Willie Bryan Interview: Offaly's faithful servant

Willie Bryan — midfielder, All Star, Footballer of the Year, artist, gentleman, musician, storyteller, legend. And the first Offaly man to lift the Sam Maguire...

The crowd is out on the pitch. People surge and sway, pulled with emotion. There are men and women crying and dancing and jumping around in a kind of delirium. The light is dying, the rain is falling in torrents, driven by a wind that is pushing into every corner. Up in the gathering murk of the Hogan Stand, Willie Bryan is about to be presented with the Sam Maguire Cup. It’s 1971 and Offaly have just won the All-Ireland Football Championship for the first time. There can only be one first time — and here it is. He takes the Sam Maguire and lifts it and there is bedlam. He sees his mother in the crowd. She has pushed her way to the front and all he can see is her smile. The roars settle. Willie Bryan holds the cup in one hand and the microphone in the other: “This is the happiest moment in my life.”

And the roaring starts again. Every footballer is a product of the era they are born into. This is true for the type of football that is played, and true, also, for the social context of that play. Willie Bryan was a child raised in the 1950s. He was born in Walsh Island, a small village in Offaly. The scattering of houses and farms was surrounded by an ocean of bog. “It was about getting food up on the table, when it comes down to it. We were in the middle of the bog and times were tough. There’s no denying that. There was a lot of hardship growing up in Walsh Island. But everyone was in the same boat — nobody had anything.”