Friday, February 25, 2011
MORE INNOCENT times. On the day Fianna Fáil launched its 2002 election campaign, PJ Mara walked into the party’s press conference in the Shelbourne Hotel and announced: "It’s showtime."
Last Saturday, as a general election campaign swirled at our door, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, I thought the same while Croke Park hunkered down under the bright lights. Earlier, as the bulbs warmed over Dublin’s biggest stage, I met a man who boasts the scars of many a campaign of his own.
For someone who earns his living swinging high amongst the branches with a saw, one imagines, clamped between his teeth, you’d expect Noel O’Leary to know where The Big Tree is. The Dublin watering hole is one station on the pilgrimage to Croker for many GAA supporters in the summertime. He must have rolled past the Dorset Street pub behind a coach window on countless occasions through the seasons with Cork’s football panels.
You don’t win All-Irelands by looking out the window at the lads in the pub though, I suppose.
I knew how to get there. As a student in a college up the road in my day and a one-time resident of Drumcondra, the last time I was over the threshold of the bar I was hanging from the rafters in a retro jersey on a Wednesday ‘County Colours’ night.
Last Saturday, however, I was part of a Special Olympics panel discussion with John Fogarty of this parish and The Star’s Peter Sweeney. (As someone said at the time, I do like talking about my charity work).
A couple of hundred feet away, Dublin were beating the All-Ireland hurling champions under a carpet of cotton-wool fog. Jedward were/was clearing their throats beneath the Hogan Stand in preparation for their Croker debut and over our shoulders, on TV screens, Crawley Town impressed at Old Trafford.
In this corner of the capital though, we were to talk football ahead of the Rebels’ clash with the Dubs.
The star was the Cork footballer amongst us. The Kilnamartyra man was present only because he had been sent off the previous Sunday in Tralee. Red is Noel O’Leary’s colour.
And like Superman’s kryptonite, the green-and-gold awakens something inside him. He left the Kingdom with two points and another ban after an off-the-ball tussle with Barry John Keane.
Despite never darkening the door of the Big Tree before, the tree surgeon found his way into the bar and listened intently from the audience with a couple of friends from home.
It keeps a journalist honest when one of the association’s toughest customers is peering over the lip of a jar at you as you waffle about the merits of swarm defence or whatever. One suspects he can spot a spoofer.
Eventually MC Marcus Ó Buachalla of Pembroke Communications asks O’Leary to join the panel. He doesn’t want to, naturally enough, but peels himself off the high stool, and plonks in next to the panellists.
First query: ‘Paul Galvin: friend or foe?’
"That’s a very unfair question," a lady in the front row offers from her seat, "That’s a very unfair question," she repeats.
O’Leary has his arms folded and his head dropped into the mic with a wry, bashful smile across his face. Okay, we’ll move on. His supporter in the crowd smiles and winks.
Last year, ahead of the All-Ireland football final with Down, the Cork County Board produced pen pics of the squad members with neat biographies and interesting titbits. One of the questions — what’s your favourite piece of technology — drew predictable responses.
Most appreciated the iPod, the Sky+ or the smart phone. I’d be bereft without any of the three for more than a 15-minute period, to be quite honest. One player answered differently: my chainsaw.
The arborist’s workday would take a lot longer to digest without the teeth of a chainsaw. But no one heard its distinctive brrrr-brrrr-brrrrr in the Big Tree last weekend.
O’Leary spoke quietly and intelligently. And the cartoon hard man played the politician’s role as well as any on your ballot paper today. He sprinkled praise on former team-mates and coaches — Billy to Tompkins to Counihan. Weighed the prospects of every serious football county carefully and betrayed none of the animosity that surely fuels his relationship with his near neighbours across the border in Kerry.
As the Sam Maguire sat on a pedestal 10 feet away, he concluded quietly: "There’s a lot done, more to do." Or to use another Fianna Fáil catchcall from yesteryear: Showtime.
Email: Adrian@thescore.ie
Twitter: @adrianrussell
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