Is there such a thing, Boxty?
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Is there a part 2 with the punchline?
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That should be for the Muldoons Twee or Simple thread. And I say that as an urban/rural hybrid.
Hard questions turned McGeary from ‘mediocre’ into Footballer of the Year
Kieran McGeary began 2021 by looking in the mirror and thinking: ‘I was just a sort of borderline, mediocre Tyrone senior footballer’. On Friday night, he ended it as Footballer of the Year. He spoke to Cahair O’Kane…
PwC GAA/GPA Footballer of the Year, Kieran McGeary. Picture: Sportsfile
13 December, 2021 08:50
KIERAN McGeary doesn’t go in big on poundshop philosophy.
The art of pulling random quotes from the internet and treating them as a horoscope isn’t his thing.
In trying to explain what it was about Feargal Logan and Brian Dooher’s approach that led Tyrone to the All-Ireland and facilitated him winning Footballer of the Year on Friday night, you can see he nearly doesn’t want to be seen to be spitting maxims in marketing speak.
So ‘get comfortable being uncomfortable’ gets strung out into: “It was one of those ones, you keep on being uncomfortable in a situation until you’re comfortable with it.”
He speaks the language of the everyman, because that’s what McGeary represents.
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His journey to being voted by his peers as Gaelic football’s best player in 2021 is something every child in Tyrone will look at and think ‘I could do that’.
McGeary would be the first to admit that when he was being hooked at half-time in the Ulster Championship opener against Cavan this summer, seeing his name up beside those of Peter Canavan, Stephen O’Neill and Sean Cavanagh as Footballers of the Year to hail from the county wasn’t on the agenda.
But the longer the summer went on, the better he got.
He had come in to 2021 with his questions about himself that he felt needed answered.
This was year six on the Tyrone panel, having turned down Mickey Harte’s call in 2015 to enjoy a summer in Boston instead. He was a soaked and frustrated fan on Hill 16 as the county’s second-half charge died away just when they looked to have Kerry nailed.
Going back to the idea of an everyman, he has fulfilled a whole host of roles for Tyrone.
While he’d have primarily been identified as a roaming half-back, it’s only two years since Harte had him on man-marking duties, memorably shifting him on to Shane Walsh in a Salthill league game where the Red Hands came from seven down to win by the same largely thanks to McGeary’s influence.
There were good days, there were middling days and there were bad days. And as he looked in at year six from the outset, the question he had for himself was simple.
“I suppose the fact I am there since 2016 and this is now 2021 and I am looking back and going: ‘Right, what has he done here? What have you achieved? You wanted to be in the Tyrone seniors. You got yourself to one All-Ireland final, got beat. You have a couple of Ulster medals. What have you done individually? What have you done collectively since I’ve joined the panel?’
“Look, there’s a lot of the boys have been successful and they deserve every single bit of it, but for myself I was just a sort of borderline, mediocre Tyrone senior footballer.
“Why was I driving to Garvaghey three or four nights a week and changing my whole life for no success?
“I suppose this year I really thought, ‘Right, here, kick yourself into gear man and get going.’
“There was a lot of things this year that perhaps didn’t go right, but I kept going, kept going with the same mindset that we could win and achieve.”
2020 had hit hard. The teeming rain in Ballybofey, the Covid year, the knockout championship, the dream put to sleep by Donegal in its infancy, another year gone.
“That was it. First round of the Championship. No back door. League was finished, heading into a wet November, wet Christmas, probably with nothing to look back on.
“Wee moments like that hit home real quick. You’ve been here long enough. There’s six gone. What’s to say you’ll get the next six as a playing member? What’s to say you’ll get the next six at all, even being there in the set-up?
“It was time I got myself into gear.
“I wouldn’t say [I had] any particular conversation, not with Brian, not with Feargal, just more or less a small moment with myself but I didn’t dwell on it too much now.”
There’s no gain without some pain.
McGeary had been a prolific underage captain right through but was dropped from the Tyrone minor squad in his first year.
He recovered to earn a place back the following year and in a recent podcast with Emma Connolly, recalled playing every game that year with the mindset that he had to prove his manager, Mickey Donnelly, wrong.
“Aye, do you know what, it hurt. I have been chatting to Mickey a few times since that and it was a decision he made.
“He used to tell me he didn’t make it lightly, which I believe, but he had his reasons for it. Maybe it was an eye opener that I needed.
