Mayo master exiled in the Kingdom
TRALEE boasts more All-Ireland medals per square inch than any other town in Ireland and it’s a proud boast, a valid boast, a hard-earned boast.
Hidden among all the fives, sixes, sevens, even the eights, that have been won by natives of the Rock (Austin Stacks), Strand Road (Kerins O’Rahillys), Boherbee (John Mitchells), however, are two medals more valued than any of them.
In 1950 and 1951, Mayo won the second and third of their three All-Ireland senior championships. The full back on those two teams, full back later on the Connacht team of the millennium, was Paddy Prendergast.
“Definitely the most spectacular full back ever,” said renowned commentator Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh, on the night last year when Paddy was named on the garda all-time All-Star football team.
“He owned every ball that landed inside the 14, he was wonderfully light-footed, was able to rise very well to capture the high ball and was a member of the Irish representative team in 1952 and 1956.”
Early in the 1960s, however, and by then working for Shell, Paddy was transferred to Tralee. He has been there ever since.
“My boss at the time, a man called Fred Dixon asked me: ‘How do you feel about this?’ I said: ‘You mean how do I feel about being transferred across the Mason-Dixie line? I don’t feel very good about it.’ I wasn’t serious of course, but didn’t let on. He loved Kerry himself, so he said to me: ‘I’ll meet you again in six months’ time, and if you haven’t changed your mind, I’ll eat my hat!’
“We duly met six months later, at the Curragh race meeting — his hat was safe. I loved it from the start. I remember him asking me, at the very beginning: ‘Well, do you see anything good about it?’ ‘I do,’ I said. ‘The extra 13 days leave.’ ‘What extra 13 days leave?’ he says. ‘Killarney three days,’ says I, ‘Tralee three days, Listowel five days, and Dingle two days’ — all the race meetings. ‘Damn right,’ he says, ‘I wouldn’t miss a day of one of those meetings myself!’ That was my introduction to Kerry, and I’ve loved it ever since. Many times they tried to transfer me to Dublin and I refused. Why would I? ‘For God’s sake,’ I said, ‘Leave me in peace to rear my family properly.’ I have three kids, they were very happy here, but also, this was a place where I was able to do most of the things I love to do myself.”
One of the things he loved to do most, of course, was play football. Landing where he had and still in his early 30s, he was ready to line out again.
Fate, however, intervened.
“I was out swimming in Fenit one day and banged my big toe off a rock. I could never kick properly afterwards. But I was gone anyway. We (Mayo) were a very close-knit team, trained collectively, did a lot of things together. When you’re young like that, that’s the best time to make friends, because they last a lifetime. I’m still in touch regularly with a lot of the lads like Eamonn Mongey. Seán Flanagan was a great friend of mine as was Pauric Carney. They used to come down here regularly, so those relationships were strong. When the team breaks up, then you don’t want to carry on on your own. I remember one day, after a few of the lads had packed it in, I was going up to play a match in Mayo and stopped to collect a couple of young lads from UCG. On the way, between Galway and Castlebar, one of them called me ‘Sir’ — that was my last time travelling! That finished me.
“The lads were all gone, it was time for me to join them.”
Then as now, Mayo was a football stronghold. Then as now also, however, it was also a football desert with one All-Ireland title in over 50 years of trying.
For a couple of years at least, that team of 1950/51 changed everything.
“It was a different world then, a bleak, bleak world, in Mayo especially. There was no work, thousands were emigrating — there was no present, no future, there was nothing. The winning of that All-Ireland in 1950 was something very special. It lifted people off their knees. And how they travelled, for those games, in their tens of thousands, by bicycle, by sidecar, on foot. There was nearly 80,000 in Croke Park for the two finals. I can remember old men, out on the pitch after the game, throwing their arms around me with tears in their eyes. It changed the face of Mayo, and it was a blessing for them that we won it again the following year.”
They nearly didn’t though, as they should have fallen victim to Kerry in the semi-final.
