Homeboy still chasing the dream

Leinster SFC Interview with Paddy Christie: Tom Humphries talks to a Dublin stalwart whose love of the game isundimmed by the bad days and for whom the hills closest to his own doorstepremain the greenest

When they started throwing Dublin jerseys across dressingrooms and into the hands of Paddy Christie, the first lesson he had to learn was that he wasn't being given sky blue body armour. Three castles don't make a man bulletproof. There would be bad days and plenty of them. Funny thing is that he set out to be something even more vulnerable. With a mother from Lorrha in Tipp and a father from Rathmolyon in Meath, young Paddy thought he might follow his kin and be a hurler. Paddy senior would take his son out onto the green off Glasnevin Avenue and they'd puc around together, cheerfully oblivious to the fact that in Ballymun football was the mainstream faith.

One day a young fella slowed to watch. Paddy Christie was about eight years old at the time. The young fella was maybe 15. He could see the kid had quick wrists and a good eye and when they'd exchanged a few sentences it was agreed that Christie would join Ballymun Kickhams that weekend. He did. His first team was a hurling team. His first coach was called Dermot Deasy.

Thus accidentally he found his way into the lineage that is Ballymun full backs on Dublin teams. Apart from injuries or brief periods of uncertainty, the number three jersey has been Ballymun's for 20 championships now. Kevin Heffernan persisted with young Gerry Hargan in 1983. When Hargan went he handed the jersey to his brother-in-law Deasy, who passed it in 1997 to Ian Robertson, yet another Ballymun man. His brief tenure ended with Christie's accession.

That's the way it's stayed. Hurling is just a memory borrowed from ancient summer evenings now.

This is a different story though. The jersey had lost its magic weave by the time Christie slipped it over his head. Hargan had won an All-Ireland in his maiden season. Deasy had to wait, nourishing himself with a series of Leinster medals before 1995 came along with brass bands playing. He played through to the All-Ireland semi-final and then succumbed to injury and missed the big day. Robertson's immense promise was always undermined by a treacherous body.

Paddy Christie though? He has endured his own slow-drip form of torture. Nine years in blue. An O'Byrne Cup medal and a Leinster medal to show. Last year was the best year. Suppose it stays that way? He looks back in wistfulness.

If timing is a full back's greatest weapon, well then he began impeccably. Dublin chuntered through the league of 1994/1995 and when the ground got firm and the sun got higher 19-year-old Paddy Christie was sprung from the traps in a series of challenge games.

Two matches in a weekend. One in Armagh, one in Down. He flew through both as a corner back. Then they played Leitrim on a Saturday afternoon in Clan na Gael's new ground in Ringsend. No bother. Then Mayo in the St Vincent's ground in Marino. Roscommon down in Roscommon. Looking comfortable, looking good. The Dublin selectors knew they had a live one. Quick and smart and learning like a prodigy.

Then one evening training out in Santry he didn't spot trouble till it had spotted him.

"I went to tackle a fella and caught my finger in his jersey." He holds up the second-last finger on his left hand, the one beside his little finger. Gives it the hard stare. They've not been friends since.

"I looked down and it was pointing over that way. I decided not to tell anyone." So he lit a match to see if his petrol tank was empty. He closed his eyes and hit the finger a bang and it straightened up and he said nothing.

Dermot Deasy came over to him in the dressingroom afterwards. "I saw you holding your hand." "I think it's grand." "Well, mind it." He went home, iced the hand and went to bed. Got up the next morning and his paw was purple. The whole thing. Throbbing violent purple. Not good, he reckoned.

So now. Full disclosure time. He went to Dr Pat O'Neill, team manager and a man who was a good deal more qualified to make decisions about banging the finger back into place. He held out his swollen, discoloured mitt and said disingenuously: "Pat, I think I hurt my finger." Next he's in a room in the Mater Private. His hand has just been X-rayed. A nice cheery woman comes in and not knowing that the finger's owner has self-diagnosed this as a pesky dislocation, not knowing that a week missed in training will be a personal disaster, not knowing these things, she just says to Paddy Christie: "Yep, your finger is broken alright."

Details come to him while he is still in shock. Spiral fracture! Here's how that works: the finger is twisted around and it breaks! Easy peasy. Oh, and all the ligaments have been destroyed too. Snapped! It's all over now, baby blue.

"I missed six weeks and when I came back I was miles off. I'd thought I'd get back in but the summer wore on and it dawned on me: I'm not getting into this team. In the first round I didn't get on but I'd come back training the week of the Louth game. The hand was still very very sore but I thought I'd chance it. I got a sub jersey by playing through pain and keeping my mouth shut.

"I think they thought I was mad. One day I was saying I'll train. The next day I'd decided to rest it. They thought it was odd. After the Laois game it was really bad. I was going for the ball holding back, batting it with one hand. Playing really bad and in pain. By the time the confidence came back and the pain was gone it was All-Ireland semi-final time. I knew by then."

For a few years it was very, very hard. He wondered what it must have been like to be Keith Galvin. Just come in at 19 and win an All-Ireland straight off. It would be a dream, that's what it would be.

"For years it was in the back of my mind that I'd missed the boat. On the other hand, maybe I could have played the first game against Louth and been taken off. Keith played very well in those early games. So you don't know. I blinked and now eight years have gone. Now I'm just gone 28. If somebody said when I was 18 that I'd play for Dublin for nine years, I would have said no way. You've got to be thankful sometimes. Just to be in Croke Park. Just to be fit and able-bodied."

