YOU CAN’T BE FAMOUS... YOU’RE FROM BALLYMUN!
All-Ireland final star McMahon eager to show proper community spirit
IN A year when he has answered every quest i on t hat f ootball’s greatest could throw at him, Philly McMahon was left speechless after a chance encounter recently with a neighbour’s child.
McMahon’s role i n Dublin’s All-Ireland triumph hardly needs repeating. After not only putting the brakes on two of the game’s most potent forwards in Aidan O’Shea and Colm Cooper but also outscoring them, he has become one of football’s most recognisable faces.
The rewards for that are likely to start coming now; he is a shoo-in for an All-Star next month, while he has been shortlisted alongside team-mates Jack McCaffrey and Bernard Brogan for Player of the Year.
And tonight he will receive his award for being the Gaelic Writers Association (GWA) Gaelic football personality of 2015.
From a corner-back struggling to nail down a starting place to the owner of what may become the busiest monkey suit in the business this autumn, McMahon has travelled so far so quickly that he still has to take it all in.
It would grate with his sense of place in his own community — his voluntary work and establishment of a scholarship fund to support disenfranchised youth in Ballymun has been well aired — to play the f ame card, but he admitted recently that he was cornered into it.
‘I had the Sam Maguire a couple of weeks ago, the kids were all running around the place and they wouldn’t even have passed notice at me only for they saw the cup,’ explained McMahon.
‘Then I was going to do a speech in a youth centre and as I was walking out of the house one of those kids came over to me and said “you’re a famous footballer.”
I was initially about to say “no” but in my head I was thinking “should I say I am or should I say I’m not?”
‘When your profile goes up I suppose you want to be a bit of a role model to kids like that, so I said “yeah, maybe I am a f amous footballer.”
‘But his next sentence was amaz- ing to me; it stopped me in my tracks. He said, “but you’re from Ballymun, you can’t be famous”.
‘I s at down on t he path, just where I had the car parked. I couldn’t believe it. I spent about 10 minutes speaking with the kid — it probably looked a little bit weird, but I just wanted to talk with him.
‘ It j ust shows you the l ow self- esteem the kids in the area have.
‘But I’ve noticed that a lot of people in the area have recognised me a bit more than what they would have. But that’s good for the area, it’s good for the kids, it’s good for them to see that there is somebody from their area winning All-Irelands and on the TV and things like that.
‘I think that’s what this year has helped me do; it’s helped me build up a little bit of a profile. It’s not something I initially wanted to do — I just wanted to play football.
‘But if it helps people, if it can be used positively to help others then t hat has t o be good,’ s ai d McMahon.
Outside of his scorching form, McMahon has developed a reputation as a ruthlessly aggressive defender which has seen him on occasions blur the line between playing on the edge and crossing to a darker side.
The most recent example of that occurred in the All-Ireland final when he was issued with a retrospective one-match ban after television pictures seem to show him attempting to eye-gouge Kerry captain Kieran Donaghy.
This week the GAA’s Central Hearings Committee upheld that ban, which will see the Dublin defender miss the champions’ opening round League clash next January against Kerry; a decision that the Ballymun man has decided to accept.
‘The season is over now and we didn’t want to drag it on either. We didn’t want it to overshadow what we’ve achieved this year,’ he said.
‘It was just a small incident in the game, there could have been 101 incidents from the day that could have been slowed down shot by shot and made big issues out of.
‘I’m not going to let it hang over me or be a burden on me. I’m moving on, I’m just looking forward to getting back playing football and setting more challenges and see how we get on with them,’ added McMahon. PHILLY McMAHON has been named as the Gaelic Writers Association 2015 Football Personality of the Year. The GWA awards ceremony takes place in Dublin’s Jackson Court Hotel tonight.
‘If my profile can be used positively then that’s a good thing’