Trevor Mortimer: Out of Africa, and back in Mayo’s melting pot

It’s six years and half a world since Trevor Mortimer put a full stop on his inter-county career with Mayo. From there to the Middle East and West Africa, a changed perspective on Islam, life and Mayo’s obsession with an All-Ireland. Having recently returned home, he views his county through the prism of change for the better – ‘Mayo aren’t as nice a team, which is a good thing,’ he says.

Trevor Mortimer was no jilted boyfriend. Inter-county football didn’t dump him; he dumped it. It may have been a nine-point All-Ireland semi-final defeat to Kerry that he bowed out on but, at 31, there was still stuff in the tank. His versatility, experience but above all else honesty made him relevant. It’s just life outside the game had taken a turn for the worse.

The family’s long-standing quarry business outside Tuam had become a drudge. The economy had robbed its soul. Mortimer was charged with the unenviable task of chasing outstanding accounts. “Towards the end my job was knocking on people’s doors and trying to collect money owed to us. And that wasn’t very successful. People didn’t have it – what could you do? My dad (Frank) told me last week we still have a client paying €40 a month since seven years ago. Genuinely, people are still trying but it was a genuinely tough job. You were trying to get something off people they didn’t have.”

Qualified in mineral and mining engineering and quarry management, Mortimer was wasting his talents in a dormant industry at home. Africa, specifically the west of the continent, promised opportunities and riches. The intention was to return home but leading teams in the mines of Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Ghana presented not only an unique life challenge but experience he could, in time, bring back to Belclare.

Leaving his family was a wrench as was handing over the Mayo jersey but he felt like he was put into a corner. “Did I leave earlier than I should have in my playing career? Possibly. But there’s more to life than football and I had to make decisions and looking back now I don’t regret it because it’s helped significantly the business here and that’s what it’s all about. I missed out on a couple of All- Irelands possibly but you live with it.”

The game has since moved in a direction he fancied would have been right up his street. “I was fit, strong, liked a bit of contact and I would play wherever I was asked to play. If I had another couple of years, I would probably have done well because I think it suits the way I play. From the day I started playing with Mayo seniors (2000-01) to the day I finished up, the game had changed a lot and it’s still changing and for the better. I think the black card might have caught me a bit but I might have been able to con the referee once or twice to get away with it!”

Where other ex-players struggled to fill the hole in the life they once knew, Mortimer was succeeding by literally creating them. Football was never close enough to him in Africa for him to suffer any pangs of pain. “That didn’t become as apparent to me as a number of weeks ago when I went back playing a bit of club football and realised how far off the pace I was. Literally, six years completely blanked away from it. I followed a bit of it on the radio if I could. That wasn’t always possible because of time-frames and internet connections when I was in remote areas but to the greater extent I saw no football and made no contact with the boys. I didn’t train, didn’t go to the gym, did nothing.

“I had spent nearly all of 20 years with my focus on GAA, nothing else. I left work when I wanted to. My dad (Frank) didn’t really care as long as I turned up on Sunday for the match – that’s all he was really interested in. My 100% focus for 20 years was on GAA and while that was enjoyable and I do miss it on certain occasions like All-Ireland finals, it does take a lot of you. It’s mentally draining, you always have to keep your guard up. I was delighted to be able to sit down on a Tuesday in the middle of Africa and drink five or six beers and have the craic with a few of the boys and not have to think when I was supposed to be training again.”

Mortimer spent his last couple of years in the Middle East but it was his work in West Africa that left the biggest impression. With nothing in the way of contacts, he turned up in the Ghanaian capital, Accra. There he spent two months where he was offered a couple of jobs but held out for a better one, which came in Mauritania.

There his preconceptions of Islam and Africa were obliterated. “I remember coming out of a mine and seeing a Toyota 4x4 Hilux and there were four or five guys in the back with their heads wrapped in the local Arab clothing. It was the first time I saw anything like that other than on the TV and when you saw it on TV it was something to do with a terrorist attack. It was surreal.

“I spent the best part of six years living, breathing and working with people of the Muslim faith and to be fair, 90% of them were great. I had fun with them, they were the finest people you could ever meet. When you’re in Ireland you don’t get to see that because you don’t get to interact with them. That was an invaluable experience because even at home on TV you get a very negative picture of it.”

The poverty was striking although there were lighter moments. “I was driving through Accra one day. I don’t know where I was going but I was being driven by a mate of mine and we were coming back and got a flat tyre. As it goes in Africa, you pull into the side of the road and somebody will come and sort you out. This guy came out to fix the tyre and he had a Mayo U16 tee-shirt on him. I knew it was one of the t-shirts only players get. Somebody gave it to a clothes collection and it ended up on this guy.”

The sense of family and generosity among the local workers humbled him. “I had guys working for me that I was paying 30% more than the average rate for a miner. I couldn’t pay them more because there would have been war in the place. They were delighted, they were very happy but every time they came back after two weeks off they would be up asking the supervisors for cigarettes and everything. I asked the supervisors, ‘They’re getting paid more than ever have in their lives and yet they’re coming back from home after two weeks and have nothing left. Why don’t they save some money?’ He explained as soon as they go home the money is sent out to all his family members.

