Earlier this month, I went to Aviva Stadium in Dublin to soak up the pre-match atmosphere before AC Milan played Leeds United. I saw, and photographed both teams arrive with a Garda escort in their gleaming Mercedes and Volvo coaches.
Back in the 1980s, while living in Glasgow, Hudie Mór Ferry and I often arrived early at Celtic Park to meet the players and watch the visiting team pull up in their polished team buses. No one paid much attention to the buses or the drivers; the focus was always on the players.
Two weeks before, I saw Donegal and Kerry arrive at Croke Park in their luxury vehicles for the All-Ireland final. The week before, it was Cork and Tipperary for the hurling final. Today, comfort is expected, routine, and almost unnoticed.
Back in the 70s and 80s
In a recent conversation, Hudie asked if I remembered how we travelled to our local pitch in Lower Glassagh back then. I did, vividly. Most of us spent the day on the bog, turf stains still clinging to our clothes. Around 6 p.m., our neighbour Frank Boyd would set off from Upper Brinalack on his tractor, turf trailer rattling behind, making his way down through Middle and Lower Brinalack, collecting players along the way.
We climbed aboard by gripping the slatted cribs like a ladder and hauling ourselves into the open trailer. At Upper Brinalack, Hudie, Josie Sheamuis, Paul Mhaggie Charlie, John Sheamuis, Hughie Eamoinn, and Hughie Fannie boarded. In Middle Brinalack, Martin McFadden and Pat McGarvey joined. Then, in Lower Brinalack, my brother Colm, John Ownie Mhaire, and Tony Conchúr Eoin, along with myself, climbed in. Finally, at Upper Glassagh, Padraig and Eoghan Ghrainne were collected.
The trailer was now full, and we shuddered and swayed towards the pitch, the tractor’s smoke drifting above our heads.
The Quality of the Pitch
Back then, football pitches were chosen from whatever patch of ground was flattest, or least uneven. Ours lay on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, looking across to Inis Oirthear island. Picturesque, yes, but it was anything but level. A player could be lining up a perfect strike at a rolling ball, only for it to clip a bump and ricochet in an entirely different direction.
I often wonder how AC Milan or Leeds United would fare on such a pitch. We will never know, because they would not even attempt it, and if they did, they would be lost among the humps, hollows, and sudden potholes. Still, we managed very well.
Onto the Pitch
Some players walked, but every evening about twenty of us would be there. Eugene Ownie Mór managed one team, earning the nickname An Manager.
There were no warm-ups. We played in the same clothes worn on the bog just hours earlier, sometimes with one or two players in wellingtons. Hudie recently reminded me of the difficulty of executing overhead kicks in them.
The games were friendly in name only. No one wanted to lose, and tackles could be fierce. Padraig Ghrainne once left with a broken leg.
Our goalkeeper, Frank Boyd, kept up a running commentary. When I once took a ball to the face, he roared, “That’ll clean out all the wax in the ears.” Another time, when Hughie Eamoinn lost his footing, Frank declared, “He was let down by his steady pin.”
As darkness fell, we left the pitch, climbed back into the trailer, and headed home along the same road, sweat-soaked, tired, and happy, looking forward to the religious Saturday night bath.
When Competition Grew
By the early 1980s, the standard had risen so much that we organised a seven-a-side summer competition — the Glassagh 7-A-Side Summer Cup. Ten teams from nearby townlands and parishes entered, complete with sponsored jerseys. It was fiercely contested.
At the time, Colm McBride’s Gweedore Celtic were one of the strongest teams in the county. They entered the competition.
The local tractor-trailer team, Foreland Dynamo Utd, fielded Noel Bharney, Hudie Mór Sheamuis, Josie and John Sheamuis, Paddy Doogan, Paul Mhaggie Charlie, and Bosco Shiobhain Charlie. Many believed Bosco, in goals, was as good as Packie Bonner, some claimed better, yet like many others, he was undiscovered.
On the final day, the amateurish Foreland Dynamos came out on top against the firm favourites, Gweedore Celtic.
Once presented with the trophy, the whole team and a few supporters crammed into Noel Bharney’s red Toyota Corolla and celebrated the length of the parish, four victorious players hanging out of each window. That was in 1983, when seatbelts were not even considered.
After the victory parade, the team, locals, and supporters celebrated through the night in Teach Jack.
Those were the days when most people in the parish lived on a day-to-day basis, content, close-knit, and stress-free.
If Only…
If I had a photograph of those tractor journeys and showed it to AC Milan or Leeds United as they stepped off their buses at Aviva Stadium, they would hardly believe it. I do not have the picture, but I have the sound of the tractor’s engine, the sway of the trailer, the turf dust in the air, the laughter of friends in the evening light, and the memory of twenty determined players in bog clothes, playing not for money or glory, but for nothing more, and nothing less, than pride.
Eamonn Coyle is a Chartered Engineer and Chartered Environmentalist, originally from the Gaoth Dobhair Gaeltacht
