Thin line between triumph and disaster

Sports Books 2004/Football and hurling: In the acknowledgements of I Crossed The Line - the Liam Dunne Story (Sliabh Bán, €19.99 hardback), the former Wexford hurler says of Star journalist Damien Lawlor, who co-wrote this intense memoir: "I have a new friend for life."

Coming from someone who on the evidence therein values loyalty and friendship highly, this is an impressive tribute. In return Lawlor has put together an authentic and memorable account of a hurling career.

As a player Dunne was gifted and inspirational. He was and remains a very articulately introspective individual - a dynamite combination for journalists over the past decade and a half. He was also someone who despite, perhaps because of, his small stature trailed a whiff of sulphur concerning what he was prepared to do on the field.

Although his career ended with a fine and uncontroversial year in 2003, the preceding three seasons had all ended with championship red cards. They also took a drastic toll on his personal life, as he tried to purge the remorse with alcohol.

This is the book's launching pad, the delusional and drink-fuelled self-pity that he managed, with the help of former Wexford manager Liam Griffin, to escape in order to turn 2003 into the sort of redemptive finale his career deserved.

Griffin runs through the crucial aspects of this story as intricately as the illustration on a Celtic manuscript. Manager when the county returned to the top in 1996, Griffin also arranged a career opportunity for Dunne and his influence emerges at other critical junctures.

This isn't always a comfortable read. Shuffling in the shadows of the drink problem is the uneasy presence of Griffin's warning after the All-Ireland victory that one of the team would become an alcoholic. Dunne is haunted by the notion that he might be "the one" and readers will share the concern, as his consumption levels soar in the face of adversity.

And there's plenty of it. Apart from the red cards there was a horrific injury in 1997 and serial disappointments on the field and off.

For someone so self-critically honest he is, however, sometimes in denial. The three sendings-off are accepted on one level and quibbled with on another.

The 2002 foul on Martin Comerford was "a stupid blow" but the response is painted with chicanery. "Some Kilkenny man urged Comerford to stay on the deck . . . It was his first championship so of course he was going to stay down."

Getting dismissed with Brian O'Meara a year earlier (which cost the Tipperary player participation in the All-Ireland final) becomes a platform to abuse match officials and belittle the offence. "We started it and were ultimately to blame," but "all over the country that sort of handbags stuff goes on".

In 2000 he accepts that he should have got red for an earlier offence but when he is eventually dismissed for a further foul on John Troy, the referee "is hardly able to hear me above the howls of pain coming from Troy," who subsequent to the sending-off "got up straightaway".

Inevitably there are innocent bystanders. Former GAA president Seán McCague is unfairly maligned by the contrast between the fates of Kerry footballer Darragh Ó Sé and Tipperary minor John Boland, both of whom were sent off in club fixtures, just before All-Ireland matches, and both of whom had the red cards rescinded.

McCague was outraged by Kerry's evasion and forbade any further reconsideration of red cards. Boland happened to be the first intercounty player affected by that new stringency.

But it's not all downbeat. There's Dunne's love of his family and his passionate sense of place and club in Oulart where he has rebuilt the family home.

A poignant subtext concerns the restless and estranged father, absent for many of the high-water marks in his son's life but recurrently in his thoughts, who died in England last summer and was brought home for burial.

This is a very readable account of a modern intercounty career. It illuminates attitudes common to many players and memorably weighs the balance of triumph and disaster. It would have been invaluable to have a book like this from previous eras of Gaelic games and we should be glad that we have it now.

Brief mention should be made of three other titles, already reviewed in the books pages. Croke Park: A History (The Collins Press, price €30) is a great idea that took surprisingly long to be realised. There can be very few sports venues in the world so entangled with the history and culture of their country and Tim Carey, formerly curator of the GAA Museum, is ideally suited to the task of telling the story.

Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh's From Dún Síon to Croke Park (Penguin Ireland, €17.99) has been widely held not to contain enough about the broadcaster's own life but remains an engaging memoir, which still works as a social and family history.

Finally, readers of this newspaper probably won't need any further encouragement to take in The Lifelong Season (Town House, €12.99), the elegant and at times elegiac collection of essays by Keith Duggan. The recommendation of friends isn't the strongest critical currency but neither should the sentiment be withheld if genuinely felt.