“It would have been very easy to throw the dummy out of the pram like a lot of……that particular age where your social life becomes a big thing. Your job becomes a big thing.
“If you are going out with a girl it becomes a big thing or vice versa. It’s things like that at that age that stop you from maybe playing, but nah, it wasn’t going to stop me.
“It was where I wanted to be. I went back in the next year with my head held high and done the same thing again, and was lucky to get on that year, was lucky to be there.”
Kieran McGeary has had no time to stop at a red light this year.
As a teacher, where he works alongside Peter Canavan in Holy Trinity, and the joint-owner of a bar and restaurant at home, he had no time for anything, really. That’s how he likes it.
McGEARY is only the sixth man to win Footballer of the Year in the same year as his first Allstar, and takes over from Tomás Ó Sé (who was 26) as the oldest.
It’s a fast-tracked route to the big gong, but it’s been the scenic route to the Allstar.
His fellow Footballer of the Year nominee Conor Meyler – the pair of whom were in opposition as Pomeroy faced Omagh in the final club league game of the year yesterday – had spoken through the campaign about adopting a ‘less is more’ approach to his football.
That applied across the board. Tyrone’s training regime during the heat of the season consisted of three nights’ football and one optional gym session. They looked faster and fitter and fresher than ever.
Lessons were learned through the year, individually and collectively.
McGeary himself looks back on a conversation with Tiernan McCann after being whipped off at the break against Cavan, having been on a yellow card from the early moment he poleaxed Gearoid McKiernan after nine minutes.
“I thought I had been really, really working on my tackling individually at the pitch. I was doing a bit of my own stuff.
“It was my downfall in the game probably because I was being a wee bit over aggressive. It is never a bad thing to have a bit of aggression, but I suppose it’s being able to cap it at the right times,” said McGeary.
The early booking and having to be replaced felt like a setback.
McCann said to him afterwards to approach the game as though he was on a yellow card from the first minute, that every tackle had to be perfectly executed.
“It’s actually a piece of advice that I took on board massively.”
No tale of Tyrone’s season is complete without reference to the gruesome afternoon in Killarney when Kerry scored six goals past them in a league semi-final.
After the All-Ireland final win over Mayo, Feargal Logan smiled in memory of the galvanising effect of the night out that was held afterwards.
It was when they got back up the road to Garvaghey on the Tuesday night that the process began though. Rather than taking fear that what they were trying to do might be leaving them vulnerable, Tyrone’s management went completely the other way.
“It’s very easy now for everybody to look back and say, ‘Killarney was the kick up the backside they needed.’ But it’s only a kick up the backside if you make it a kick up the backside,” says the 27-year-old.
“After that, it would have been very easy to revert to a defensive style of play, dropping behind the ball. But after that, the exposure we had to one-v-ones in training, was incredible.
“At the start, it was scary. You could have had Conor McKenna, an Aussie Rules professional, coming like a gazelle at you. Sidestep, your feet are in a twist and he’s gone past you.
“But if you do that time and time and time again, you start to learn where you need to get your feet placed or what you need for your body position.
“It goes right back to the two men who took us this year. What way was Fergal Logan and Brian Dooher football’s played back then? You’re a wing-forward, you’re a wing-back, that’s who you’re marking - go out and do your job.”
At 27, he has a fair bit of road left ahead.
Canavan won six Allstars, Cavanagh five, O’Neill three. In one sense McGeary has matched them and in another, there are obvious targets that he can refocus on.
“I’d love to stick the nail into the wall now and hang them up, that could be me!” he laughs.
“No, it’s good. You just have to live up to it next year. No matter the weather or where the match is or the occasion, you’ll always be expected to try your best and show up.
“It would be easy for people to say ‘he’s not the same as he was last year’ or ‘that’s went to his head’, you just know what people would be saying.
“I’ve no doubt that I’ll try. The hunger’s still there. Hard work is one of my main ingredients on the pitch.
“I mightn’t be as skilful as some men that are on it but I’ll try my damndest. If I do that next year, I don’t think I’ll be too far away.”
The night before the All-Ireland final, when their dinner was finished, the Tyrone players sat around with their cups of tea. The company McGeary fell in with told stories and jokes, one after the other, until after 45 minutes he left to go to the room with his sides sore from laughing. He slept like a log.
This is the dream he would have dreamt.
Footballer of the Year, Allstar, All-Ireland winner, a name is now embedded in football’s history.
