The Examiner's Top Forty Irish Sports Books

What marvellous food for thought the Examiner has given us in publishing a list of the top forty Irish sports books. It would be churlish to argue with the ordering of the list, as no two lists will ever have the same order. But there is much to be gleaned from the list about who we are, the sports we watch and how we chronicle them.

The first thing that strikes you about the list is how much it is dominated by the GAA. Eighteen of the forty books listed are GAA-themed. This is astonishing, as Paddy is not a man who has ever liked to go on the record. Paddy felt strongly this way against the Invader, but he feels no less so against the notebook and the Bic biro.

In a culture where omerta rules, how can we get eighteen books about the GAA at all, to say nothing of saying those eighteen are among the best forty of all time?

Well. Firstly, the list betrays a certain bias towards the recent – twenty of the forty books were published in the past nine years, and thirteen of the eighteen GAA books on the list were published after 2005.

This is not to say that some of the books aren’t deserving of their position; of course they are. But is fair to presume that, were the list compiled again in ten years’ time, the position of these books relative to each other will change.

For instance, Michael Foley’s The Bloodied Field, published in the past two months, is 23rd on the list, behind Eamon Sweeney’s The Road to Croker, Dónal Óg Cusack’s Come What May and others. This is the last time Foley’s book will be listed so low, while some of the others ahead of it will be folded back into the mists of time.

The other astonishing thing about the list is relative absence of horse racing and rugby. Horse-racing books can run to a specialist interest, but rugby has traditionally been a well-documented sport – it’s origins in the English public schools make that inevitable. Rugby has also undergone a popularity surge in Ireland as couldn’t have been imagined even as Brian O’Driscoll ran in his three tries in Paris in 2000.

In the light of this, it’s odd that, not only are there so few good books on rugby (as opposed to player autobiographies, say), but the rugby book that is head and shoulders above the other two is about a game that was played in 1978.

The books that top the list are also a bit odd. According to the Examiner list, the five best Irish sportsbooks ever written are Paul Kimmage’s Rough Ride, Paul McGrath’s autobiography, Eamon Dunphy’s (first) autobiography, Michael Foley’s Kings of September and Tony Cascarino’s autobiography.

Four out of those five books do not make for jolly reading (all five, if you’re from Kerry). As a matter of fact, you would wonder why anyone would either play or follow sports at all if all that awaits them is what befell Kimmage, McGrath, Dunphy and Cascarino (and Micko, again, only if you live in Kerry).

There is no reason to let sport loom large in your life if the sport itself is the be-all and end-all. We follow sports for what they represent as much, if not more than, the sport itself.

At one level the 1982 All-Ireland football final was thirty grown men chasing a ball in the rain. At another level, it was Greek tragedy brought to life, as those who would think themselves equal to the gods were cut down by Fate. You don’t get much drama like that to the dollar, and that’s one of the reasons why we follow sports as we do.

Breandán Ó hEithir’s GAA memoir, Over the Bar, languishes at number 19 in the Examiner list. On my own list, it’s Number One. Other books show were sport fits in with history. Over the Bar shows where the GAA fits in with the Irish soul. An extraordinary, inspired book and essential reading for students of sport, of Ireland and of writing.

In the print edition of the Examiner list, Over the Bar is compared to a compilation of work by PD Mehigan, published at the same time as Ó hEithir’s book, 1984. Mehigan, who wrote under the pen-name Carbery, was one of the first GAA journalists and a man with a prolific output. But to compare his writing to Ó Eithir’s is to compare water with wine.

FOCAL SCÓR: William Hamilton Maxwell’s Wild Sports of the West, first published in 1832, should be on any list of great Irish sports books. Maxwell was something of a rake, who took a holiday from smokey London to do a bit of huntin', shootin' and fishin' in the West of Ireland. The prose in the book is, like Maxwell himself, rich and exuberant. For instance, Maxwell quotes from a contemporary tourist guide as to what exactly Connaught is like:

It lieth under a dark gray cloud, which is evermore discharging itself on the earth, but, like the widow's curse, is never exhausted. It is bounded on the south and east by Christendom and part of Tipperary, on the north by Donegal, and on the west by the salt say.

Now that’s writin’.