He wasn't on the bench on All-Ireland final day. He wasn't involved at all and he didn't really want to be. He knew if he was involved it would just be to give him a jersey and get him a medal. He didn't want that. A charity medal and a pat on the head. By then, anyway, it wasn't so much disappointing as fascinating. He watched from the stand with parents and friends. Jayo, Charlie, The Hill. The game was about to break big in Dublin.

He was back in for the national league but the world had changed. Dublin GAA went back into its shell. A new dispensation had arrived. Mickey Whelan was in charge. Christie played his game, sat quiet, but noticed that Mickey's bells and whistles weren't playing to the audience.

"Everything the lads had done in 1995 they associated with victory, so everything that was new they weren't keen on. If they hadn't won in 1995 and Mickey Whelan had come in the next year they'd have tried anything with him." Old dogs declined to learn new tricks. Christie got on with business as they debated and howled. Come the following spring his hard work yielded a dividend - so he thought.

"Then I got this pubic bone inflammation. I'd been playing well all through the league. Playing really well I thought. I started to feel stiff in the groin. I was playing a club league game one night and found I couldn't run or twist or stretch.

"Somebody mentioned this osteitis pubis thing. They said if you have that you're in trouble. I had it. I took two weeks off and used anti-inflammatories. I wouldn't let myself believe it was as bad as it was even though I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. Couldn't sprint, twist or turn." Draw a line through 1996.

On it went. 1997: 70 minutes of football. Against Meath! Paul Bealin hits the bar with a penalty in injury time. Dublin lose by three points. Three years of championship training and injuries and 70 minutes of championship football.

1998: Two games against Kildare. A draw, a replay. No goals conceded. Scant consolation.

1999: A Leinster final. Meath are never troubled really. He notices that Meath forwards have a phenomenal hunger for the ball, they'll contest anything. Not easy.

2000: Leinster final replay. A quick combination slapping from Kildare ends the summer.

2001: All the way to Thurles. A replay with Kerry. "My fault those two goals. First one I didn't get a tackle in quick enough on Crowley. Second goal I was out front and I slipped. It was a good season to that game."

And then, suddenly, last summer. An eruption of excitement. A journey. You can't know what it meant.

"The Leinster final last year was the best day in Croke Park. I don't have to think about that. Best day in football. For me as someone who'd missed out it was incredible. In 2000, having been beaten by Kildare, I left Croke Park and thought that I'd probably end up with an O'Byrne Cup medal. I'd missed the boat. When that whistle went last summer I collapsed on the ground and said to myself, honestly, if I get hit with a truck tomorrow at least I have won something.

"I was gutted to lose the All-Ireland semi-final but nearly a year later I still think to myself that I have a Leinster medal. It was something off my back. Getting over the first obstacle was a big thing. 2000 and 2001 were disasters. There have been so many days when you could look back and see us as a team missing the chance."

So it has all come round. Full circle. As a kid he joined a Dublin team full of more senior members. They should have been surfing the wave from 1995 onwards but they got pulled under. Now he is a senior figure in a team that should be going to the next level. He concedes though that ambition right now is no loftier than beating Louth by a point tomorrow He is bleak and a little downbeat about the pending summer. Not the usual god-help-us guff either.

"Considering our success last year was based on goals it's not nice not to be scoring them anymore. I still have confidence in the lads. I think they'll get in there and score but it's going to be tough. Alan is going to be a marked man. Obviously Ray too. So maybe we won't get the goals this year and we'll have to depend on popping it from further.

"I watched highlights of Louth versus Wicklow. The Louth full-forward line looked tasty. Then I think back to the league. Cork gave us a hammering, they made a show of us, against Galway we had our moments, Tyrone was the same, against Kerry we were okay but lost by four points. Armagh just destroyed us, Donegal was a good result but early on everyone got good results up there. So we'd be delighted to win by a point against Louth. We haven't given enough signs in the league. The Kerrys and Galways are out in front - we're just in a chasing posse with a load of other teams."

The pessimism is native to his position perhaps. Full backs live lives punctuated by postmortems. A little fatalism is understandable. They are always braced for the worst.

"In the end you'll always get cleaned out. If you play against those guys all your career some days they take you. You try your best , you do the damage limitation but that's their job. You can't go into depression when your man scores. Most of them would score with two men on them. Any given day you'll be marking some guy who's scored a rake. You do your best to be in good shape and to get your tackles in and to get out first. I don't know that I'm even a natural full back. You get thrown in there as a kid because you're a bit of a fouler, a bit of a mullocker and you can hoof it. Or else the modern full back gets moved there because he is a bit of a ball player. I'm not sure how they see me!"

He's a modern player alright but something in his nature if not his choice of club made him destined to be a full back. He can cope with life on the edge of the square. It's not in his nature to explore life much beyond the 21. Never has been.

He lives just across the road from the school he now teaches in. Five-minute walk. Or after a hard training session a one-minute drive. He knows. He went to school there too. He went to secondary school in St Aidan's CBS, a five-minute cycle away. Then to DCU, just a ten-minute walk, followed adventurously by post-grad work down in St Pat's of Drumcondra. He felt like Marco Polo setting off on that journey but he had a car at that stage. Five to ten minutes got him there.

This is the time of year he loves and dreads. The excitement rising. The fear of injury haunting him. The hard work all but done. Soon school will be out and the days will be his to rest and dream. But what this summer offers is anyone's guess.

"I'm hoping that we can be like last year and experience a different level of things. Last year was special. The Leinster final, the whistle, running around with the cup, the noise, the atmosphere in the city for days afterwards. If we could build on that. You could dream about it forever. If we could even have the same this year I'd be very happy. It's up to us."

He heads out onto Glasnevin Avenue. Minutes from home, a short distance from success. Same old feeling.