PAUL BRADY has been World Champion five times but if he walked past you in the street, you wouldn't even blink.

Four times he has returned to Dublin Airport with the crown in his hands - in 2012 the world handball championship was held in Citywest only a few miles up the road from his Cavan home - but scarcely ever has there been a welcoming posse to greet him off the plane. Save for immediate family and friends backing him, Brady's incredible journey has mostly been one in solitude.

He is 35 now and well into his final year as a competitive handballer, the greatest one in the history of the sport at that.

There will be no long goodbye, no elongated, Sinatra-like, curtain call. Once his days of competing professionally are over Brady says he will never play the sport recreationally.

Somewhere along the way his passion became a job. A means to an end. Maybe it was the constant travel, the time spent on his own or the insane preparation he demanded of himself. No matter what he is close to an end now.

Disappointingly, it has taken the outside world a long time to sit up and take notice of his achievements but at least as he enters the late winter of his career, his exploits have finally grasped peoples attention.

"He is an example of a lad who is 35 and has won so much," says Kilkenny hurler Richie Hogan.  "Yet, I still see him drive from Cavan to DCU to go to the gym because it's the best gym around him. I don't know how many miles that is but he does that three days a week or drives into Dublin to play someone who is pretty competitive in a challenge game.

"That's the sort of stuff he does. What separates these guys from the average guys. It's things like that. He's won ten All-Ireland doubles, 10 All-Ireland singles, five World Championships in a row - the first Irish man to win one, never mind five. But you see what he puts into it. Endless, endless, endless hours of work."

And most of it unseen.

Sure there have been flirtations with fame and brief cameos in the public eye, but Brady rarely saw the microscope shining on him and when he did he tended to turn the other way. It's not that he was uncomfortable with the attention, merely he had gotten so far without it.

A few weeks ago, leading US website TheSkinny365.com put him at number 14 on the list of top 15 athletes of all time. On the list Brady took his place alongside vaunted icons like Pele and Mohammed Ali.

"Most people are probably asking,”WHO”? But, Paul Brady is the greatest, and most accomplished handball player of all-time," the website wrote.

We pointed out to Brady the irony of a US media outlet having to acknowledge him before his home country did likewise, but he didn't bite.

"Nah, that little bit of fuss didn't mean a thing to me," Brady said. "That's just outside noise. I've seen it at various stages during my career where there's a hoopla over something like that You ignore it because it means nothing. If I wanted attention and hype I would have gone into a different sport.

"I really admire Conor McGregor and Katie Taylor because they come from minority sports but have gone global. But that was never going to happen with handball. So, all I could ever do was try to promote the game in the right way. You get single minded about it then. That's why I don't really listen to the outside world."

Why would he when so few were there to back him along the way. We asked if he ever attracted a major sponsor?

"Not really," he smiles. "But I wouldn't have pushed myself either so I have to take the blame."

He could have done with one.

At the start he had to scour hotel price-lists to find the best value. Up to a few years ago he remembers booking a ticket back to Dublin in a US airport and wincing when the desk official ran his credit card through the machine.

"I honestly didn't know if there was enough left on the card to get me home," he admits.

"I had a cheque for $200 that I had won from tournament prize money but that wouldn't have got me home either. I sweated as the card went through. It was tough going at the start."

As a pro handballer, Brady regularly appears on the US sports broadcaster ESPN but mostly remains anonymous stateside too. He says it suits just fine.

"I'm low key," he insists. "I'd rather live my life right for handball, recovering, diet and nutrition, massage than seek attention. Now, I would be a wealthy man if I chose the PR and didn't have the sports massages to pay for but those sessions have kept me healthy. I have spent tens of thousands on them over the years, but they are so important."

Last year, he won the World Championship for a fifth and final time. The competition rolls around every three years so he won't be competing again. In fact, in the coming 12 months he will bow out of competition altogether.

Life is moving on. He is job sharing as a teacher, working one week in school, travelling to the US the next to play. He is newly engaged to Shauna, and studying for a Masters in Sports and Exercise Performance in University of Ulster, Jordanstown.

