Socks being pulled up is another - you need to be the main man and fulcrum of the forewords or the free taker to get away with it.
You know full well when you see a lad with his socks up he is either a serious operator or a complete shaper
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Oisín McConville was some man for the collar up. Then they went and took the collar away.
It wasn’t just Cantona that was an influence on the collar up phenomenon. It was Oasis. Oasis didn’t wear collars up, but the whole dominant culture among males who were between the ages of 15 and 20 in 1995 was one of portraying cockiness and/or cod hardness in any way they could. Socks up were out because that was what fancy dans did. Bleached hair was mildly acceptable, but only a certain type of male could get away with it, the type that could in another life have possibly have made it in a boy band. Also if you were 5’11 or over, bleached hair was NOT OK. Certain types of “cuties” were possibly allowed away with doing it once, unless they were from Laois, where they did it repeatedly, and this was a dead giveaway Laois would never amount to anything at senior level.
Then Owen Mulligan came along and broke all the rules.
The collar up was the solution a lot settled on because it portrayed cod “hardness”.
The taped sleeves, that was another one that really showed a confidence.
The Combo were always teeming with socks up shapers for whatever reason. Must have been because Carmody use to wear them back in the day.
Collar-up used nearly always mean hotshot or hachet man. Helmet normally the deciding factor. Collar-up and no helmet generally meant they’d either threaten or try to kill you before the day is out.
It usen’t always be this way. In the 1980s and early 1990s it tended to be the duller members of a team profile and personality wise that pulled the socks up. The lads you thought were conformist types.
Greg Blaney for Down always had the socks up because that’s just what he did, he was the exact opposite of a shaper, he was a dentist, a serious man.
Jim Ronayne of Dublin was a socks up man but nobody ever heard anything from him, he just got on with it. Mick Deegan was a socks up man presumably because he was an association football man.
Joe Cooney was socks up, John Fenton was socks up, Nicholas English was socks up.
In my mind Kerry and Kilkenny players liked to pull their socks up more than players from other counties, probably because they had hoopy socks and hoopy socks were more enticing to pull up.
In the 1990s the socks up in hurling became associated with two fiery Johns, Power and Leahy.
At some nebulous point in the 2000s though it became identified as an attention seeking thing and most of what has happened since has played to the modern stereotype. Paddy Andrews wore his socks up. Enda McNulty wore his socks up. Paddy Andrews’ post-playing personality has become emblematic of what wearing socks up now means about somebody.
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Declan Ryan the one I always think of. Very much in the serious operator category.
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Would I be right in saying Patsy Keys was a collar up, no helmet player?
In the 1991 Munster hurling final replay, the following players wore socks up:
Paul Delaney
Noel Sheehy
Declan Ryan
Donie O’Connell
Sean O’Gorman
Cathal Casey
John Fitzgibbon
Apart from Fitzgibbon none of these could be said to be in any way in the flamboyant category.
John Leahy did not wear his socks up and my recollection is that earlier in his career he never did, it was only something he started doing later.
In the meath dressing room after Foley’s unlikely goal had finished off the 4 game saga in 1991. Kevin emerged from the shower only to be asked by a waiting journalist for a quote. ‘You’re standing on my towel’ says Kevin.
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TNH.
There’s no way any of those Meath players took a shower.
Mick Lyons was fair tough until the AFL fellas levelled him. I think the headline in the Aussie paper was “Irish fancy dans are fairy floss”.
Mick was smart enough that there was not the place to die.
Colm Parkinson. An iconic rockstar look in the 90s GAA world.
In Limerick, collars up was for rugby jocks or twats.
I must say I liked the skinhead look. Enda Muldoon had a great version of it. He was absolutely shcalped. Better than this even.
Sean Ban O Sullivan wore it well also.
Seanie O Shea works it nicely
Real no nonsense stuff
Mike Houlihan.
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Did Mike houlihan not wear his up?
Edit. Just saw fagans post
Any coward can hit a blind side cheap shot.
Lyons played the next eight Compromise Rules TESTS and got on just fine.
The Irish went to Australia and walked all over the cunts, as they say.
Was JBM the original skinhead??
He loses many points for his doggy dog tedancies.
