The Follower: likes will not be seen again

Sideline Cut: It is a pity The Follower was not around to post his views on yesterday's farce in Australia.

"They shall be spoken of amongst their people."

- The Follower, March 1988, the Donegal Democrat.

The sudden death of the inimitable Donegal Democrat columnist draws a silence on a GAA voice that was, in its way, as remarkable and original as those of O'Hehir or Ó Muircheartaigh. He wrote from a perspective that was as impassioned and instantly recognisable as the vintage Paddy Downey or John D Hickey or Pádraig Puirséal.

A Convoy native who lived in Dromod, Co Leitrim, he had a foot in both counties and kept a close eye on Longford for good measure. But Donegal football was his love.

From 1987 until April of this year, his weekly dispatch read like an open letter to the various generations of Donegal footballers, addressing them by first name only. And he regularly implored the Greek gods and Brian McEniff - The Follower placed Virgil and the Bundoran man on the same pedestal and often in the same line - to give it one more year, always one more year.

Latin, Irish and English were his languages of choice.

Born in the early 1930s, Cormac McGill was a classic Irish romantic, steeped in the language and song and unwaveringly true to the strong, anti-British rhetoric that would have been the common currency of his youth. Time never diminished the flame of those feelings, and although he was much too clever not to know that Ireland had become much too soft and wealthy to be stirred by his indignation, he never contemplated altering his stance. The Longford Leader, for whom he penned Leitrim notes, recalled a visit to the newspaper by a British ambassador in the early 1990s, with the ceasefire imminent. The Follower registered his protest by sheltering in a darkened corner of the Harbour Bar until the invasion passed.

One of his last columns in the Democrat lamented the fact that Donegal had, to his eternal dismay, been among the counties to opt in favour of ending Rule 42. Under the heading "West Brits Win Out", he wrote: "Within five minutes of the decision by Coisde Chonndae Dún na nGall to permit the foreign games into Croke Park, the news reached me here in Leitrim. I was shocked. Dún na nGall. My Dún na nGall, the last bastion of our native language."

The Follower came into being through a happy accident. Gerry McDermott, now the soccer correspondent for the Irish Independent, was covering the Under-21 All-Ireland final between Kerry and Donegal in Roscommon when he was introduced to a grey-haired, bespectacled man who spoke in the soothing tones of a practised schoolteacher about Donegal football through the decades. Out of the blue, a missive was sent to the Democrat offices with notes on the game "From One Who Was There". To McDermott and Michael Daly, now the editor of the Derry Journal group, the emergence of someone who had been attending Ulster championship games since 1939 was like a godsend. They hatched the title of The Follower in the office and the column took off, a frequently beseeching, often funny and sometimes tearful commentary on the highs and lows of Donegal football - and there are only ever extremes where that subject is concerned.

"No more will Paddy take the boat to England," he declared triumphantly after flying to watch Donegal play London in Ruislip, "to work on sites and eat Pedigree Chum," a sentiment that seems outrageous until you consider the subject of the novels of his namesake Patrick McGill.

"Sam, Tá Fáilte Romhat," he wrote after the 1992 All-Ireland final. "I told you last week this would be my headline. I believed all along it would be my year."

He did. He believed that most years. He did not always get it right. Excited by Donegal's dramatic draw against Dublin in front of 70,000 people in 2002, he predicted that his heroes would destroy the city boys a week later: "As Marie Antoinette, Banríon na Fraince, said: Après Moi, Le Deluge."

On other days, he hit more mellow notes. "I never was a showband aficionado, my terpsichorean energies being mostly céilí. If you 'squared' a wee lass, then it was a great céilí. If you got 'shot down' it was a useless céilí or dance. Maybe things are different nowadays."

For years, the identity of The Follower remained a secret. On Saturday night in the 1980s, Michael Daly found himself taking heat in a Kerry bar from some Donegal supporters outraged by a recent column. As Daly stood his corner, he looked across the pub and saw The Follower himself happily banging away at a piano, a half-one standing on the lid of the instrument, oblivious to the commotion. "Nero plays while Rome burns" - a phrase The Follower often employed - came to Daly's mind.

Although he was loyal to Pearse's vision and a trenchant Gaeilgeoir, The Follower was never a bore or a crank. Rather, he took sustenance from the future and from youth, always dreamily optimistic about the year ahead. If he could envisage booking into "the Dergvale for the August bed agus bricfeasta", then fine things were in store for Donegal football. In humdrum times, he ruminated on the great days and on young prospects. The likes of Ovid were quite likely to crop up in a column about training in Castlefin. In fact, there was a period when Rambo Gavigan was injured that several of us hoped The Follower, with McEniff's blessing and a divine intercession, might succeed in having the poet Horace line out at centre-half for a relegation tussle against Offaly.

Tied down by age in recent years, he roamed compulsively for most of his life and regularly ended his columns with a Focal Scor, praising the tea, apple tart and conversation he had been treated to in houses in the Border counties he loved.

This week, they came in droves to his house in Dromod. Generations of the footballers he had idolised down the years, friends, readers. In a strange week in Ireland, when bewildered priests poured their hearts out to Joe Duffy, one man of the cloth was able to stand up on the altar and celebrate Cormac McGill's wholehearted devotion to his faith, to his family and to Irish culture. The Follower column was just a small part of a rich life, but it is safe to say Donegal football will never be the same.

Focal Scor: It is time to end the International Rules charade once and for all. The compromise game might have originated in noble intentions. But as a sport, its worth has always been questionable and its fitful life-span has always been underscored by the uneasy feeling that it was a venture forced into being by two associations desperate to add international glamour to their games.

Yesterday, it was little more than a sick joke and raises several questions. What is "up" with the Australians? Why are they so clearly turned on by ultra violence? Doesn't this settle the issue as to whether our GAA stars are professional or amateur? How the hell was Francie Bellew not picked? Is Irish pride worth Tom Kelly getting his face smashed in? Do both associations have a true interest in developing some kind of sport, or is this just a junket and an exercise in daft, on-field machismo? Do the players know the rules? Do the referees? Are there rules? Has this series brought the Rules back to the killing fields of 1984/86? If so, does Mick Lyons still lace 'em up? And do we want that? Why not just kick the ball to touch and have a dust-up for 10 minutes? Is the sight of Robert The Big Dipper Diepierdominico not kind of a pain in the ass after all these years? Has he nothing better to be doing? For all its smiles and sunshine, is Australia a happy country? Do we need to be the whipping boys for their ridiculous exhibition of daft and irresponsible aggression? Is now not the time to bow out with dignity? Has some kind of watershed not been reached? Après Moi, Le Déluge.