Fitting farewell to honour the life of a true great
THE crowd at the church in Curraheen in Cork yesterday was bigger than you’d usually see at a midweek funeral, but then again, it wasn’t your usual funeral.
John Egan, the great Kerry corner-forward whose remains were being laid to rest, was more than the usual superstar.
Long before Mass started, some of Egan’s former opponents were in situ. Former Dublin stars Jimmy Keaveney and Paddy Cullen chatted outside the church and tried, via mobiles, to guide in others who were grappling with Cork’s roundabouts. Then Tony Hanahoe strolled in from the car park and they all went in together.
Hanahoe, the old captain: some men don’t need an armband to show they’re leaders.
Mikey Sheehy ambled across as though strolling out the field to stroke a 45 over the bar, while Ger O’Keeffe was deep in conversation with Kevin Kehily coming across the threshold of the church. Mick O’Dwyer was at the door watching men approach as though it were ten to seven on a training night.
The above-mentioned weren’t the only men in the church who saw their prime in the 1970s (apart from O’Dwyer, who seems to have been in his prime since the early 50s). There was no shortage of drooping moustaches to be seen, outcrops which have clearly withstood the odd decade in the fashion wilderness, while here and there in the congregation a hairstyle that might have first been shaped to blend in at a Rory Gallagher gig was visible.
Other strands of John Egan’s life were also close by. His career as a Garda meant that members of the force were in evidence for more than traffic duties, some of them standing bareheaded in the porch of the church. The number of members of Bishopstown GAA club forming the guard of honour outside the church doors after the ceremony indicated the strength of the Kerryman’s roots in the local community.
For all that, however, one place name dominated the tributes. Egan left home almost 50 years ago to go to school in Carrignavar outside Cork city, and was then stationed for most of his Garda career in the same county, but he was loyal always to Sneem and its football team. Sneem was where Egan came from and Sneem didn’t forget him yesterday, sending a strong representation to accompany their most famous son to his final rest.
It was striking to hear the word “corner-forward” used so much, but it was appropriate, as Egan’s stocky grace embodied the position for many.
You couldn’t see him playing anywhere else: you could hardly envision him standing anywhere else on a football field but out at the intersection of the sideline and the end line.
In his homily the priest described how Egan had become an Easter man, a man of hope, in recent years, but surely a corner-forward always lives on hope?
Isolated, remote, dependent on the accuracy of his midfielders, dreaming of a team-mate at wing-back who won’t balloon a clearance, the corner-forward nourishes himself on a diet of hope and a side order of confidence.
He knows that a bad manager will take him off first and that even a good manager may lapse into the same habit under pressure; that the corner-back will be merciless if he wins the ball near goal and that the full-back will use the geometry of his approach to flatten if he can; that he may only have one glimpse of the target in the hour and that he only has the time it takes the thought to form to take that chance, to win a game.
Man of hope? It might as well be tattooed on the chest of 13s and 15s everywhere.
Egan’s son, John Jr, said yesterday that his father used to kid they’d never played on the same team. We’d have done some damage, said the older man. We also learned yesterday he could have included daughter Máirín in that conversation: last week she scored three goals for Bishopstown.
The congregation also heard an old reading in the funeral Mass, one that made for a fine farewell to John Egan.
The virtuous man, though he die before his time, will find rest.
Length of days is not what makes age honourable,
Nor number of years the true measure of life.
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