In an extract from Talking Gaelic, the new book by Eamonn Rafferty, top comedian Patrick Kielty reveals his previous career as a teenage GAA administrator - and how the Irish News gave him his big break in showbusiness
I know the reason why the GAA won't let RUC men play - because nobody would beat them. It's as simple as that. All the bigwigs in Croke Park have it sussed. Just imagine playing against RUC United in the club championship. On the 21-yard line there would be barbed wire; on the 14-yard line, bollards; on the six yard line, ramps; and two cameras on top of the posts. The opposing full-forward would be racing through and out would come the torch: "Excuse me Sir, have you any means of identification on you please? Is this your own football?"
They'd win hands down. It's not because of bigotry that they are kept out. Don't let anyone tell you that. All those men who go to Congress with their ties sticking out of their tank-tops are shrewder than you might think.
I should know. I went to a few Congresses in the 1980s, representing Down. Here I was, still at school, running around the hall in the fashion of the day - baseball boots with the tongues out - meeting the pipe smokers and pioneer pins of Ireland; men who remembered the Polo Grounds in 1947 and Michael O'Hehir on the wireless.
Down Bord na nOg Secretary, Patrick Kielty, had
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Paddy Kielty, as he is now, keeping his audience |
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Contact was contagious. You'd see a huddle of delegates chatting away and someone would be saying, "Ah now Ulster's a hard province to come out of". And soon you found yourself joining in: "Yeah, when Kerry won their All-Irelands, they only really had to play three matches. One got them out of Munster..." Then you'd suddenly catch yourself on and say "Jaysus, I'm as bad as them - get me out of here~!"
Actually, in fairness, I owe my career in comedy to the GAA. I was playing once in nets at a sevens tournament and came out for a ball, jumped back awkwardly and split my head open, needing hospital treatment. After that I became funny.
Then later, while still at school in Downpatrick, I was on the Rannafast panel. The trainer approached me and said if I didn't do some impressions of teachers in the school Christmas concert, then I wouldn't get my place on the team the next game. Despite my feigning stage fright, he was adamant: "Look Kielty, you don't understand - no concert, no f***ing place." I did the concert, got my place and let in six goals - not many laughs there.
In fairness though, I came from a strong GAA family, although I was never quite as keen on the game at primary school as my older brother and I watched him play a lot. I would stand on the sideline shouting, "Come on Our Fella", while the opposition's manager would be running up and own the line roaring, "Hey Ref, that hoor's over-age".
There was always some controversy, no matter how inconsequential the fame was, or the age of the players. I remember being a sub in an under-12 match at Dundrum and there were was little in the way of changing facilities at the pitch. You just jumped behind a ditch and got togged out. The referee gave his car keys to the manager of our team, who was my uncle, to mind. Towards the end of the match he gave the other side a penalty, from which they scored, beating us by a point. My uncle was furious and he flung the car keys into the middle of some whin bushes, saying to the ref:
"Now if you have eyes to find those keys, you have eyes to know that that was no f***ing penalty." Everything was incredibly important; every match seemed to be the test of manhood - "Now go out there lads and show them what Dundrum lads are made of."
It was that sort of thing, great when you're young.
There were other great stories: one about a referee who had been given charge of his first senior game, an important championship fixture. The day of the match he bumped into someone from his county board in the dressing-rooms, who started to talk to him about the fixture: "Aye, it's a big game right enough, good luck to you. Aye, there'll be a lot of people at....and even more at the replay."
Initially I played outfield, but I developed shin splints and the doctor said that my playing days were over and all I would be able to do was play in nets. I found out to my surprise that I was actually rather good at goalkeeping, so I stayed in nets.
I was sub keeper on the 1987 Down minor team that won the All-Ireland. It was a great day for all of us, and some of the guys on that team, notably Conor Deegan and James McCartan, went on to win on the 1991 and 1994 senior teams.
The following day we went to the traditional lunch for the teams at the Burlington. It was another great day among the bigwigs of the GAA. You always knew the minors: they were the ones hiding at the side of the free bar trying to have a sneaky drink. Some of the old pioneer pins would be saying, "I didn't know that boy took a drink now". These were the same lads who had been getting blocked all year with their mates, but they were expected to be the essence of sobriety whenever they were with adults.
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The 1987 Minor All-Ireland Winning Panel.
Back Row: Martin Fitzsimons, Barney Treanor, Paddy Tinnelly, Ronan Fitzpatrick, Larry Duggan, Tom Fegan, Dermot Hawkins, John Markey, Conor Deegan, Collie Burns, Michael Magill, Dominic Brannigan, Paddy Hannaway, Dan McCartan, Peter McGrath (Manager)
Middle Row: Collie McCoy, James McCartan, Cathal Murray, Raphael Haughian, Mark Quinn, Noel Haughian, Colin Mason, Neil Caulfield, John Kielty, Geoffrey Breen
Front Row: Patrick Kielty, Mark Matthews, Martin Carey, Paul Close, Rowan Lyons, Martin McGivern
Traditionally a person from each of the four teams sings a song, but we made history by being the first team not to. Instead, I did a skit commentary of the match. The sketch went down very well and included a few of the well-known personalities of the game and the not-so-well-known, like Big Ian. the next day's the Irish News carried the headline: 'Down Minors have the last laugh'. I still have it; it's probably the first review of my comedy career.
The next year I made the team but we were put out in the semi-final of the championship. In 1989, I had my place until the first round and then I was dropped. My county career ended there, with those words so common to Gaelic folk across the land: "F*** yiz". Maybe it was just as well, the way things turned out.