"I've had to handle pressure for the past 12 years," he says. "But the pressure is off me now and there's going to be a new world champion in three years' time. I have done my thing."

Yet people at home, a minority it must be said, still don't get his achievements.

When the TheSkinny365 listed him, broadcasters of one Irish sports podcast contacted them to complain about Brady's inclusion.

Madness.

But Brady just laughs.

He laughs again when you ask if he will hang around to win a sixth title in Alaska in 2018. He will be 40, but he could still win it.

"Nah, I'm done," he insists.

We forget, too, that he also spent 10 years as a Cavan senior footballer, merging a fine Gaelic career with his burgeoning prowess on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Exhausting.

For the first time those monthly trips to the States are becoming a bit of a hindrance. So he is wise to exit stage left with his reputation fully intact.

"I wanted to live a world champion and I want to die one," he said.

Mission accomplished. Yet again.

DAMIAN LAWLOR'S BLOG

 

ALL THE WAY, TONY BROWNE

NEXT May, if the Man Above spares me, I’ll hit the big 40. And if I’m being entirely honest, it’s not exactly something I’m looking forward to.

I remember when I was young; reporting on the Tipperary Masters team on a winter’s Sunday, and thinking that these guys were positively lucky not to be in a nursing home, never mind on a hurling field.

Now, though, I’m just a year shy of that mark myself and wondering what the hell has happened in the past 20 years. And, of course, the Masters competition has been scrapped by the GAA –so the only positive of turning 40 has been taken away from me.

When you get to this stage, you reflect on what you have done to-date and in my case, career-wise at least, I’m not yet where I want to be. That brings its own concerns. But I’m probably no different to thousands of others in that regard.

Then you look around to see who else is in and around the 40-mark and you can’t help but compare and contrast. Lads you went to school with, for instance, have they a rounder belly than you or a receding hairline? Did they make it big, or crash and burn? How do you stand with these guys?

In my job, you also get to see sporting figures you grew up with move through the channels, from rookies to veterans to coaches. Tony Browne and Brendan Cummins are about the only ones of my ‘vintage’ still left about the place. I’ll give my thoughts on Cummins at another time, but Browne turns 40 today and apart from Anthony Rainbow, who still looks like a boyband member, I’ve never met anyone like Tony.

Last year, we were doing some filming for a GAA show when Rainbow rung looking for directions. I told the make-up girls to tell me what age he was. They reckoned 29. I had to tell them to go again - by 10 years.

Browne is of a similar breed. The Peter Pan of hurling. I was lucky enough to be on countless All Star tours with him over the years and I saw at firsthand how he looked after himself. A quiet corner and the bit of a chat. A few beers to be sipped on during the week, but only a few. The odd steak but no fat. A bit of fishing in his spare time and a word for everyone.

You meet him and he’s so laid back but behind that carefree nature is a hungry tiger, a born winner. For the past few years he’s taken it easy during the league, worked hard on prehab, stretching, diet and core conditioning. He’s usually trained on his own from January to March and in the past worked on fitness programmes drawn up by the likes of Gerard Hartmann.

He carries the secrets of Waterford's successes and failures over the past 21 years and thus his experience will be essential on the line some day in their ongoing quest for the Liam McCarthy Cup.

But he’s not finished playing just yet. Last weekend, he came on to massive applause against Westmeath in Mullingar. He would have been mortified by the reception he got and even more so if anyone thought he couldn’t do a job on the pitch.

I’ve interviewed him several times over his career and he’s always maintained he’d be out the gate if he felt he couldn’t contribute.

“I don't pick and choose with Waterford hurling,” he told me. “I work harder than anyone. Sure I have to. I can still train as hard as any of the lads; the only difference is the next day they'll be ready to go again and I won't. That's the only difference."

