Legendary Mon academy award winner for Cork

DONAL O’GRADY gave a hint of his daytime occupation when describing his first experience as a manager in the new Croke Park.

Casting around for a word to describe the lavish surroundings, the first to come to mind was ‘galántacht’. In another life the Cork hurling coach is principal of the North Monastery’s prestigious all-Irish section, Scoil Mhuire, and the first two weeks of September are busy enough for him without any piffling entries in the diary, like an All-Ireland final.

Still, it’s not as if hurling and the Mon are easy to separate in the first place; practically every student at the school has, at one stage or other, walked up to the old Mon field above St. Vincent’s grounds, or skipped past the Brothers’ cemetery and the Monastery itself, to the pitches above the school.