Now when I am back doing a gig in a GAA hall, it's funny to see what gets a laugh. If I do a joke about, say, Sinn Fein, they say "Here, there's no call for that now", or worse still if I mention something about priests and wee boys, up jump the pioneer pins: "This is a GAA hall, you shouldn't be running down the clergy...I heard you had an All-Ireland medal, get your dirty act outa here." I just say, "Thanks very much, pleasure doing business with you" and make a mental note not to come back. But do a joke about Ian Paisley and they would canonise you.
It's easy to fall into the trap of telling them the jokes they want to hear, but my act's my act and I don't compromise. Having said that, I think nationalist people on the whole do laugh at themselves; perhaps it's being the underdog? I don't know for sure, but my act is about having a go at sacred cows and the establishment, and you find in working-class Catholic Gaelic venues and working-class Protestant soccer venues that you are directing your comedy to targets outside the room - so you tend to go down well. In rugby club venues, on the other hand, if you're having a go at, say, the Northern Ireland Office, there might be someone in the audience working there, so they can be a bit more paranoid.
On the whole, the GAA crowds are up for it, though I wouldn't fancy cracking a joke about Eamonn Casey at Congress. The GAA, like soccer, is essentially working-class, and it's not part of any establishment clique. There's been a tendency to say that the GAA has changed and become more cosmopolitan, with better educated people playing it. The sub-text is, "We've as many vets and lawyers as you rugger-buggers" but that's a bit of bluff.
When I went to Queen's, I drank a lot with the GAA lads, but I wasn't part of the chaplaincy disco type; anyway, camogie girls never really did anything for me. At Queen's there was far more tolerance of Gaelic than I imagined there would be. GAA and rugby lads shared the same watering holes and swapped stories, but I often thought if I went back to parts of south Down and said to certain fellas I was out having a pint with a few rugby boys, they would not be all that happy.
The whole notion of identification with the nationalist community bores me: Catholics play Gaelic football, what's the problem? It's like people saying to me that my comedy is from both sides, as if I'm steering some scrupulous balance. No, I just tell the truth; it just so happens that it hits both sides.
That said, the GAA does have a problem with its dynamics. It's seen as a very conservative organisation, Catholic conservatism at its very worst. Part of the problem is that young people do not want to become involved in the structure of the organisation because they know they'd be banging their heads off a brick wall. The pioneer pins and the pipes are in the ascendant and resist change.
The response from young people I know is to forget about the politics of it and just play the game. There is a faint hope that maybe in time the walls between the communities will come tumbling down, though knowing the GAA, they'd probably get a grant from the EU to rebuild them.
When it comes to money, the GAA are in a world of their own. All those cute hoors running around with enough cash in their back pocket to choke a horse.
My father used to book bands, and the manager of a well-known showband told him that they were playing for a GAA club down the country once. They had hired a big marquee and put it up in the field. After the dance, the parish priest came wandering over with a supercilious grin on his face - an ominous sign.
The ould PP started out saying how well the band played and how well the crowd liked them. All the time he was tap-tapping a wad of notes on the manager's shoulder. Then the face tightened as he relayed how another GAA club down the road had also hired a big marquee and had pulled a bigger crowd, even taking away some of his potential audience. "I'm very, very unhappy", said the priest, putting on the poor mouth. "We didn't do as well as we had hoped, now that's the truth." With that, the manager grabbed the wad of notes, put them in his breast pocket and said "Well Father, there's not much point in the two of us being unhappy".
There's something special about Gaelic football, particularly if you're a Down fan, because we're better than anyone else. And they hate us with a passion; it doesn't matter where we go: the Dubs hate us, Tyrone men hate us. In fact I love going to a GAA match just to watch some of the fans. They live for the championship, the whole notion of heading to Clones and getting the sandwiches and cups of tea in. Once they have that into them, they're straight into the pub, fourteen pints and plant themselves in the middle of Tyrone boys shouting "How many All-Irelands have you, then? Ah shut your f***ing mouth." It's that Down cry, those culchies with their little paper hats with "Up Down" scrawled on them, roaring "Homon Down! Homon Down!" If you sit beside them you soon realise their knowledge of the game is very little; they don't even know whether the ball is stuffed or blown up, but they think they're the Joe Lennons and Pat Spillanes of the world.
All those little side-shows are part of the day out, and give it that particular flavour. I suppose you have to count yourself lucky you're from Down. If you're from Antrim or Fermanagh you can safely book your holidays for the twelfth fortnight as there's little chance of being in Clones.
There's nothing to beat an All-Ireland weekend, and the days afterwards if you win (or, in Donegal's case, the month afterwards). The atmosphere pervades Dublin in a way that's very special. I have been to big soccer matches but the atmosphere on All-Ireland days is out on its own.
Gaelic also carries a load of baggage that's holding it down. I think it's at its best when it's seen in full flight: a fast-moving, skillful ball game that can takes its place among the others.
In fact I know people in Belfast who play all three: Gaelic, soccer and rugby. Granted they are playing with liberal clubs like Carryduff, Malone and Queen's. The days when someone will be able to play their soccer for Newry Town, their rugby for Armagh City and their Gaelic for Crossmaglen Rangers are still a long way off.
Speaking of Crossmaglen, I did a gig there one night and I asked what was the big club there? Immediately, about 14 fellas shouted in unison: "Rangers". "OK lads" I said, "all together now...It was old but it was beautiful..." I lasted five minutes.
* Talking Gaelic, by Eamonn Rafferty, is published today by the Blackwater Press (£8.99).