Irish Daily Star - Inside Sport
The battle Mcguinness
INTRIGUE AS FASCINATING PAIR GOING HEAD TO HEAD
I’ve been dipping my toes into coaching for a few years now. Does that mean I’ll end up as a manager? I can’t answer that.
More and more, I see that the biggest problem managers have is not managing players but managing time.
Devote
If you’re going to make the kind of impact Mcguinness or Mcgeeney have made, you need to devote endless hours to it.
When you have a family and a job, that isn’t always easy. It mightn’t even be possible.
I have a lot of time for Justin Mcnulty but I can see why the SDLP aren’t happy with the time he’s spending with Laois.
If you’re an employer — and the SDLP are de facto employers of Justin, in this case — why would you be happy with someone being missing for a sporting commitment?
The solution is paying managers legally and properly — not the under the table crap.
But there is huge resistance and hypocrisy in the GAA to such a move. They want to maintain the pretence of amateurism. They’re fooling noone.
The whole management gig has changed so much it’s nearly like being the CEO of a small company.
There are plenty of managers who don’t do the coaching or training but Mcguinness takes the old fashioned approach.
I can see aspects of the Mcgeeney approach to the way Armagh play but he’s brought in others like Kieran Donaghy and Conleth Gilligan to help.
He’s learned to delegate and to trust others, and I think it’s paying off.
Mcgeeney had plenty of pain at the hands of Donegal for much of the last decade and he’ll be keen to stop their rise, even if just for a short while.
I think he’ll get a big performance out of his team on home soil. Armagh
THIS evening, the Spring Series reverts to its original formula, with All-ireland champions in both codes on view at Croke Park.
An adult stand ticket for all four events that spring (four football games, two hurling, one camogie) stood at €45, with individual stand tickets costing €13. A stand ticket for Dublin-limerick (hurling) and Dublin-kerry (football) this evening will set you back €20 — decent value but still some €4 ahead of the rate of inflation in the intervening 13 years.
A crowd of 35,028 turned out that first night and, though it dipped for the footballers’ subsequent wins over Kerry (played alongside the Dublinkilkenny camogie tie) and Mayo, it jumped back up to 35,264 for the double header against Down (football) and Kilkenny (hurling) to round out that first season.
That attendance remains a Spring Series record, with an average of 28,243 over the course of the four matchdays in 2011. Modest enough in some terms given that it’s around one-third of
Croke Park’s capacity, while the near full house crowds that were drawn for marquee League games against Tyrone at Croke Park in 2007 and ‘09 were never threatened, but it was still far more than would have seen the games had they stayed in Parnell Park.
Famine
Back then, Dublin were striving to make a breakthrough in both codes as their All-ireland famine moved into a 16th and, as it turned out, final year in football, while the hurlers were looking to win major silverware for the first time since 1963, another itch that was scratched in subsequent months as they won a rare League title.
There are myriad factors behind those respective breakthroughs, but being exposed to the venue where the biggest prizes are won on a far more regular basis was surely one of them — however big or small you argue that it is.
Bernard Brogan slotted a late point to beat Kerry in a frantic finish that wasn’t all that different to the following September’s All-ireland final, for example, while the manner in which the hurlers snatched a draw against Kilkenny was surely a useful lodgement in the memory bank before they demolished the Cats back at Croke Park in the League final.
The hurlers didn’t, and still don’t, have the box office factor to draw a reasonable crowd to Croke Park on their own and the Spring Series double headers featuring them have dwindled.
Indeed, this evening’s will be just the ninth in all and, of the previous eight, the hurlers have only won twice.
Tonight’s All-ireland final rematch will be the 45th time that the footballers have played a regulation League game (not including semi-finals and finals) at Croke Park since 2011, however, and they’ve won 31 of the previous 44, drawing five and losing eight.
They’ve won five League titles and eight All-irelands in that time having won none of either for 18 and 16 years before then respectively.
Reason
By far the primary reason for that success is the quality of footballer that has been produced, but that their exposure to Croke Park far more often than anyone else is relevant to some degree is undeniable, with successive generations of Dublin players now knowing no other home ground.
But there have been strong indications of late that Dublin supporters are less mobilised for these fixtures than used to be the case. The average attendance dropped by around 8,000 after the pandemic and has continued to fall, albeit last year’s stint in Division Two had an added effect.
Attendance figures for the last four fixtures (Clare and Louth last year; Monaghan and Roscommon this year) do not appear to have been issued.