Kieran McGeary has earned the right to be comfortable in any company.
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Teaching innit?
Limerick’s All-Star riches raises issues about selection system and poor standard of rivals.
Martin Breheny
Limerick 12, Clare 1, Kilkenny 1, Waterford 1, Others 0. Just what does this year’s All-Star hurling team tell us about (a) Limerick, (b) their rivals, (c) the selectors?
At face value, it suggests that the current Limerick crop is possibly the greatest of all time and definitely the best since the All-Stars were launched 50 years ago and that the selectors recognised it by honouring four-fifths of the team that started in the All-Ireland final.
Indeed, there’s disappointment down Limerick way that Nickie Quaid, Dan Morrissey and Aaron Gillane, who lost out to Eoin Murphy, Conor Prunty and Tony Kelly respectively, weren’t also selected in what would have been a first ever clean sweep by All-Ireland champions.
All-Stars have certainly been won by players who contributed less than Quaid, Morrissey and Gillane, but it would have been very strange if one county were deemed to have the best player in every position.
Expand Close Pat Critchley, currently IT Carlow football manager, was an All-Star for Laois back in 1985 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Pat Critchley, currently IT Carlow football manager, was an All-Star for Laois back in 1985
Twelve of 15 is questionable too, but then the context for All-Star selection changed gradually over the years before gathering real pace in recent times.
It used to centre mainly on individual excellence, whereas now it’s heavily influenced by the team dynamic and how players fit into it.
And since Limerick are the quintessential team unit, every player’s case is greatly enhanced by his colleagues and the support structure they implement so effectively.
Men like Laois’ Pat Critchley (1985), Westmeath’s David Kilcoyne (1986), Down’s Gerard McGrattan (1992) would stand no chance of winning an All-Star nowadays. Their individual excellence stood out in teams which had modest achievements, but that wouldn’t be recognised anymore.
Even the Allianz League counts for next to nothing in All-Star terms. That wasn’t the case in the past when the winners were almost always represented, even if their summer campaigns ended early.
The early stages of the championship is no longer all that important either and, as Cork discovered this year, even reaching the All-Ireland final brings no guarantee of an All-Star.
There should be nothing automatic about the All-Stars, but if All-Ireland runners-up aren’t guaranteed one, there’s no reason why the winners’ haul should overwhelm all the rest and certainly not to the degree established by Limerick last week.
Prior to this year, the hurling record stood at nine (Kilkenny 1982-2000-2008 and Limerick 2020). The average for All-Ireland winners over 50 years was just under seven, with Tipperary (1971), Kilkenny (1979) dipping as low as four.
Given the selection system that applies, it’s difficult to argue against Limerick’s haul, but that raises the question of whether a season’s work can be accurately assessed in December, rather than on a continual basis. Actually, it can’t.
If an All-Star team were selected at the end of the league, Limerick would have had a small representation, but that changed once they powered up during the championship.
That’s understandable, but it also meant that solid performances by others during the league counted for absolutely nothing by comparison with Limerick’s summer exploits.
The championship will always outweigh the league in accumulating All-Star kudos, but unless the system is changed so that there are regular meetings of selectors throughout the season, the balance will remain skewed.
It was always so, but is even more so in a tactical age when team, rather than individual, is more pronounced. Limerick’s unprecedented dominance of the All-Stars makes it imperative that the selection system is re-examined because it hasn’t kept pace with the changes in either fixture formats or how the game is played now.
Another issue raised by Limerick’s All-Star sweep is what it says about their rivals. Are John Kiely’s men the greatest ever, or is it a case of being the best at a time when others have slipped back?
I would side towards the latter view. The great Kilkenny team which won so much between 2000 and 2015, almost always had more top-class rivals than Limerick are encountering now.
Other than Limerick, which county has improved over the last few years? Tipperary have regressed considerably since 2019; Kilkenny are solid but not at anything like the level they used to be; Galway are unrecognisable from the squad that won the 2017 All-Ireland title.
Cork remain frustratingly inconsistent; Clare continue to be the team always talked about for the future but aren’t delivering; Wexford and Dublin keep banging their heads off glass ceilings.
Waterford have improved, but then the base was low following their sharp decline after reaching the 2017 All-Ireland final.
It’s a golden age for Limerick, but accumulating riches is made easier by the opposition, most of whom are going through mediocre times.