John Mullane told me recently how Browne has lifted his teammates after their defeat to Clare. But he was doing the same thing 20 years ago. He delivered the keynote speech at half-time in the replayed 1992 All-Ireland U21 final against Offaly. At 19, Browne was their captain and laid himself bare with an oration that drove his team out of the dressing room with fire in their bellies. They landed their only ever title at that level.

It’s impossible to imagine a Waterford team without him now. He’ll also find it hard to adjust to life without intercounty training. I only hope he doesn’t go into politics. His family is steeped in Fianna Fail; his grandfather Patrick 'Fad' Browne served as a TD in the 1960s and '70s while his father, Tony senior, also represented the city as a councilor  and there was all sorts of talk that he would run in the last general election, but Tony is way too genuine and open for that sort of lark.

For the past 20 years, I have looked specifically for him; to see his reaction as Waterford bowed out of another championship without reaching the Holy Grail. I’ve seen Brian Cody go over and embrace him, I’ve seen players from other teams seek him out the minute the final whistle has blown.

There’s a reason for that. The man may never have won an All-Ireland but he’s up there with Ring, Shefflin, Carey, the best of them. The gas thing is while the rest of us are wishing him a happy birthday and preparing for his farewell, in his own mind and quiet way, given the unpredictable nature of this year’s championship, he’ll be quietly targeting this September as the most glorious curtain call possible to his inter county career.  

As for me? Well, turning 40 next year is bad enough, but not seeing this fella around the place anymore really is enough to bring a tear to the eye.

O'HARA DIRECT AS USUAL - JUST WITH A NEW TEAM!

THERE have been times over the years when I’ve watched Joe Brolly come out with some outlandish soundbite on TV and I have cringed.

On other occasions I have let a shoe, or the nearest thing to me, fly when Pat Spillane has gone on one of his rants.

But I’m wrong to get worked up. Those two lads know what they are doing. They know how to rattle cages, push buttons and ultimately promote their product.

And finally, I’m around long enough to realise that we need them in the GAA – for good or bad.

It’s taken me a while to get there, though.

Some years ago, Brolly labeled the Waterford footballers a ‘pub team’. He was half the reason why I then spent a year travelling around with that said team, documenting their personal struggles and their battles to get out of Division 4. In 2009 I joined them for the season with the aim of disproving Brolly’s theory high on my agenda. One of the Waterford players, Paul Ogle, postponed an operation to have a tumour removed to play a league game against Cavan. He was part of no pub team, I can tell you.

Those guys may have played the role of whipping boys for an eternity but don’t disrespect them. I’ve always wanted to say that to Brolly but whenever I’ve met him I’ve been pretty much taken aback at how sociable and fun he is and, to be honest, I’ve never bothered to lower the tone.

Spillane, too, seems like a decent sort. A few weeks ago he was on about how the Cork footballers were regressing and this weekend he was telling us that we could write them off at our peril. No matter, though, I’ve made more U-turns myself than OJ Simpson on a Los Angeles freeway. Last weekend he called Ballybofey a tight pitch. In fact, it’s bigger than Croke Park and Thurles. But again, being a total scatterbrain myself, I’ve mixed up dates and scorelines more often than is right for any journalist.  Let he without sin and all that….

The bottom line is we need these guys. Just 1200 people turned up to Cork-Limerick on Saturday night. Only for Brolly and company and their sometimes outrageous views, attendances could be even poorer this year – particularly in the early stages of the season.

That’s why I was a little surprised at the backlash Eamonn O’Hara has received for his Sunday Game analysis on Kevin Walsh and the Sligo set-up. O’Hara is slick, looks well and talks well too. He is exactly the type of pundit RTE should be looking at. Though he doesn’t have a stack of All-Ireland medals, he is relevant, tuned into modern ways and not afraid to call it.

He is fully entitled to have a pop at whoever he wants.

As a viewer I would have felt shortchanged had he come out and gave the whole ‘London are a coming team, Sligo were just unlucky’ sort of guff. The truth is that this Sligo team has been in decline for two years and Kevin Walsh has probably stayed on a year too long. But Walsh, who clearly had differing views to O’Hara regarding his role as a squad member in 2013, is a good fella and big enough to ship this criticism. He is an All-Ireland winner, was one of the best midfielders the game has ever seen, and his initial exploits with Sligo will surely leave him firmly in the frame for a crack with Galway in the years to come.

