Starring in today’s Hospital Pass are two exit-bound Connacht men and a Meath man who gives veterans a bad name.
They say timing is the essence of comedy, so it’s probably fair to say that if Graham Geraghty doesn’t starting getting his timing right a once great career could start becoming more than a little comic.
And by timing in this instance we mean knowing when to call a dignified end to the affair. Sporting legends are often heightened by an early departure; Eric Cantona voluntarily, George Best, eh, less so.
In the GAA there’s a long established tradition of star men drifting off into brief retirements before returning in a blaze of glory. Maybe it’s part of the DNA that makes a star: the hunger for attention that marked them out as special in the first place then prompting a yearning for the adulation that comes with an early withdrawal. (No snickering at the back…)
Great hurlers like Lar Corbett and DJ Carey announced early retirements before being persuaded back into the fold. Brian McGuigan in Tyrone is a prime example from the last few weeks.
Graham Geraghty would have lots in common with those … if he’d retired when he was 30.
Instead, Geraghty was 35 when he called time on his inter-county career four years ago, came back into the fold last year.
And instead of marking that down as a bad idea he looks like he wants to come back for more this year. Quoted in the Irish Independent this morning the almost 40-something said, “I have to get an injection in the Achilles so hopefully I might play some part later on. I think that usually takes three or four weeks to kick in. I haven’t ruled it out 100 per cent yet. But at the minute I’m just concentrating on the selecting side of it and getting the team ready for the next day against Carlow.”
On the road out west
When you’re one of the lesser sides in Connacht it doesn’t seem to matter if you win your first game in the championship or you lose your first game in the championship. Roscommon’s hopes were routinely extinguished by Galway a few weeks ago, while Leitrim lived to get whipped another day following their win over London in the GAA’s equivalent of Papua New Guinea against the Solomon Islands.
But at the risk of coming over all Sylvia Plath for a second, it’s a case of win or lose there’s no good news. Because today has seen a couple of significant departures.
No sooner had news broken that Roscommon vice-captain David Keenan would be joining teammate David O’Gara in making the move to the United States for the rest of the summer, when a town crier ambled slowly around the streets of Carrick-on-Shannon announcing the enforced end of Ciaran Egan’s stint as Leitrim full back.
“Disciplinary reasons” was the rather unspecific reason given for the departure. Egan shouldn’t worry. Leitrim will be making their own departure fairly soon.