That’s nothing to do with Limerick, who are rightly basking in the glory of it all, but it needs to be borne in mind when assessing them in a wider context and their place in the all-time greatest roll of honour.
They may, of course, reinforce their claim as the greatest of all time over the next few years but, whatever a record number of All-Stars suggests, they are not there yet.
The big question now is how many of their rivals will improve next year. They need to, because none of them can feel remotely happy with the last few seasons.
Careful what you wish for, Martin…
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Poor Martin is seething
Yup.
This being the top dogs business is class.
Martin is a Galway man is he?
He is.
In fairness, none of the Galway lads here have shown a single ounce of begrudgery. Except the English lad
From near Tuam. More a football man.
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Unfortunate choice of words there from Limerick’s Peter Casey. 
You love smelling the underpants, don’t you?
Martin O Connell being on the team of the millennium must be the biggest case of recency bias in the last millennium.
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Wise words, as ever – but I am certainly not seeking to draw you into this pile of nonsense and ego. Since I see the other lad is still banging on, in unhinged fashion, about being called a paedophile, I am just going to use your slice of wise good nature to make, belatedly, some comments and leave it so.
I already allowed that I was loose in making an irritated comment about “creeping on about children” – “creeping on about children”, though. I retracted the phrasal verb and changed it to ‘burbling on’. People can judge for themselves the histrionicism of @EstebanSexface, past and present and future. While the semantic implication of ‘about’ is clear, I accept the tonal aspect of ‘creeping’ was off. But not so off as to justify what ensued. @EstebanSexface made a total flute of himself. He was no more called a paedophile than he was called intelligent and balanced. And he can introduce himself to me any time he wants. No one has ever desisted me from thinking what I am inclined to think. No soccer head anti GAA clown on a discussion forum is going to change this reality.
The off aspect derived from prior irritation and had a specific context. This context was one ladeen’s bruised ego, The bruised ego issued from his inability to make a coherent argument about why the GAA, unlike any other sports code in Ireland, is obliged to promote other codes by making its facilities available, simply on request, to those other codes. The specific topic was an U10 soccer panel in Waterford not being allowed any longer to use Ballygunner GAA Club’s facilities. This topic elicited all sorts of nonsense – representative nonsense – from @EstebanSexface. Said nonsense included an assertion – factually untrue – about GAA clubs being in possession of “government money” and therefore obliged to offer its facilities to other codes such as soccer. Many hockey clubs have received money from Sports Ireland. Are those clubs obliged, on foot of this largesse, to offer their facilities to lacrosse clubs? This utter bullshine is of a piece with the usual carry on of opinionated prejudiced morons, starred graduates from Joe Duffy College.
Said nonsense likewise included repeated assertions.that the GAA is “sectarian”. Why? Were that U10 soccer panel Methodists? Where would you start…
Which or whether, I made brusque reply to a brusque comment by @BruidheanChaorthainn about Eoin Murphy. Exceedingly small beer by TFK standards, such brusqueness. But the bruised ego of @EstebanSexface took over. Away in he jumped, personalized hobnails flashing. So I had an irritated reflexive swipe. The rest anyone reading this craic here will have read.
I will now go to nub. @EstebanSexface accused me, ludicrously, of “delighting in” the distress of U10s left in the cold. So who was it that linked someone’s attitude to children to their attitude towards sport? Why, none other than @EstebanSexface. Go back and read what he actually wrote. And he wrote that reprehensible comment in full knowledge that I said the relevant rule should be rescinded and that any GAA club should be able, in principle, to make their facilities available to other codes. How does this position translate, in any way whatsoever, to “delighting in” children’s distress or discomfort? Not at all, of course. But the tactic of @EstebanSexface was to ‘win’ the argument by bringing a supposed attitude to children spuriously into the debate. This craic, as I pointed out, is classic Joe Duffy shite.
Should I have sought an apology at the time? I suppose I should. Why did I not? Because what an anti GAA soccer head thinks is of no account to me. I was not factoring in the bruised ego effect. Silly me.
On the issue of making public a private message from a poster: I was reluctant to do so but simply am not going to have someone following me around with inane comments – ‘Ollie Baker?!’ – simply because I had the temerity to suggest it was unworthy to tell a poster who had just revealed he was down with Covid to shove something up his hole. Some people understand naught but bluntness.
Nobody cares
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Without a hint of irony, you gobshite 