People have said O’Hara got personal with the criticism but I think his analysis was clinical and well formulated. He spoke of in-fighting among the county board, an alleged poor quality of training, the fact that their centre of excellence was at a standstill and gave us a good general insight as well as a specific critique of the manager.

O’Hara gets paid to call a spade a spade for RTE and he did just that. There may have been some baggage attached to his viewpoint but he works for RTE now. He is no longer a member of the Sligo panel and maybe feels he deserved better treatment after all his years of distinguished service. If that’s the case he’s quite entitled to call it.

I’d certainly rather sit down to listen to him, Ger Loughnane and Donal Og Cusack than the likes of Jamie Redknapp and Ray Wilkins.

We spend the whole year looking for pundits to get off the fence and call it straight and when one finally does we climb to the high moral ground. It’s mad.

Take O’Hara’s analysis for what it is. His old team has been in freefall for a while now. They were beaten by London so obviously, there are mounting problems. He possibly feels he should be still involved but he’s not. He is still, however, perfectly positioned to offer his tuppence worth on what is going wrong.

Unlike pundits who tip the teams their own counties are playing, unlike pundits who sit on the fence and get paid for it, O’Hara showed loyalty to his new team – RTE. Having given almost two decades of loyalty to his first love, Sligo, he more or less had a door closed in his face.

Now he is taking a leaf out of Brolly and Spillinane’s book. Playing for a new team. That’s life. That’s the way this game works.

WHATEVER YOU SAY, SAY NOTHING!

WHATEVER YOU SAY, SAY NOTHING!

THIS weekend, counties all over Ireland will hold their ‘open nights’. This is where supporters and press get to meet teams ahead of their respective championships.

Now, for any journalist, an open night can be a challenging experience.

I remember interviewing John Carroll from Tipperary ahead of the 2001 All-Ireland final. Usually, we like to sit the players down, maybe throw them a cup of tea and a bit of grub to relax them. But this one was taking place on the field. In between drills! I got a feeling the interview wasn’t going to put Michael Parkinson’s position at the BBC under much pressure.

Still, I knew Carroll fairly well anyway and it wasn’t exactly going to be the most stressful of interviews.  Or so I thought.

No sooner had I thrust a Dictaphone in front of the Roscrea man when an army of Tipp supporters surrounded him. It suddenly became a Them v Moi situation and Carroll, the most laid back man this side of the Atlantic, loved every second of it.

“John, are you worried that Roscrea’s poor form might hinder your build-up to this final?” I asked. Harmless enough.

But Carroll hit the trigger quicker than Johnny Pilkington pulling on a ground ball.

“Poor form?” he gasped, mockingly. “Sure didn’t we beat ye (Kilruane) two weeks ago!”

Cue uproar from the ‘fans’. ‘Waaahheeeyyyy,’ they roared. “Aboy, Carroll. You tell him. Lawlor, you clown!”

They clapped him heartily on the back and I got a few good natured thumps myself. But I’m not as tough as Carroll. They bloody hurt.

Face reddening, I ventured another question, desperately looking for redemption.

“Are you concerned, John, that Wexford nearly caught you in the drawn semi-final. Ye seemed to collapse when Martin Storey came on?”

“Sure didn’t we win the replay by nine points?” Carroll replied.

Cue the crowd again. “Waaahhheeeeyyyyy. Abbooyy Carroll!!!!”

Off I limped, more humbled than Fianna Fail in the last general election.

Anyways, there’ll be lots of that this weekend. Open nights are a great idea provided they are run right but this notion of interviewing a player on the pitch? Ah, forget about it.

Last week, fellow journalist Ewan MacKenna lamented the access that writers have to players and managers. He recounted that he made 52 phone calls to one manager looking for a chat but with no luck. Now personally, I wouldn’t have made five calls, but Ewan is probably more determined than I and fair play to him.

