Mártan Ó Ciardha: Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh could lift a person up when they were in his company
Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh at the day's racing. Cheltenham Racing Festival 2015, Prestbury Park, Cheltenham, England. Picture credit: Matt Browne / SPORTSFILE
Mícheál, Mícheál Ó Sé, and myself were annual racegoers to Cheltenham for 20-odd years.
We were supposed to travel in 2020 for his 90th birthday. Of course, Covid arrived, and while Cheltenham still went ahead, we three were not among those to make the trip.
In the spring of last year, while Mícheál’s health was holding fine, we thought that at 92 years of age he mightn’t want to make the journey, or he might have lost the will to go. Not a chance.
Aonghus, his son, rang me one day and said this fella wants to go to Cheltenham. He told me that he'll go if you and Mícheál go.
Aonghus, his youngest daughter Doireann, and the three of us hit off by car and by boat for our latest and, as it turned out, last trip to Cheltenham together. We knew this day was going to come at some point, but we didn't think leaving Cheltenham last year that that was going to be our final chapter there. Neither did he. We talked about it on the drive home and the feeling was, with the help of God, we will be back here again next year.
At 92, Mícheál was down in the lounge on the boat home talking hurling, football, horses, and whatever other sport came up in conversation with those who came over to chat him. He never gave the impression to anyone he was speaking with that he was in a hurry or that he didn't have time for them. In doing so, he had the ability to lift a person up for however long they were in his company.
Staying with horses, I’ll never forget Mícheál telling me the story of how he came to have a horse named after him. The trainer, Eddie O’Grady, and his mother were sitting at home one evening with the radio on. They were waiting for the racing results.
Whatever game Mícheál was commentating on either went to extra-time or ran over because Eddie’s mother asked if this fella was ever going to stop talking and were they ever going to get to the racing results! Eddie told his mother he had a foal out in the stable that needed a name, and now he had one, Ó Muircheartaigh.
My friendship with Mícheál goes back to the late 1970s. It started off as a friendship of common interests. It grew into a lifelong friendship of 45-plus years.
For anybody who spent even a small amount of time in Mícheál's company, never mind myself or Mícheál Ó Sé who were so fortunate to spend a lifetime in his company, there was something magical about him. He will be remembered for his prowess as a commentator, but he was above all else a gentleman.
I never once heard him raise his voice. Such a gentle, loving, caring person. Even with his children when they were young, he never raised his voice.
His bond with his family and his bond with the area he was born and reared in was something very special. He never ever forgot his roots.
And you could see that in how, for years and years, he would make the effort to be present to call the Comórtas Peile na Gaeltachta final. He might be in Clones on the Sunday of Comórtas Peile commentating on a championship game for RTÉ, but even if the tournament was below in Ballinskelligs, he’d travel the country to be down to do the final on the Monday. He felt it was an integral part of the Irish language movement.
And let’s be honest, that man did more for the Irish language than any government initiative. And he did it in his own gentle way, the same gentle way that saw him nab then Labour TD Jim Kemmy ahead of all the other reporters in Leinster House when Kemmy brought down the Government by voting against adding VAT onto children's shoes during the 1982 Budget. The only hiccup was that he forgot to ask Jim if he had any Irish.
In 1989, myself and Mícheál travelled to Antrim ahead of the All-Ireland hurling final. The team was training in Ballymena. While in the town, we met the Olympian Maeve Kyle. Mícheál asked her if there'd be any chance of us interviewing someone from Ballymena. Life was fairly hot up there at the time. Who he ended up interviewing was Lord Mayor Sandy Spence of the DUP.
Mícheál said to him, ‘you are the Lord Mayor of Ballymena, the heartlands of Ulster, Antrim hurling up the road from you, will you be in Croke Park?’ In reply, Spence said, 'I note the game is being played on the Lord's day'.
Micheál never mentioned the troubles, never mentioned one side or the other, or one religion or the other. He just engaged with him in that brilliant way he could. People trusted him. People liked him because they knew he could be trusted. He was a magnet to people in all walks of life.
That famous book, An tOileánach, by Tomás Ó Criomhthain, its last line reads as follows: Ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann. Tomás was writing about the island people and how their like will never be seen again. It is a phrase often overused. In this case, it is spot on.
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