Final place in sporting jigsaw about to fall into place

IT’S 20 years since this column sat down to complete the Leaving Cert – for a second, excruciating time – but it is probably some sort of twisted pseudo-tribute to that daunting time in all our lives that scraps of the information we had to learn by rote occasionally jostle their way back to the forefront of the mind when least expected, writes Brendan O’Brien.

Patrick Kavanagh, for instance. Many has been the time, whilst on the way to cover a GAA game in Clones, that his poem ‘Stony Grey Soil’, with its conquering plough and steaming dunghills, has elbowed its way into the frontal lobes uninvited, whilst memories of ‘Iniskeen Road’ have likewise been rekindled on the odd occasion when tasked to cover Monaghan’s league games in that very district.

If there was a favourite then that was it. “There’s a dance in Billy Brennan’s barn tonight/ And there’s the half-talk code of mysteries/ And the wink-and-elbow language of delight.”