It’s important now to remember that players are not professional and they really do not owe us a thing. But Ewan’s column (for the Eircom sports website and well worth a read) makes the point that a bit of PR can be good for both the players and the Association.

It got me thinking. When I first started working off on the national media scene in 1998 it was a totally different landscape. Tom O’Riordan, formerly of the Indo, used to tell how players would bring the best china out when he called to visit. I never had any of that, mind you, but I have nonetheless met some great characters along the way.

The best memories? Frank Roche from The Herald tearing his cruciate on Langton’s dance floor after a Kilkenny press night about 13 years ago. Back then the Kilkenny press night was a tough gig and Rochey decided to unleash some stress on the dance floor. In fairness he was pulling some moves, dancing to the smashing tribute group Abba-esque. Then came the dreaded tear.

The fact that he hobbled over to the Offaly presser a night later showed what a brave old soldier he is. That same night Gentleman Joe Dooley, one of the most co-operative hurlers we ever came across, gave us the slip. Joe was somewhere between 70 and 76 at the time and still hurling at the highest level, breaking all sorts of records. On this occasion, however, he wanted to keep it low key.

We couldn’t find him anywhere, not even when we offered up a hobbling Rochey as a sacrificial lamb. Disappointed, we headed off and booked into some local B & Bs. Seven or eight of the lads found a roof in this particular B & B and they were sitting down munching sandwiches and biscuits about an hour later when the bould Joe walked into the kitchen. His face fell like the property market. The B & B belonged to him and his wife, Marie! Everyone burst out laughing. I think the boys interviewed him over a full Irish breakfast the following morning! Where else would you get it?

A year later we hit Tuam for a Galway footballers press night. We did our days work and then made for the west. After a few hours of interviews we filed some copy and made for Martin MacNamara’s pub. He was the Galway goalkeeper at the time and just hours after we interviewed him he came over again and chatted to us for the evening. With a big match approaching he didn’t see out the night with us but before he left he pulled a bottle of rum down from a dusty shelf. And I mean dusty. I’d say the bottle had seen a pair of hands in 20 years and judging by the green faces on the boys the next morning ‘twasn’t a vintage that wintered well either. From then on, I always looked out for Martin Mac and even though we are impartial, you’d be thrilled to see him win medals.

All that was a far cry from when the Mayo players ran out the back door of a hotel before the 1996 All-Ireland final. They made their move just as the press was coming in the front door. The Cavan boys pulled a similar stroke soon after.

Three weeks before a particular All-Ireland final I remember going to one county and asking if there was a press pack.

“There certainly is,” the chairman replied. “Our PRO Tommy (not real name) has it.”

“Grand,” says I. “I’ll head over to him to get it.”

“Oh God, no,” the chairman replied. “Tommy doesn’t like the press at all.”

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

We’ve seen it all at this stage.

From one player driving us around the local area trying to get a lock-in, to another player trying to hit a journalist by drilling a sliotar at him from the far side of the field.

From Rochey tearing his cruciate to players freezing in terror when they are asked: ‘So how is the mood in the camp?’

But it’s all part of it. We drive on. No matter who goes to ground, there are always great characters and colour about if you look hard enough. That’s the glory of the GAA.

   

  

THE FIRST BUDS OF SUMMER BLOOM

“LAWLOR, get your fat hole up that hill.”

Sometimes Horse Regan’s booming voice wakes me in the middle of the night and I jolt, half afraid that he’s coming to get me again. It was 1998 and I had just started a Journalism H Dip at NUI Galway. H Dips these days are like bank overdrafts – most everyone has them but they’re only a short term solution to get you to where you want to go. Back then, though, they were big business.

So too was the college hurling team.

