Keady’s courage on pitch matched his daring off it
THE joy which came with winning a place in the All-Ireland hurling final was sucked out of Galway last Thursday. The county stopped celebrating their one-point victory over defending champions, Tipperary last Sunday afternoon and began the heartbreaking task of mourning one of their own as the news broke that Tony Keady had passed.
The 53-year-old double All-Ireland winning centre-back was gone.
And Galway had lost one of their true legends of the game – and lost him at far too young an age. Though the word ‘legend’ barely does justice to the life and times of Tony Keady.
Keady was more than a man who wore the maroon jersey with immense pride. His courage on the pitch was matched every day of his glorious career with a daring, and a sense of endearing bravado off it that made him one of the compelling personalities in the GAA.
His suspension for the Championship of 1989, which effectively crushed Galway’s hopes of winning an historic three in-a-row of All-Ireland titles, was merciless from the game’s authorities – but the actions that got him into trouble in the first place were typical Tony Keady.
He dared to line out and play the game he loved in New York City and show the locals who he was, and how good he was! For that, he was banned for a year.
But, as his former manager Cyril Farrell explained this week, Tony Keady always believed that it was his responsibility to win games on his own if necessary – and he also believed, in Farrell’s words that the ‘70,000 people in Croke Park’ had turned up to see him play.
That was never strictly true, of course, but in the Galway dressing-room Keady would always imbue those around him with a sense of destiny.
He truly believed that Galway would be great.
And that, in the process, he would go down in the game’s history books as one of the most magnificent of men who guarded the door to the Galway defence. That, Tony Keady did. To his wife, Margaret and their children, Anthony, Jake, Shannon and Harry, we offer our sincere sympathies.