Enda McEvoy: Seán Boylan's story received the perfect treatment

Former Meath manager Seán Boylan.

An RTÉ documentary on a prominent sporting figure in a primetime viewing slot on a Thursday night. How gratifying. How surprising.

Official Ireland doesn’t really do sport, y’see. Unofficial Ireland, the Real Ireland, does and always has. No surprise. We’re a sports-mad nation. But sport and Official Ireland – that’s another matter.

Your correspondent’s long held theory goes as follows. Official Ireland has never done sport because the young state was so busy with more pressing matters – civil war, economic war, the Great Depression, the Emergency – to have either the time or the taste for such fripperies.

Hence, apart from the president and Taoiseach of the day doing their duty at sporting events for appearance’s sake, Official Ireland’s inability or refusal for decades to recognise the role of sport as a key social lubricant and critical agent of community cohesiveness. Hence, as a byproduct, the outrage from some people but the sheer incomprehension from others when the government part-funded the Croke Park redevelopment.

Which brings us neatly to Seán Boylan, the subject of last Thursday’s documentary and a man who brought more meaning and joy to the lives of thousands – thousands of Meath folk at any rate - than any politician, local worthy or other representative of Official Ireland possibly could have.

Boylan wouldn’t have achieved half of what he did had he been just another manager. His references in the programme to the Cistercian mystic and author Thomas Merton, the 1988 Olympic marathon winner Joan Benoit and the “sacred place” that is the Hill of Tara – and leave it alone to his improbable friendship with Brush Shiels - made it apparent that the Dunboyne herbalist was even less ordinary than we realised.

He is a great man for the oul’ aphorisms. “Don’t be afraid not to be as good as other people. Just be yourself. Do the best you can.” 

Heaven knows why some enterprising publisher has never brought out The Little Book of Boylan. It would make a perfect Christmas stocking filler.

It took time, mind, for Boylan to search for the inner steel hidden beneath the fluffy glove. “Will you put your shyness in your arse pocket?” Padraig Lyons demanded of him after another summer of promise eluded an ageing team in 1985. The moment marked an epiphany and nothing was ever the same again.

The programme didn’t avoid the eternal Boylan conundrum. How could such a patently good and decent man have managed such a shower of “thugs and dirty bastards” (the words of Colm O’Rourke, getting his retaliation in early)? Here was Gandalf leading not the forces of light but a fellowship of orcs.

O’Rourke and his colleagues were at pains to point out that Boylan never sent them out to intimidate opponents. Equally, he instructed them never to take a step back from an opponent. These are not mutually incompatible stances, in the same way that saintliness and worldliness are not mutually incompatible qualities. The best saints, indeed, have been worldly to a fault, and here was one saint pragmatic enough to allow his charges to play it as they saw it.

Whereas Boylan had been a big brother to the Meath team of the 1980s he was a father figure to the Meath team of the 1990s. Darren Fay, who confessed to growing up without a lot of values, declared that he owes the manager “far more” than simply two All Ireland medals.

One amusing side note I didn’t spot till someone tweeted about it later. Among the former players who featured as talking heads was one particular talking head who didn’t utter a word: Mick Lyons, the strong and silent type off the field as well as on it. Priceless. In an only slightly different world Sean Boylan would have been a monk and doubtless a fine one. But it’s difficult to imagine that he would have touched as many lives, and achieved as much good, as he did in this world. Lovely man. Lovely programme. Hurrah for the Real Ireland.

History wouldn't look to kindly on betting ads

“Your Mastermind specialist subject, Mr McEvoy?”

“Teen movies of the ‘80s.” 

“Your two minutes start now… How long did it take to bring Back to the Future to the screen?” 

“Four years, then more drafts, after the initial draft. The plot is that intricate, that layered, that precisely engineered.” 

“Correct… How did the studio go about marketing the film?

“With considerable difficulty. Is it an adventure? Sci-fi? Rom com? Time-travel fantasy? Screwball comedy? Sub-Oedipal ‘Mom has the hots for the cute guy who’ll be her son’ drama?” 

“Er, correct… What scene from the film did you think of when you were watching Sky Sports the other night?”

“The one where Marty McFly, transported from 1985 back to 1955, sees a TV ad extolling the virtues of cigarettes and is stunned that such ads were deemed acceptable at the time.” 

“Correct… What, pray tell, prompted this extravagant flight of fancy on your behalf?” 

“The very fact that betting companies are still free to advertise on certain TV channels. The ads make betting look like an integral part of viewing sport, a jaunty, consequence-free pastime for everyone from lads to maiden aunts, when it’s anything but. 

Given what we read on a weekly basis about the widespread nature of gambling addiction and its pernicious effects, it beggars belief that such ads continue to be screened. At least with smoking it takes years to have an effect. I say all this, incidentally, as someone who enjoys a flutter. In a few years’ time we’ll look back, like Marty did, and wonder how the hell such ads were ever allowed on television.” 

“Hmm... that was a mouthful, but correct. Finally, what real-life figure was the character of Marty’s enemy, the oafish Biff Tannen, supposedly based on?”

“Donald Trump, of course.”

Teasers to get your teeth into 

Some questions, and one answer, arising out of the events of recent days.

How many goals will the always entertaining Alexandr Mitrovic, now happily restored to the top flight with Fulham, bag next season? More to the point, how many red and yellow cards will he bag?

Will Arsenal’s decision to make 55 staff members redundant look quite so callous over the coming months when the pandemic forces other clubs to take drastic measures?

How can the fans of other teams possibly object if the wonderful Kevin De Bruyne wins a Champions League medal?

Why are AC Milan, the club of Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini, interested in – deep breath – Serge Aurier?

Can anyone explain in one sentence what’s happening at the FAI?

How, as per a headline in The Athletic, “does Everton’s recruitment work?” I’ll answer that last one meself.

“Badly.”

Fearing for the future 

The state of Wyoming no longer possesses a daily print newspaper.

Sooner or later, the process having been hastened by the pandemic, an Irish county will find itself with no provincial paper. The implications for gaelic games scarcely need to be elucidated. Yet it won’t be merely a matter of no more match reports. Who’ll keep an eye on county boards? Who’ll ask uncomfortable questions about lavish expenditure on backroom staff and grandiose capital projects? Who’ll be left to shout stop?

Quite.