And like a second-rate clown who thinks he can juggle more than two balls I decided to try out for the team. It didn’t seem to bother me that I was stone wall useless. Being such a gentleman it didn’t seem to bother Horse either. Horse was our Sports Officer, the side’s manager and he called all the shots. Thanks to him, and despite the fact that I was considered entirely dispensable at junior B level back home in Kilruane, I was suddenly drafted onto the 1998 NUI Galway Fitzgibbon Cup training squad. It helped that my friend and classmate Terence Fahy, who was on the Clare team at the time, was one of the college’s best hurlers. He introduced me to the lads and I was left be. Jesus, though, was I overawed! Finbarr Gantley, Gary Hanniffy, Darren Hanniffy, Dara Coen… a heap of All-Ireland winners across all grades.

And me. Running up a hill in Daingean alongside them. With a fat arse and Horse roaring at me.

He could see I was struggling but deep down I think he admired the fact that I wouldn’t give up. That and the fact that I actually managed to lap Dara Coen. ‘Think of what good the training will do,” Horse roared as I wheezed past him. ‘’Twill benefit you in May back home if nothing else. We’ve the Fitzgibbon in March but you think of May – you’ll be on fire back home.” In other words, you’re complete shite but you’re a good fella to have around the place.

Still, fate deals all sorts of hands. The words of John Cahill, one of our managers back home, rang through as I tried to find my way. JC has been over every team in the club by now and once took charge of a junior side that wasn’t too fancied to say the least. JC, though, had some great advice. ‘Lads,” he advised as we trailed our opponents by 15 points at the break. “The longer ye stay in this dressing room the longer ye stay in the championship.”

With such wise counsel embedded in the inner chambers of my mind I wafted around the college team like a bad smell. We played a Fitzgibbon league game against UL and as there were exams I was one of only seven subs to tog. With about 15 minutes left, and men going down like front line soldiers, Frank Keane, our coach, went through the dregs of the squad, enquiring if any of us was a forward. Turns out I was the only one they had – and even still it’s debatable as to whether I actually fit the criteria. Much to my sheer mystery - and the shock of my housemates from Nenagh (JP Guilmartin, Mick Grey, Gunner Kelly and Tom Conroy) who had turned out to cheer/jeer me at every chance - I was thrust in for the last quarter. I think the ham roll I’d finished just an hour earlier repeated on me but I hit a few balls, got a point and was unlucky for a goal.

With a pep firmly in my step I threw the books aside again the following week and went down to UCC with the boys. We had no goalie and so the utility man (I was equally hopeless in a number of positions) was this time thrown into the line of fire to face Johnny Enright and the rest of his hotshots. I was a bag of nerves, so anxious that I could barely hold the hurl, but I didn’t let myself down too badly at the same time. Only let in two or three.

A couple of more training sessions and I regularly made the college intermediate team. Gradually, though, if I’m being honest, every passing week showed my teammates and managers just how bad I was. After some self-counsel I decided that my best days were positively behind me and I was suddenly struck down by a mystery virus which took me out of the line of fire.

College ended soon enough anyway and I returned to the safe confines of the Kilruane junior B team, alongside such luminary talents as Cronan Casey, where I felt a lot more at ease. Until I was taken off against Lorrha.

Now, being taken off in a junior B game is about as humbling an experience as you can get. When I was asked afterwards by our manager what was wrong, the immortal words of another Kilruane man, Paddy Spain, came into my head.

Thinking of the lofty position I had commanded with those All-Ireland winners just a few weeks earlier I attempted to explain my demise - using Paddy’s classic line. “Des,” I said. “’Tis like this. It’s hard to flap with the penguins when you’ve soared with the eagles.” He looked at me in both bewilderment and pity.

There’s a message in all of this. It’s May, the evenings are longer, and apart from a cracking league final to look forward to this weekend, the championship also starts. And no matter how awful I was there’s a huge part of me wishes I was still sledging away at some level. For those of you who are, the hard work and the winter graft is now complete. The ground is hard and the crowds are coming. There is much hope and promise in the air. It’s surely the best time of year.

