Mr McNamee taught us Irish at Omagh CBS. Twenty years ago and before Riverdance, the language and its culture did not enjoy its current fashionable status and those Irish classes were greeted less than enthusiastically.
They were endured in the early years when it was compulsory, but by fifth year there were only a few of us hardy souls who had lasted the pace and opted to take it as an examination subject. The results probably reflected this and we left Irish behind with barely a backward glance.
The absolute error of our ways was laid bare last Thursday night during TG4's excellent and innovative coverage of Celtic's UEFA Cup third-round second-leg game against Valencia. The station's decision to show the game displayed a level of imagination and adventure you don't tend to see among Irish broadcasters.
It also had the happy spin-off effect of sparing desperadoes like us the lonely trawl around Belfast's less salubrious night-spots trying to find some shifty landlord who had grainy, unwatchable pictures of Norwegian coverage of the game which had obviously been relayed via Turkey and the South Pole.
So far so good. With the picture situation cracked, we would not now have to endure intermittent and crackly medium wave coverage courtesy of Radio Scotland. That only left the small matter of the commentary.
All over the country, former students who had displayed the same studied indifference as us to the pleasures of the native tongue while at school were racked with regret and self-loathing as they tried manfully to follow the TG4 commentary.
In the early stages of the game, when Celtic were attacking with that cavalier attitude you usually see in kickabouts in primary school playgrounds, it seemed destined to be a fairly fruitless task. The rhythm and the intonation of the commentary were familiar alright, but for the most part they might as well have been speaking a foreign language. And as far as most of the erstwhile uncommitted students of Irish were concerned, they actually were.
We were innocents cast abroad in a no-man's land where every fifth or sixth word made sense but only because it was the name of a Celtic player which we recognised. The entire situation seemed entirely hopeless and we seemed destined to suffer all the drama in absolute silence with the sound turned grudgingly down.
But after a 15 or 20-minute settling in period, ears that had become lazy through decades of idleness gradually became tuned in. Bits and pieces of the vocabulary assumed a slightly more familiar air and it became obvious that the enthusiastic way in which efforts had been made to impart some of the language to us two decades ago had not been totally wasted.
Every now and then, the occasional phrase or snippet of comment would hit home, stirring up some piece of long-forgotten knowledge in the process. At one stage, the Spanish deliverer of a cynical body-check received a "cβrta bu∅" from the referee and shortly afterwards match summariser Terry Eviston criticised a scything Valencia foul with the observation that "Th≤g sΘ an fear". This was heady stuff and bilingualism seemed just around the corner.
As the game inched towards its inevitable penalty shoot-out, the Irish element to the proceedings actually became enjoyable and in some strange way intrinsic to what was going on. The grappling with even the most basic nuances of the language created a connection with the coverage you don't get during the anodyne commentaries that have become familiar to anyone with an interest in how the English-based channels cover the Premiership. This felt like something which we could connect with in a way that simply wasn't possible anywhere else.
That is the greatest achievement of TG4's coverage of sporting events like this. A connection is created that would not otherwise be there and the overall package does much to promote the idea of Irish as a living, vibrant language rather than one forever stuck in those dreary textbooks of 20 years ago.
Many of those driven souls who hooked up with the station last Thursday in desperate search of their Celtic fix might never have had cause to watch TG4 before. And it is not conceivable that a fair proportion of them would not even have been aware of its existence.
As such, the entire event was a perfect example of the benefits that a little bit of imaginative programming can bring to a channel with modest resources but wide-ranging ambition.
The Celtic-Valencia game in fact marked the high-point of a fine run of sports programming by TG4. Its reputation has been made to a large extent by its extensive coverage of club GAA fixtures at both county and provincial level. Added to that over recent months there has been a move towards more rugby coverage, particularly the latter stages of the Celtic League.
Working more or less from a standing start, TG4 has quickly marked out territory for itself as the home of indigenous Irish sports programming of a type which the more established broadcasters both north and south seem bent on ignoring.
The GAA was the obvious starting point and the marrying of the station with the games was a strategic move with clear benefits for all involved. It also plugged a significant gap in GAA television coverage as a whole because at a time when RT╔ and the BBC are fixated on the newly expanded football championship there was concern that the club scene would be squeezed out. TG4 has ensured that would not happen.
Television exposure, more often than not live, has breathed new life into club competitions that had reached a stage where they were meandering along until the St Patrick's Day finals guaranteed some much needed attention and publicity.
While their more illustrious competitors have dithered and, as it were, taken their eye off the ball, TG4 has blazed a trail and shown what can be done when the right people are making the scheduling decisions.
Just now, TG4 is the clear market leader in this country when it comes to satisfying previously untapped demand. And it might just be providing some valuable cultural education along the way.