“I met Tom Ashe (Kerry player from that era) a few years ago, he was feeling good, telling the lads about our match with Kerry in 1951. Kerry were leading by four points. Langan was full forward for us, shouting: ‘Mickeen (Flanagan), come in here; Mickey, get out there, come in Mulderrig,’ — the Kerry backs didn’t know who they were marking with all the changing. Next thing The Bawn (Paddy Brosnan) kicked this bloody ball, a bit short. Mongey spotted it, laid it off into Langan and it was in the back of the net. The next ball came, says Ashe, and Paddy Irwin (Mayo wing forward) caught it, turned, kicked it. It was headed straight for the upright, I remember turning around, couldn’t look at it; of course the umpire, Patsy Lynch — a Cavan man — didn’t hesitate and was up with the white flag straight away. The ball, says Ashe, was at least three yards wide — it wasn’t, says I, it was only one! Ah, he was a great character — he told me that one time himself and The Bawn played in Croke Park on 10 consecutive weeks, between Railway Cup, league and championship. They’d leave Dublin on the Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, on to Dingle, into Jimmy Ashe’s pub, he’d open the safe, in with the hand, out with a shovel of cash, then turn the car and head back up to Dublin. And that was how they spent those 10 weeks! Different times.”
Different times, different attitudes also, in the two counties.
“I don’t think people fully realise the intensity involved in Kerry football. There was a story I heard one time, about a Dingle man, to illustrate that.
He had six daughters, and he was talking about football one day. ‘Jaysus,’ he said, ‘If I had only one son, and I saw him parading around Croke Park just once, they could hang him afterwards!’ I think that sums up how they feel about their football in Kerry. It’s wonderful, and they’ve brought so much to football. I played against Kerry for many years, have lived here for many more, and I’ve seen them produce so many fantastic teams, so many fantastic footballers. And the thing about them is this: they are pure footballers — they’re not interested in winning by any other means, just pure football.”
WHICH brings us nicely to Ciaran McDonald, one of the purest footballers in the current game, Mayo’s ace Sunday in the All-Ireland final against Kerry. “He’s an extraordinary human being with so much talent. People say he should be inside, but if he is, there’s nothing coming in. Maybe he overdoes things at times, he seems to want everything to go through himself, but he’s the best man I’ve seen to pump that ball in. Against Kerry a couple of years ago he sent five balls into the corner, perfect balls, knee-high, you wouldn’t do it better with a laser guide. The first four hopped off the corner forward, he got the fifth, 25 yards out, turned, and kicked it wide. He is a marvellous passer of the ball, and he scores some great points also; look at the two brilliant points against Dublin. He’s extremely talented, and the amount of work he does — he ran the whole field the last day. It’s this simple — without McDonald, Mayo could stay in Castlebar, stay at home.”
What about Sunday, is he confident?
“No. Looking at it as objectively as I can, quite frankly, I can’t see Kerry being beaten. I don’t think we have the artillery. Leitrim could have beaten us, we beat a poor Galway team in the Connacht final with a free that wasn’t a free at all, in the last minute. Laois could have beaten us the first day, we beat a tired Laois in that replay and then Dublin helped to beat themselves.
“Kerry beat Armagh, and they beat Cork, a very good Cork team. I think any other team would have struggled against Cork, though mind you they really felt the loss of Graham Canty.
“This Kerry team is the most physically strong Kerry team I’ve seen for a long, long time, and Croke Park is nearly their first home. They’ve been getting better and better as the year went on, though I think their best game was against the team I thought would win the All-Ireland, Armagh. They were too strong for them, in every department. I don’t care what anyone says, they’re going to be very hard to beat Sunday.”
As for his own allegiance? In spite of feeling totally at home in the heartland of the Kingdom, Paddy Prendergast is still Mayo to the core.
His instincts are telling him his new friends will be celebrating Sunday evening. His heart and soul are still with his own.
“As a full-back, you have to realise that you’re the last line of defence. If you’re a defender, you’re a defender, and your first job is to mind the house. A vital element of good full-back play is that you’ve got to be able to turn, you’ve got to be able to sprint out ten yards, but stop, turn, get back just as quickly, because that’s the nature of the play in there. So many fellas get caught out, like that.”