A TIME AND PLACE FOR EVERYTHING

A TIME AND A PLACE FOR EVERYTHING

THE weekend just passed was a very special one. Not because Manchester United won the premiership, or not because Kilkenny and Tipperary both put on exhibitions of hurling, but because our little daughter Chloe was born, joining my wife, Ruth, and little boy, Jamie, in the latest generation of Lawlor clan.

It was also a weekend for being there for Ruth and keeping my trap shut, the latter not coming naturally to me. A maternity ward is perhaps the greatest place on earth to be; a haven for little miracles but it’s also a potential minefield for the male species. Everything you say can and will be used against you in the Court of Cop On.

The last time I was there, two years back, the consultant held our little boy aloft and showed him to me. My wife enquired whether we just had a boy or girl. “I don’t know,” I blurted.

All I could see was a little face looking at me. I was in a heap. You’d want to see the looks I got!

This time around I went in with a clear vision of my role. I’d take on a Denis Irwin type role. I’d be hugely dependable, always there in the background if needed, but I wasn’t going to speak unless I was spoken to either.

It worked out just fine for the most part.

Sort of.

As the day rolled on I couldn’t help making a clown of myself all over again.

5 things a guy doesn’t say in a maternity ward….

1)      Jaysus, wouldn’t your arse get fair numb in this chair? – Indeed it would, especially after about 8 hours of sitting and waiting but, wait, in the grand scheme of things it’s not the biggest deal in the world that you are uncomfortable. I sort of grasped that when the nurse shot dagger number one in my direction.

2)      By God, they have a great spread in the canteen there today. – Her Good Self hadn’t eaten in about 24 hours and wasn’t likely to for another good spell. Turns out she didn’t want to hear what I had for lunch. Nor did the midwives. Dagger number two was launched.

3)      I’m so tired I could sleep for a week. – You certainly are. And you probably would. Again, though, this isn’t really about you. Shut up you ape.

4)      Breathe in now and hold it. -  I was only trying to help! Turns out you don’t breathe in and hold it at all. You blow out as strongly as you can when there’s a contraction coming. (or something like that – I don’t think that’s right either). Anyway, I was only thinking of the stretching exercises we did with the Tipp U17 footballers last year.

5)      I wouldn’t say no, nurse!  - Turns out the offer of ‘What would you say to some tea and toast?’ at 2am - when baby Chloe was safely delivered - wasn’t for me at all. Dagger number five.

Luckily for me, while I didn’t have a notion of what to do, the good doctors, nurses and midwives played a blinder. And thanks to them and my wife we all got there.

Mr Dependable himself, Denis Irwin, however, would probably shudder at my efforts.

JACKSON LORDS IT ONCE MORE

Back to sport and here’s a great yarn for you.

John ‘Jackson’ Kiely is over the Waterford minor footballers this year. Last Saturday, they took on Limerick in the Munster championship opener. Limerick had been training since October and Waterford only managed one 30 minute session before the game – that on the Thursday night before they played championship. Many of Jackson’s minors were involved with Dungarvan Colleges, Dungarvan CBS and St Augustine’s in respective schools All-Ireland championships up ‘til last week while many others were playing minor and U21 hurling and football for their clubs. So Kiely had no chance to get them together.

He didn’t panic, though. He knows every club player in Waterford and knew that the lads he wanted would be super-fit and well tuned. Earlier in the year they got a challenge against Carlow but that was it. There was no other gap to get the players together. A week before the game word went out that Jackson was looking to get a panel to play Limerick. 49 youngsters showed up for that one and only training session. 49! In a county where underage football has been struggling for oxygen for quite a while.

They played two 15 minute games, brought the players in, chose 34 of them and told them they were going to rip at Limerick from the start. There would be no blanket defence or anything like that. They told the other 19 lads they wouldn’t forget them and would be back to look at them.

With time just up Limerick scored two late goals but still came out second as Waterford clung onto a famous 3-10 – 3-9 win.

Later that day I watched the U21 semi-finals and saw the finest specimens of athletes shoot wide after wide – the same in the hurling league semi-finals a day later. Maybe it’s too simplistic, but what a pity more managers just don’t let their teams out to play. Fellas that age are playing up to three to four games a week at this stage of the season and they need to be let enjoy what they are doing.