Kings of September, by Michael Foley

Keith Duggan remarks in his masterful study of Mayo football, House of Pain, that it is a pity John Maughan and John O’Mahony were born in the same generation. It is just as much a pity that Duggan’s book and Michael Foley’s Kings of September were published in the same autumn, and for Foley’s book to pip Duggan to the coveted Boyle Sports Sports Book of the Year title. Foley’s is the rightful winner; in craft and skill the writers are equal, but Duggan’s canvas is the Dadaist struggle of Mayo to once more win the Sam McGuire Cup, while Foley’s art comes from the classics of the long-haired Greeks themselves, and the deathless struggle of men to become gods and claim the very field of heaven. Foley calls the Muse to sing, and then stands well back as the day is recalled when some gods fell, some gods were born and some gods were destined to rise again.

In telling the story of how Kerry and Offaly came to contest the 1982 All-Ireland Final, how the game was played and what its aftermath was, Foley has all the ingredients of classical epic, not least in his cast of characters. The greatest of all these characters is Eugene McGee himself, a remarkable man without whom Offaly could never have risen to the heights of glory they achieved. Nowadays, McGee is simply the straight-shooting pundit of the Irish Independent and Setanta Sports, the last man in Ireland with sufficient credibility to be able to damn a player in so rich a phrase as a “fancy Dan.” Foley’s book is an important reminder to the nation that McGee is not just another talking head, but one of the greatest Gaelic Football coaches of all time. Like all men touched with genius, McGee can be prickly – many of the Offaly players remark on how they never really knew him, and still don’t – but McGee took those men from the bottom of the Leinster Championship barrel to Ardán Uí hÓgáin itself, and the retelling of how he did that is fascinating in the extreme.

Not least when we consider against whom it was done. Much has been said and written about Kerry of the 1970s and 80s, but it’s remarkable to note, reading Michael Foley’s book, how much they suffered by losing that 1982 final. Even now, complete strangers abuse Mikey Sheehy in the street about missing the penalty in the 1982 final, twenty-five years ago. Mikey Sheehy has eight All-Ireland senior medals – how much more does he have to prove?

It’s fascinating also to consider that the defeat to Offaly in 1982 may have done more for the lustre of that Kerry team, looking back, than winning a five-in-a-row would have done. Had they won the five-in-a-row, they would have done something that had never been done before, certainly. Had they won the five-in-a-row, Kerry would have been gods, but the loss in 1982 and Kerry’s subsequent return showed us that gods can fall to, but falling does mean that you never get up again. To come back from Séamus Darby and 1982 and, nearly worse again, Tadhgie Murphy and 1983, gives the Kerry team of the 1970s and 80s a lustre greater than the five-in-a-row would have bestowed.

No talk of gods in a football sense is complete without mention of Offaly’s own peerless Matt Connor, and what happened to Connor in 1983, crippled on Christmas Day in a car accident, is one of the most moving passages in the book. Connor’s accident deeply affected the entire Offaly team – Eugene McGee’s horror at Connor’s accident was plain when he was interviewed about it twenty years later on Laochra Gael, and Offaly players in the book mention how very upsetting and unsettling they found Connor’s accident. It was brave of Foley to take on the subject when so many people find it so distressing, but without bravery this book could not have been so honestly written.

Kings of September’s final gift is Foley’s ability to contextualise the game in its place and time, the grim Ireland of the 1980s. If there is one single vignette that shows how much the country has changed, it’s when Seán Lowry talks of the people back home, watching on TV or listening to the radio. Modern GAA commentary never talks of the people back home, because it’s now taken for granted that you have enough money to bring kids and caboodle to Dublin for long and expensive match weekends; in Ireland of the 1980s, that was a luxury that was not easy to afford. Conspicuous spending is what it’s all about in our times; if it’s Saturday it must be Electric Picnic, and if Sunday, it must be Croker. Anybody sitting at home low on bobs is now some sort of louse or bum. Are we a richer or poorer people for it, I wonder?

Denis Walsh’s Hurling: The Revolution Years revolutionised the way books on Irish sports are written, and now Foley has taken it a step further. The prospect of further books of this ilk, the great events of Irish sports placed in their place and time, John Pullin’s England arriving at Lansdowne Road in 1973, the summer of 1987, when Stephen and Lydia Roche were King and Queen of Ireland, even Saipan itself. It’s a thrilling prospect, and Kings of September has led the way. It’s essential reading.





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