But a conservative estimate would suggest that less than 15,000 were present for the two most recent fixtures and, if tonight’s double bill can’t pull something well north of 20,000, does the concept have a future?
Of course it does. Because, ultimately, it’s advantageous to Dublin, who can easily afford the hit on the rental fees even if the crowds drop so low that it becomes cost prohibitive relative to Parnell Park, while the GAA likes to have footfall through its primary stadium when otherwise it would be left idle for much of the period from late July through to March.
Levelling the playing field wouldn’t even get a look in.
30 years ago DANNY Boyle was catapulted into the Hollywood big time when hit the Cannes Film Festival. But his screen debut as a director came seven years earlier with a football film set in the Mourne Mountains called Scout. Sports editor DAVID COUGHLAN goes in search of a cult classic.
IT began
Down.
Danny Boyle’s opening shot was not of Edinburgh, there was no Leftfield, no Iggy Pop and no Ewan Mcgregor.
Instead, it was Ray Mcanally on a quiet rural back road and Stephen Rea driving like a maniac while reciting the names of Brazil players from the 1970 World Cup.
“I don’t remember a damn thing about it!” says Stephen Rea, laughing.
“It was a very long time ago.” This is Scout, a cult football film first shown on BBC2 in September 1987 and the screen debut for Boyle.
The Lancashire filmmaker already had a strong connection with Ireland — his mother Annie came from Ballinasloe and his father Frank was born in England to an Irish family.
The director would go on to make iconic films like Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, The Beach, 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire and produce the opening ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic Games.
And Trainspotting would get its first public viewing in Derry.
But it all began with a TV drama loosely based on legendary Manchester United scout Bob
in County Shallow Grave
Bishop written by Donegal playwright Frank Mcguinness.
And the first music used in a Danny Boyle film was Get Over You by The Undertones.
“Danny was just starting his career in TV,” says Mcguinness.
“There was a man called Bob Cooper (at BBC Northern Ireland) who was very encouraging at putting together young directors and young writers at the time — as both Danny and myself were.
“We decided on this topic about a scout. We didn’t want to bother Bob Bishop himself, we knew he was a very private man, so we invented a story around that idea.
“And the young fellas who were in it were all first-timers, none of them had really worked in TV before.”
Direct
Boyle had recently started working for BBC NI and commissioned himself to direct Scout, despite having little experience behind the camera. The real Bob Bishop was the scout who discovered George Best and alerted Manchester United to players like Sammy Mcilroy and Norman Whiteside.
Each year Bishop would bring a bunch of hopefuls to a pitch in Helen’s Bay, County Down for trials and the dream of following in their footsteps. In Scout, Bishop is represented by the formidable flat-cap-wearing character Palmer who similarly takes six young players through their paces over one weekend at a remote cottage in the Mourne Mountains.
“The great Ray Mcanally played him and Ray was a great man for investing character with little secrets — byways into how people worked,” says Mcguinness. “I had worked with Ray on Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme. utterly in awe of him.
“He was the best teacher I ever worked with in theatre, he was a gloriously good teacher and he took the lads under his wing.
“He really helped them as actors and they all respected him dearly. He was also great fun.”
Rea fondly remembers working with Mcanally, who was by then enjoying a late career high after appearing alongside Robert de Niro in The Mission a year earlier and would later star in the Oscar-winning My Left Foot.
“I remember sitting in a make-up trailer with Ray Mcanally when the lights went out,” says Rea.
I was
“We sat there talking in the dark and he told me a story about how his wife was fed up with him. He could be a difficult man, Ray, you know.
Career
“But Ray was one of the Abbey actors who ended up having a great career outside the Abbey, which most people didn’t.
“They didn’t have the energy to burst out of the Abbey, but he did.”
Rea plays Marshall in Scout — a former trialist who briefly makes it at United only to return home in despair once his career is over.
“You think Palmer sees the future,” Marshall bellows drunkenly at the six young hopefuls, before shaking his head. “(No) I’m your future.”
The character is seen drinking heavily throughout the film which provides obvious parallels with George Best, but Rea sees it differently.
“He was troubled, but he wasn’t like George Best, a staggeringly talented ball player… which I thought was disappointing for me,” he says, laughing.
“George was an extraordinary figure. The first glamour footballer. Poor old Marshall isn’t a glamour footballer, he’s a bit too steady.
“Frank changed him to be a defender, that’s why he was called Marshall because he used to marshal the defence.
