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13 October 2005 Edition

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Farrell's book catches the imagination

BY

MATT TREACY

First of all, congratulations to the Dublin Junior Camogie team on their victory over Clare in the replayed All-Ireland Final at Birr last Sunday. Goals from Emer Lucey of Ballyboden and Louise O'Hara of Erin's Isle were the key scores in a match that was dominated by the strong wind. Midfielder Ciara Lucey, also of Ballyboden, took some excellent points from placed balls in a game in which Dublin were held scoreless for the first half.

Dessie Farrell spent the week bolstering his reputation as possibly the most controversial GAA player of recent years. Little of that has to do with his performances on the pitch where he won six Leinsters and one All-Ireland with Dublin over 13 years. Mostly Dessie has been in the public eye because of his leading role in the Gaelic Players' Association.

His book Tangled Up in Blue has certainly caught the imagination and already been the subject of numerous reviews and media interviews. Again, little of the attention has focussed on the football. Mostly people seem interested in the personal aspects such as Dessie's drink driving, his marriage break-up and his contemplating suicide.

It certainly takes a brave person to expose their lives to such scrutiny and anything that helps to shed light on the reasons why people are driven to the stage where they seriously think about taking their own life has to be welcomed. The GAA is a large organisation whose membership encompasses a wide range of Irish life and it would be true to say that there are many clubs in the country who have experienced the trauma of generally young male members choosing that option. And yet it is not an issue that the Association has taken serious steps to address.

From Farrell you get the sense that the pressure of playing football at a high level, far from being an enjoyable escape from the burdens of work and day-to-day life, became almost an obsession and one that increasingly affected his ability to deal with all the other issues. You can certainly understand why the GPA argues that some meaningful financial compensation would help to ease some of those pressures.

Fascinating from a football, and particularly a Dublin football perspective is Dessie's account of his dysfunctional relationship with former manager Tommy Lyons. Indeed you would get the impression that Lyons tried to run the team in the same avuncular style as Joseph Vissaronovich Stalin did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Lyons apparently was not beyond employing some cunning tricks, like telling the players after their Leinster defeat by Laois in 2003 that they had permission to drink for the night. Farrell, worried about a possible qualifying game the following Saturday, demurred but was informed by Lyons that this was a ploy to see which of them were sufficiently disciplined not to! Uncle Joe would be chuckling to himself.

There were lots of stories at the time about Dublin players drinking 'fat frogs' and generally having a ball. Something that did not go down well with the manically depressed, porter drinking chaps who happened to observe this as they scrunched up their Paddy Powers dockets under the table in various Temple Bar hostelries.

At least they were not drinking before the match. Unlike certain players of the past, who shall remain nameless! An uncle of mine was a selector on the Dublin senior hurling team years back and it was not uncommon for one of the key figures to turn up in the dressing room after a few scoops. I also have a cousin who played minor for Kilkenny who claims that they were all given a whack of brandy before a Leinster Final. Can't see Joe Kernan going for that.

What Farrell's book does is illustrate the heightened pressures that are on the top GAA players. Being amateurs does not protect them from media attention although in fairness there has been little of the type of intrusive 'journalism' that professional sportspeople have to put up with, and even at that Irish newspapers tend not to torment, say, Irish soccer internationals in the same manner as happens elsewhere.

An exception to that was the execrable Sunday Independent's 'scoop' on DJ Carey's marriage break-up on the morning of the All Ireland Final a few years back. The front page carried a photograph of DJ's former partner along with his two children dressed in their Young Irelands jerseys. That was met with such universal revulsion that there has been no repeat.

The problem is, however, that if players like Farrell themselves decide to uncover aspects of their private lives, then the media may feel that a threshold has been crossed and that similar inquiries, invited or otherwise, are permitted in the case of others who may not wish for the same disclosure.

It illustrates the strange situation in which inter-county players find themselves. On Sunday you could be playing in front of tens of thousands of people with the pride of your county, and the mental well-being of your fellow county people in your hands or at your feet. On Monday you are back at work.

Finally, I would like to extend my sympathy to the family of Brian Campbell who died last weekend. Brian had the charity to publish my first scrawlings when he was editor of An Glór Gafa. I was talking to him in Conways after the re-launch of this paper two weeks ago and he was still full of enthusiasm for the written word, and the John Mitchell's Club in Newry.


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