Rather than force them to cram their schedules more Jackson trusted the raw materials at hand to come together at the right time. And once again he was at the heart of a milestone for Waterford football, having led the county to two junior All-Ireland championships in the past before raising the senior team from also rans to a side to be reckoned with. I put that to him when we spoke on Sunday night, but typically he deflected the plaudits.

"Not at all,” he shrugged. “I always maintained that if we get the best lads out on the field at the same time in this county we’d be as good as anybody.”

One training session and one win. Waterford won’t win the Munster championship but all the same they buried a few myths last weekend.

IN choosing a topic for my first blog I glanced back at a few notes I compiled over the weekend.

All the usual stuff… What would relegation mean for Cork and hurling in general….How would the four NFL semi-finalists would have coped if a black card system had been in place on Sunday last? …Then a vague notion to check in with London hurling captain, John Walsh, to see how they managed to beat a lively Meath side and secure promotion to Division 2A next year.

Then he came into my head. I remembered that I hadn’t seen him in a press box this year. And it really hit me that those days are over.

Johnny Murphy was a friend of mine. Nothing special in that – he was a friend of most everyone that knew him.

But when I’d head off for a match on a Sunday morning and head over to Thurles, Limerick, Cork, Waterford, Dungarvan, wherever, I’d think of Johnny en route. And I’d look forward to hearing the latest yarn or story he’d have for me.

We first met in 1998. I was just out of college from NUI, Galway and working with the Evening Echo. Cork, like Galway, was a serious spot and I loved it. Not long into my role as a news and political reporter I was invited to a function for Johnny. He had clocked in 25 years service - or something in that region - as an Examiner journalist. So a function was arranged at the Garda Club and after a flow of orations I remember the formalities ended on this particular note from the editor of the paper at the time, Brian Looney.

“John A Murphy is a legend,” Looney said.

Cue much applause.

About four hours later I was heading for the gents and who did I see a few steps down the stairs from me only Johnny. He was mumbling away to himself. It was only as I got closer that I could properly make out what he was saying.

“They’re dead fecking right,” he said cheerily to no-one, his mouth slanting to one side.

“I am a fecking legend.”

On another occasion a Dungarvan sleuth and friend of mine recalled a publican hearing a catalogue of knocks and thumps on the front door of his premises many years back. It was past 2am and the owner still had a few locals inside, sipping away and chatting. He opened the door only to find the polis outside.

“I’m f***d here,” he thought to himself as he opened up only for two officers to march past him. They went straight to the scrum of locals. Johnny was flanking the group, always ready for a turnover.

“Will you come on, Johnny, for f**k sake?” one Garda shouted. “We’re waiting for bloody ages outside.”

They weren’t there to take names. They were there to give Johnny a lift home. Sure he knew everyone.

The stories go on. These are just two of my favourites.

Johnny was a right good reporter. He got some great scoops, including the kidnapping of Lord and Lady Donoughmore in Clonmel, the arrest of the Claudia gun running ship off the Waterford coast, and he broke the infamous ‘Angel of Death’ story, otherwise known as the Dungarvan Aids scare.

He was also the first man you’d ring for a number or a bit of advice. Last year the Gaelic Writers Association honoured him for his lifetime achievements and I’m so glad we did for it meant a lot to him.

It’s heading towards the start of the 2013 championship now and all our attention will focus on games, results, controversies, suspensions, Hawkeye, cynicism … you know yourself.

Slowly, there is less and less room for characters in Gaelic Games, and equally in the reporting world of Gaelic Games. It’s an era of mass media production and consumption. Everything comes in an instant and it has to. Nothing holds.

But Johnny took life at his own pace and it did him no harm at all. He bowed out surrounded by a loving family, content that he had an illustrious career behind him and he closed his eyes content in the knowledge that he managed to get on famously with most everyone. There’s a lot to be said for that.