‘Gerry loved the game more so than the Association’
It was only reading this paper’s bumper end-of-year sports supplement that we learned the Gaelic Games analyst and statistician Gerry McDermott at 59 had joined the list of those who left this mortal coil in the year we just waved bye to, his on-off battle with the dreaded big C finally getting the better of him in November.
Almost every journalist or pundit regularly commenting on Gaelic football over the past decade would have come across Gerry, often upon him initiating the contact. Normally it would have been some reference you’d have made to some rule in his beloved Gaelic football that would have triggered him to pick up the phone or the pen, and if per chance you had criticised the sport’s tackle, you were in for a particularly lengthy phone call or letter.
I was fortunate enough to be basically on the right side of Gerry on that one. To me the problem with the tackle in football has been that it has been poorly coached and ambiguously officiated rather than poorly defined. The rulebook shouldn’t necessarily be a coaching manual as well; why should a rulebook detail the subtle skill of shadowing, of forcing your opponent onto his weaker side, or waiting until he hops or solos the ball to strip it off him?
Incorporating the Aussie or Internationals Rule tackle into our game would do nothing for football, only harm it. If people wanted a cruder, more physical tackle, they were welcome to take up rugby or American football.
That still didn’t spare me lengthy phone calls from Gerry on the issue. Even as recently as last June he was on the phone for nearly an hour lamenting the number of high-profile inter-county coaches critical of how the tackle was either defined or at least refereed. In the course of the conversation I suggested the rulebook should probably be tweaked to provide greater clarity, but Gerry stridently disagreed. At times, even to friends, he could be irritatingly pedantic and all-knowing, but all-knowing he was.
Only Frank Murphy had such a command of the rulebook. As recently as last June again Gerry would have assisted his fellow Donegal man Michael Murphy in successfully appealing a suspension, something that delighted Gerry. Unlike Frank though, Gerry wasn’t an insider. He was never asked to sit on any rules revision committee even though he would have contributed so much more to them than the litany of inoffensive, big-name managers GAA presidents seem to favour. Gerry loved the game more so than the Association, and while that left him open to isolation and even derision it didn’t stop him monitoring and inevitably criticising referees and officials that hadn’t enforced the sport’s rules.
At times that crusade seemed to be as zealous and as futile as the preachings of those born-again Christians on Grafton Street, but it was always reassuring to know that in as complex and unglamorous a field as the GAA rulebook, there was one watchdog out there.
Gerry was a lot more than an authority on the rulebook. He was a pioneer in the field of GAA statistics, demanding and compiling information to back up any argument. The Donegal team of 1992 and Down’s Pete McGrath in 1994 deeply valued his analysis and input into their respective All-Ireland winning campaigns while he was a regular member of Mick O’Dwyer’s various backroom teams in Leinster. He wasn’t always serious and analytical either. He loved to hear and tell a yarn, especially one concerning his good friend Micko.
He often told the story about one of the many championship wins they shared together in Kildare.
“At half-time Micko was annoyed with some of the [referee’s] decisions but told the players to accept them even if they were wrong. As we were walking back across to the dugout, who came along but the referee. I said to myself, ‘God, there’s going to be some confrontation here’. Instead Micko said, ‘Jesus, Johnny, you’re having a mighty game! You’re the best referee in the country! I’m telling yoouuu!’ wagging his finger like this here.
“Well, Johnny went away with his tail wagging and the next thing we got a free in which should definitely have been a free out. We won that game by a point. When the final whistle went, Micko gave me a nudge and winked, ‘It pays to praise people, you know’.”
It’s hard to believe we won’t hear him telling more yarns about Micko’s roguery; that the cancer he had defeated before and made so light of in conversation this past summer got the better off him; that
Sunday Game pundits who proclaim to the nation “the rule is very clear” after phoning the forever-helpful McDermott will no longer have that port of call. The GAA has lost one of its great watchdogs but we’re fairly sure wherever he is now he’s able to look down and see us all.