“Sometimes you get incredible defenders like Paul Mcgrath. Paul Mcgrath was always a step ahead of what the attackers were doing. I wouldn’t say Marshall was that good.”
Fascinated
Rea has long been fascinated by the beautiful game and was at both Italia ’90 and USA ’94 to see Mcgrath in his prime.
“Mcgrath was something else. I remember seeing him in New York in 1994. It was staggering,” he says.
“Mcgrath was so intelligent, he had already worked out where the striker was going to go and had arrived there before him.
“Marshall was not Paul Mcgrath, although I suppose they both had problems with alcohol.
“But what a player Mcgrath was. He was out of this world.”
Rea grew up in Belfast and formed the Field Day Theatre Company in 1980 with Brian Friel, before coming to international prominence in Neil Jordan’s 1982 film Angel.
He would go on to become one of the greatest actors of his generation on stage and screen, winning multiple prestigious awards and starring in movies like The Crying Game and Michael Collins.
One image of him as Ned Broy in Michael Collins has become a meme for any suggestion of cultural appropriation by our neighbours across the water — including footballers.
So what does the real Stephen Rea think?
“When I went to London I had a season ticket for Arsenal. I loved Liam Brady, he was just marvellous. What a player.
“I was a huge Arsenal fan and still am really, except for the inclusion of… Declan Rice,”he says with a huge amount of mischief.
“Because of his treachery in playing for Ireland and leaving before he qualified.”
He pauses for extra drama. “And how dare he play for England? I don’t think I’ll ever get over it,” he adds.
“They were trying to get Evan Ferguson as well.
“He said, ‘No, I won’t go, I’m Irish!’ Honest to God, it’s terrible when a huge team starts to pinch players like Grealish and Rice.
“It makes me mad.”
Writers
Mcguinness first came to prominence with his 1982 play The Factory Girls and has gone on to become one of Ireland’s most celebrated writers, often tackling political subjects in his works.
In one of Scout’s opening scenes, the Bob Bishop-based character Palmer gathers the six young hopefuls together and introduces them as three Catholics and three Protestants.
“That is the last time I will mention religion this weekend. If any of you start on it you’re out on your ear,” says the character Palmer in the film.
Mcguinness remembers writing it very deliberately: “That was very much Bob Bishop’s method. That was one subject that was never allowed to be mentioned. Religion did not enter the discussion.
“I only met Bob once after the film had been shown in public. He was an extraordinarily impressive man, very neatly dressed, very precise, very together in what he would say.
“One thing Bob asked us was if any of the boys were any good as footballers or if I was a good footballer.
“I’d never played game of football in my life!” a
As for Marshall, he admits there were elements of Best in his writing.
“If you want to write about a footballer failing through his weakness for the drink, who else could you look to than George Best?” says Mcguinness.
Interested
“But I was more interested in Bob Bishop, the scout himself and in the lads.”
Rea received an Oscar nomination for his role in The Crying Game and has worked with Mcguinness on numerous occasions since Scout — including the Tonynominated Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me which was loosely based on the experiences of Brian Keenan in captivity.
Although he has yet to work with
Boyle again.
“No, I never did, he mustn’t have liked me,” says Rea, laughing.
“Ah he’s had a huge success since then, Danny Boyle.
“And everything Frank does is terribly interesting in so many ways. I’ve done a good bit of work with Frank. Always very good. I love his writing.
“I did a play of his in London and on Broadway about Brian Keenan.
“I knew on the first page that it would be great because there was a wonderful passage about the hell of being a hostage… the food’s dreadful, the place stinks, everybody is vile… he gives a whole list of why this place is so awful and then he says, ‘But it’s better than being in Strabane’.
“Every night when you said that, even in Newyork where nobody had ever been to Strabane, it was a show-stopper.”
Mcguinness is currently Emeritus
Professor of Creative Writing at UCD.
He worked with Boyle on another BBC production called The Hen House and has not been surprised by the director’s subsequent success.
Completely
“Even though we were young, both Danny and myself, starting out, we knew enough not to blow the gig completely,” says Mcguinness.
“He was extremely ambitious, extremely articulate and extremely helpful, but I think that the boys that were in it would know that by God he was a hard taskmaster.
“He knew what he was doing even then.
“It was his first film, we were learning, we made mistakes, we learned from mistakes, but he was exceptionally benevolent at the time.
“It was very clear he was going to go very far.”