“If you put that into perspective, it’s like a guy here going away with six weeks, working 42 days’ straight and 12 hours a day, knowing that every time he goes home every cent he earns is going out to all his family. It would never happen here yet they do it and they’re happy doing it. We look to them with pity and to a certain extent it should be the other way around. You’d never learn that until you’re there.

“It puts things into perspective. You come back here and hear people complaining about this and that and you’re saying to yourself, ‘Jesus, man, what are you complaining about? You’ve a house, you’ve heat, you’ve food. Whatever you want. You probably have Sky TV.’ That’s the problem. I think it has benefited me and calmed me out a bit.”

Some things Mortimer could only shake his head at, though. Like on his first day on a site seeing a worker put his hand into a mining crusher. I asked him ‘why did you do that?’ and through the interpreter he said that Allah had told him to do it. The one difference from here is that the Africans have no concept of danger whatsoever. You always have to second-guess them because at least the guy beside you here is thinking of the risks too.”

Operating in gold mines worth up to $30 million, it wasn’t just the very nature of Mortimer’s contracts that were dangerous. Armed guards protected several places he worked though the only areas he felt unsafe were in the south western African countries as Liberia and Sierra Leone. But there were some perks too like being able to catch a Mayo game on the internet 300 miles into the Sahara desert in Mauritania – “it had better internet connection there than I have here in my house in Ireland!

“It was run by one of the top five goldmine companies in the world, Kinross Gold, and their facilities were very good. Very good food, very secure. They had a bar inside which opened for a couple of hours every night. To be fair to them, none of them compared to Kinross. They were very good to their people.”

All the while, Mortimer knew it wasn’t going to be something he would stay at long. The arrival of his baby daughter Joss eight months ago meant home loomed large on his horizon. There is also a belief the construction industry outside Dublin is beginning to improve. “Things here are picking up a little bit and there is no financial stress on the business. Sometimes you have to make a call – what’s more important, being at home with your family or out making money – I did it for awhile and it served its purpose.”

Back in Ireland a month, Joss is the focus of his attentions but he intends reacquainting himself with old team-mates. He spoke with David Brady by phone Wednesday - “first time in two or three years”. He hopes to meet others in Dublin today as he did at the drawn game. Seated in Croke Park he might even allow himself the fanciful thought of being out on the field with his old colleagues David Clarke, Alan Dillon and Andy Moran.

“When I was there, nobody trained as hard as me,” says the 2009 and ’10 captain, “If anybody was slacking, I would go through them. That was never an issue. What I regret now is when I was away from the team I didn’t look after myself as well as I should have. I trained so hard that I thought I could party as hard as I wanted. I went out a lot. I do regret that because there was a period from when I was 19 to about 23 when I was untouchable, flying fitness-wise and I could do anything I wanted on a pitch and nothing ever fazed me. I didn’t get tired and I didn’t get injured. For whatever reason during that period the partying outside of the team didn’t affect me.

“But when I got older and it did start to have its impact in the latter years. It’s only now when I look back that I see everybody is training hard, everybody is doing the right thing so it’s the small things that are making the big difference. Training hard and doing everything with the team is not going to get you anywhere. From that point of view, there is regret but we had a good run, we lost All-Ireland finals but I made great friends that I don’t keep in touch with as much as I should or certainly haven’t over the last few years. I plan to from now on.”

He looks on at the sets of brothers in the Mayo panel – the O’Sheas and O’Connors – and wonders if their dynamic is the same as it was for Kenneth, he and Conor.

“I think we played together in one championship match. I played a little bit with Ken. I used to be very critical of Conor and Kenneth used to be very critical of me so it was a relief when you weren’t playing with them because there was constant pulling. It’s different with the club because there isn’t as much pressure. When three of you are there and one of you plays bad, you’re all over the papers whereas if there’s only one of you playing the chances of you being all over the papers isn’t as bad. Aidan could have a great game, Seamie could have a great game and the young lad might not but you have to deal with that. But it’s a huge thing.

“My dad and my mum are very proud to have had three sons playing for Mayo. It’s a huge honour. There was a Mortimer on the Mayo team for nearly 20 years, which is a big stretch. He loved it, I know he did, and it must have been great for my dad to go to every league and championship match for that time watching his sons.”

If some things have changed since Mortimer left – “Mayo aren’t as nice a team, which is a good thing” – some things remain the same – that rabid passion among fans. “It is a good thing and it is a bad thing. When you play senior inter-county for Mayo, there is no escaping it. Everybody is watching you and you have to hold yourself in the right stead and it does consume all your life for 10 to 12 years. I don’t think it’s that intense in other counties.

“On the other hand, there is super support. I can’t remember ever going to a Mayo match where we didn’t have more support or as much as the opposition. I never got any slack off them, bar once or twice. They respected you gave your all. That’s a good thing because while we have had massive highs, we had bigger lows. It’s the bread and butter of Mayo. There is no soccer, no rugby. There is nothing else.”

Outside Mayo, there is. Mortimer knows that. And is all the better for it.