Pat Spillane: I was eight when my father died - the 2022 All-Ireland final was the first time I grieved

After Kerry beat Galway in the All-Ireland football final in 2022, Pat Spillane stunned hundreds of thousands of Sunday Game viewers by announcing his retirement - and breaking down in tears. In this extract from his new memoir, the Kerry icon explains why: that 2022 game reminded him of the 1964 All-Ireland final between the same two counties, when his father Tom was a Kerry selector.

Sat, 21 Oct, 2023 - 07:30

The night before the (1964) game, Kerry were staying in the Gresham Hotel on O’Connell Street, and that evening my father had a pain in his chest.

He was out for a walk with one of the players and said as much, and the player said to him, ‘Tom, you need to tell the doctor about that.’

He refused, because that would have been his way – my father didn’t want to miss the game the following day. It would never occur to him not to be on the bench as a selector in Croke Park.

The match was played on Sunday and Galway won. On the Monday night, he came down from Dublin, and on Tuesday night he dropped dead of a massive heart attack.

Because of that, to me, Kerry v Galway has always meant the day my father died.

And now I think that the day of the 2022 All-Ireland final was the first-ever time I actually grieved for my father, that I had an opportunity to do so.

Pat Spillane, his brother Michael and his parents, outside his fmaily's bar in 1960 or 1961.

I was eight when he died, and I was the eldest. Tommy was the youngest, two years of age, and back then youngsters wouldn’t have been brought to funerals.

That’s not to say I don’t have memories of that period. I have very sharp memories of it.

I can remember being in the room next to my parents’ room, upstairs that Tuesday evening, eight years of age, with Tommy and Mike probably in the room as well.

And I can still hear the sound of voices outside the door of the room.

To this day, I can hear the thudding of feet walking fast, over and back, and remember not knowing what had happened.

I can’t remember my mother ever bringing us together as children to tell us he died, though I do have a vague memory of someone saying the coffin couldn’t be brought down the stairs. I think it eventually had to be brought out through the top window of the bar.

The day of the funeral, we weren’t brought to the graveyard. We were brought over to the O’Sheas, our neighbours, whose farmhouse overlooked the Templenoe church.

I can still remember how it felt, standing up on a rock on the O’Sheas’ land, hearing the bell ring as my father’s funeral procession left the church. I could see glimpses of the crowd in the churchyard, but that was it.

All of that came flooding back to me that day in Croke Park. I don’t know if we do grieving that well in Ireland, but we certainly didn’t at that time in our history.

I haven’t watched that Sunday Game clip back. People have asked me if I have, but I’ve never revisited it because it was a very painful moment. It was a release of whatever had built up over the years.

There were two things about it. First of all, it made people realise who I really was. I wasn’t Pat Spillane the outspoken pundit, but Pat Spillane the family man, the son who had lost a father.

The whole family in 1975: (from left to right) Pat Spillane, Margaret, Tommy, mother Maura and Michael.

Since that day, it’s amazing the number of people who have come to me and have helped me to piece together everything about my father in the build-up to his death.

Pete Hanley was his great friend, and the sub-goalie on that Kerry team. Pete travelled with him over and back to matches and training sessions all the time, and he’s told me since that all summer my father had been complaining of pains in the chest but was putting it down to indigestion.

Because of that, he was taking Rennies, but obviously, it was his heart all the time.

He was a very heavy smoker, and the pain on the Saturday night before the All-Ireland final was another warning signal.

On the Monday night, after the final, Pete told me they had gone to a funeral home to say a prayer for the father of Galway captain John Donnellan, who had actually died during the game. They paid their respects and then came down to Killarney.

As my father walked over to his car, which was parked in my uncle Jackie Lyne’s place, he got another pain in the chest. He leaned against the wall with the pain and it took him a good five minutes before he felt well enough to drive.

Driving home that night, they met a gang of fellows from Sneem whose car had gotten a puncture. They had no jack, and Tom, being the strong man he was, lifted the car to help them replace the tyre, which couldn’t have been good for his heart.

On the Tuesday night, he was working in the bar and Jack O’Sullivan Dandy was there with his brother, who was home from England, the last two people left in the place.

My father walked out to the yard with Jacko and his brother, said goodnight, and that was it.

So, that Sunday Game moment was a special one, and it was probably my moment of bereavement, of release. It was my way of dealing with his death, something that I had never dealt with. And it’s amazing that I’ve learned so much about him from so many people.

Pat Spillane, Kerry, left, in action against Roscommon. All Ireland Football Final 1980, Croke Park. Pic: Ray McManus/SPORTSFILE

He was a wonderful man, but I have very few clear memories of him. I have a faint memory of him playing with Templenoe the year before he died just to make sure Templenoe had 15 fellas out on the field to keep the club alive.

He was responsible for developing the pitch below where I live now, and he served as the chairman of the club.

I remember he brought me on in 1963 in an U14 game over in Sneem. There were no organised games at that time, but he’d set up a challenge game and brought me on as a sub.

I was seven years old and was probably brought on because he was the team manager.

I can remember literally nothing else about him, just what he looked like and that he was a fair and honest man. A great GAA man and a great Templenoe man. A good man.

I suppose that his legacy lived on through his sons on the playing fields, and now through his grandsons.

With 19 All-Ireland medals between them Brothers Tom, Pat and Mick Spillane are pictured at the launch of Pat's book 'In The Blood' in Templenoe, County Kerry. Photo: Don MacMonagle

I got a huge reaction after that episode of The Sunday Game, not just from people getting to realise what I was really like, but also – and this was probably the biggest reaction – I encountered many other people who had suffered bereavement, particularly the deaths of their fathers.

The number of people that I met who said, ‘I cried when I was watching you,’ and I’d say, ‘But I don’t know you at all?’

That moment touched a raw nerve with a lot of people, and how perhaps they’d never grieved properly, or they’d never enjoyed time with their fathers properly.

His passing meant our world was suddenly turned upside down. My mother was left with a bar, a shop, a couple of petrol pumps, a hackney car and four young kids to rear. No widow’s pension, no state assistance of any kind at all.

The first thing she did? She sold the car because she couldn’t drive.