ballymun Kickhams ham up the deprived area thing. Most of their players come from Glasnevin ave/Wadelai Green area which is a leafy middle class suburb. They do have an odd lad like Davy Byrne and Philly from the heart of Ballymun but not many. They also actively discourage their juvenile players from playing hurling with Setanta the hurling club in Ballymun (which incidentally does pull most of its small number of players from the council estates at the heart of Ballymun).
For more guff see Philly McMahon banging on about being proud to be from Ballymun and proud to be a Kickhams man. The cunt hasn’t tried a leg for them in the championship in about 5 years
Having said that Paddy Christie, Val Andrews and the late Tom O Donoghue were/are great men who have done great work and Ballymun have supplied many great players to Dublin Football Teams.
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I always thought McEntee was amongst the worst of them. He had a nasty element to his game.
That was the game back then though. No place for nice fellas. O Rourke spent many of his early years getting flaked, you had to learn to handle yourself or fuck off home. Of course Meath club football was killing fields stuff back then too.
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That’d be the Fine Gael “nasty streak” gene in him. A lot of opponents over the years have nothing but great things to say about him in his professional capacity all the same.
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I’d say the Meath squad was just chock full of roasters. Like bulls in a china shop.
"I remember before one big game in Croke Park we had a team meeting and the team meeting comprised of all the big hits that we had made in games over the previous four or five years.
"The hits were played for 15, 20 minutes and the music put to it was Another One Bites The Dust. That was the meeting. Another One Bites The Dust. About 30 or 40 guys being poleaxed by Meath players. And we left the room.
"It was simple as that. We knew what we had to do the next day, every man.
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Simpler times, none of that McStay “hot-spot” guff or references to zonal marking.
I’d say the mantra was to fight like a dog for possession and any mental weaknesses were swiftly eradicated. Plenty lads on the sideline who’d break a jaw * in search of possession.
- Not their own obviously for those not familiar with Meath’s “style”.
McEntee has made clane shite of Conlon there
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Charlie Bird a real journalist.
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