“Kerry must have been a great team to follow, and this was something we often said, in Mayo. They were so successful.”
“I think he has added an awful lot to Kerry. This fella is an excellent footballer.”
“I’ve always had a great relationship with the Galway players, Seán Purcell used to come down to Limerick, we often slept in the same room and drank porter in the same pubs.”
“Jack Mahon told this story at Seán Purcell’s funeral, about some match they were playing. He was centre-back, won a ball, took off upfield on a solo run with the intention of laying the ball off to Seán, though if I know Jack it was no such thing, he intended going as far as he could! Anyway, Seán’s back was turned to him, he said, so he kept going and ended up either kicking a wide or giving a pass that was kicked wide. As he was on his way back, Purcell said to him, ‘Jack, you don’t often do that, and I suggest you don’t do it again! Leave that operation to us down here.’
Two weeks after telling that story, poor Jack was dead himself.”
To me, Paddy Kennedy was the prince of midfielders, better than Micko (Connell). Micko could be put off his game too easily. If I were playing on Micko, under the dropping ball I’d stand on his foot, or put my hand on his shoulder to hold him down. He’d protest, but he’d stop playing, because that was Micko. We had a fella like Micko with us, Frank White. He was a brilliant fielder, a brilliant footballer, and he was stationed with me above in Donegal. We’d go training, he’d go to jump for a ball, I’d put my hand on his shoulder, and he’d go mad. I said, ‘Frank, that’s what you’re going to get on Sunday, get used to it.’ Then there was Seán Brosnan — I was talking with The Bawn one day, asked him how good was Brosnan. ‘Could you imagine,’ he says to me, ‘Mick O’Connell, Seán Walsh and Jack O’Shea jumping for the same high ball — Seán would come in between the three of them, take it away one-handed.’ He was brilliant.”
“I think if we keep going the way we’re going we won’t be looking at football at all in a few years. All this crowding, gang-tackling, fellas not being allowed to express themselves anymore, is killing football. We’re actually penalising some of the old skills, the high fielder especially — he goes up, fields the ball, comes down, is surrounded by five or six, and the free is given against him. It’s not football. The passing is overdone, completely. I counted 16 passes in Castlebar recently, we actually went backwards. If we do that against Kerry, they’ll destroy us; you have to attack Kerry, run at that defence, go forward.”
“I remember talking to Johnny Hughes , the former Galway wing-back, outside Croke Parkand. He said: ‘There’s no such thing as a bad long ball. If the forward misses it, no problem, if the back misses, problem.’”
“A fella in Mayo asked me some years ago, ‘What’s wrong with us?’ — ‘Ye’re leaving yere brains in the dressing-room,’ I told him. ‘When you’re out on the pitch you must think for yourself, you can’t be looking to the sideline with your hands out, for directions, you must think for yourself. We had that, in our team, but I suppose we were exceptional, especially for the times that were in it. We had four lawyers, barristers, four doctors, an engineer, a priest, two or three polesmen, and a fitter. The priest was Peter Quinn, but we had an awful job getting him in, he played as Peter Quinlan.”
“When we went to Dublin we stayed in Barry’s (Hotel), three to a room — sure the County Board had no money. But you’d wake up in the morning and there’d be six or seven more fellas in the room, sleeping on the floor, anywhere they could lie down. We thought nothing of it, didn’t even know they were there ‘til we saw them in the morning.
“I remember a Railway Cup match, against Munster, and I forget who it was couldn’t make it but the Gunner Brady (Phil Brady, Cavan and Ulster) had to play. Now the night before, the Gunner, having been told he wasn’t playing, had a few pints for himself — a good few pints, ten or twelve at least. He came out the next day in Croke Park and bejaysus he bet all round him, played an absolute blinder. We wouldn’t have been able to do that at all, but the Gunner did it, and the Kerry fellas also were noted for their ability to have a few pints, and still be able to perform.
“Ah sure it’s a marvellous county to live in. I could have left it several times, but I just said no bloody way. You can live the kind of life you want to here, you have everything you want all round you, the mountains, the sea, that’s extremely important, and they’re nice people.”
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