Dingle days at the start of Kerry's golden era

SCHOOL DAYS: Seán Kennytalks to the broadcaster Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh on how Gaelic football and his early school days were intertwined.

HE HAS followed football as football followed him, through childhood and beyond. Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh was born in August 1930, just as Kerry were on the cusp of their second of four All-Irelands in a row. It was a golden decade for football in the county, even by the regally exacting standards of the Kingdom. How could a youngster not be drawn in?

"The 30s, in a way, was maybe the best decade Kerry football ever had. They won in 30, 31, 32, 37 and 39. That was a big haul and people were talking about it. It also coincided with the rise of (his local club) Dingle as a football power. An extraordinary bunch of west Kerry players came to the front, players like Paddy "Bán" Brosnan, Bill Casey, Tom "Gega" O'Connor, Bill Dillon, Seán Brosnan. They were very good players who played in several All-Irelands. They were knocking around the streets of Dingle and everybody knew them."

The landscape of west Kerry seemed to cloak his childhood heroes in a certain mist of mythology. So Bill Dillon was of the mountains, regularly disappearing off up the Connor Pass, hunting with his beagles. Paddy "Bán" Brosnan was a fisherman, so often at sea and also mysteriously remote.

He played "caid" himself, of course, during childhood. Footballs were scarce; he and his childhood friends once acquired a ball through the assiduous collection of coupons from cocoa boxes. Their usual stamping ground in Dun Sion was the local golf links by the sea.

"When the tide was answering correctly people from Lispole would come across the trá beag, as it was called: the short strand. There was no organised match. It was what was very common at that time, just kicking around. There was only one football around, and it was the same in hurling areas where there would only be one sliotar and a field full of people. Rough and tumble would be the best description of it." He attended the Christian Brothers in Dingle for primary and secondary education. Football, though, was off the curriculum. "There was no organised football. It wasn't there and, being farming, we were home straight away after school, doing a bit of work. I'd regret there wasn't more football, but it wasn't hugely organised in any place at that time, especially at underage level."

His playing career began in earnest at 15 when he entered Coláiste Iosagáin in Ballyvourney in Cork, a preparatory school for those bound for teacher training college. Communication in the school was exclusively "as Gaeilge" and the Gaelic ethos found its fullest sporting expression through football.

"I suppose there was little else to do by way of sport and it being a boarding school was a factor. Above anything, I suppose, there was passion: the whole ethos of the place was "bheith Gaelach", the Irish language, Irish singing and all that. Gaelic football was a part of that identity, as well as being a terrific pastime from the health point of view."

The boarding life leant itself to a football-filled schedule. Internal competitions were held regularly. The Coláiste drew students from disparate parts of the country and they generally mixed harmoniously. One partisan faction stood apart from others on the football field, though.

"A regular type of match was 'Kerry against the rest.' And there was great rivalry there. There was a series of these matches, almost like the Premiership now, there were so many of them. Kerry never had to get another county to support them. Maybe there were more Kerry students there than those from other counties."

He played as a half-back for the college junior team too, earning a Munster medal along the way. But some of his most vivid memories are of travelling to the school's matches as a supporter, of trundling boisterously along the roads of Munster. They sang their rattling way around the province on the back of a lorry.

"The mode of transport was a lorry: no bus, no fancy travel arrangements. There were no seats. Everyone piled in and you held on to something till you got to Killarney or Cork or wherever. It was strange, maybe, to see a lorry of supporters arriving, but that was the way of the day. Of course, the team would travel by taxi."

St Patrick's in Drumcondra was his next educational destination. He attended the college at the same time as Galway's Seán Purcell, whom he rates as the greatest footballer he has seen. "Seán Purcell was a senior student there while I was a junior. He was already a noted Galway senior, as famous an anyone that had been playing 10 years, even though he took it all in his stride.

"In saying he's the greatest player you've seen, you could be influenced by the fact you knew him from the beginning, or the fact that we did teaching practice together. But I think a lot of people would agree with that view. But then there are others. If you're talking about the greatest, you could fill volumes."

By a quirk of geography, St Patrick's is located only a short journey from Croke Park. The two institutions embodied the dual career he would soon embark on, teaching and Gaelic games broadcasting. Within a few weeks of arriving, the trainee teacher walked from the college to the stadium to the 1948 All-Ireland football final between Cavan and Mayo. Remarkably, within six months of arriving in Dublin as a student, he would make his commentating debut in GAA HQ, having successfully completed an audition for RTÉ.

He recalls that first game, a Railway Cup football match between Munster and Leinster. Again, he found Kerry football shadowing his steps. "I enjoyed it, that's the amazing thing. You'd naturally be apprehensive. 'What am I doing here?' and all this. But somehow, the moment the game started, you don't know what's going to happen and you're watching it, so you become absorbed in it right away. And it helped that quite a lot of Kerry players were on the Munster team, and I'd have known those."

During his early years in Dublin he also played for the now-defunct Geraldine club, like many other exiled Kerrymen in the capital. He once hammered in three goals in a game whilst playing at full-forward.

His delight was unconfined until a team-mate called into question the visual acuity of the beaten goalkeeper.

"Some wise man said the goalkeeper was seen the following day weaving baskets in a window in O'Connell Street. But that's said about most goalies when they have a bad day. Well, everybody's entitled to win the Lotto! It was that type of game."