In today’s Hospital Pass, we consider the two sides of being an inter-county footballer from Tyrone, and why the champagne is still on ice in Meath.
It must be tough being an inter-county footballer in Tyrone. Alright, you get a bit of adulation, especially if you’re lucky enough to have been one of a group of players who could grow their beards in tandem and dummy your way past Dublin defenders for fun en route to three All-Irelands in six summers.
However, there’s a flip side to adulation. It may be hate, or it may be envy. Whatever label you apply to it, it isn’t nice.
Joe McMahon is one of those beard-growers and a player who has been brilliant for Tyrone in every position bar water-boy – and who knows, he may well have been water-boy too at some stage, for all I know.
Earlier this year, McMahon’s jaw was broken in two places in a club match, forcing him to require surgery at Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry. He also lost some teeth, but he made it back in action soon enough to play a part in Tyrone’s journey to another All-Ireland quarter-final.
They lost that game to Dublin last week, meaning the players could again focus on club action this weekend – and if they were quaking in their boots it was probably with good reason.
Sure enough, there is another senior Tyrone star nursing a suspected broken jaw today, and this time it’s none other than two-time All-Ireland winning captain Brian Dooher, who picked up the injury during his club Clann na Gael’s league clash with Killyman.
Although we’re not sure whether “picked up” is really the right way to describe it.
McEnaney on his bike
Meath supporters up and down the land – alright, up and down the county – could have been forgiven for allowing their heart a little leap of joy when they read the following headline in the media today:
“McEnaney ready to call it a day”
Banty “Seamus” McEnaney, the first outsider ever to be given the task of showing Meath people how to play football, was hardly a unanimous choice in the county when he took the job last year, and having already admitted he was unsure of whether the County Board had enough cash to keep him in the job he really had the heart for another year, it looked like the time had come for a parting of the ways.
Popping the corks on champagne bottles is a regular occurrence on Monday mornings in parts of Meath – they don’t call it the Royal County for nothing – but before they did so, they would have read on just to make sure.
And it seems the only McEnaney heading anywhere in the near future is Seamus’s brother Pat, the referee.
Quoted in the Mail on Sunday at the weekend – so we got ourselves worked up over something that isn’t even new news? – he said, “It’s coming to a stage in my life where the National League doesn’t excite me anymore. It’s a bit like an inter-county player, when he doesn’t want to play the National League, but he’ll play championship. Once that begins to happen it’s time to look at where you’re going.
“It’s only the championship matches and the cut grass that gets me. While the thought of going up to referee Derry and Tyrone in the National League might excite a young referee, it takes the championship to excite me at the minute.
“I need to move on. I need to do other things. I’m doing a lot of cycling at the minute, a bit of mountain-climbing, kayaking – stuff that I never had time to do in my life. I’ve a couple of good juvenile teams I’m looking after. That’s going well. Refereeing is a bit of an individual thing; it’s a bit mé féin.”
