Unravelling Gaelic traditions

Instead we turn to Patrick Conway, Durham County Council's Director of Culture, Libraries and Things and a proud man of County Mayo.

This side of the water, Patrick is a celebrated Sunderland fan.

Back home his heart is with Gaelic football - a wholly different ball game - and with Mayo, seeking on Sunday October 3 to win their first All Ireland Cup final since 1950.

"As with Sunderland and Newcastle, we have rather become sleeping giants, " he says.

Like hurling, which is played with fairly fearsome sticks, Gaelic footballers score three points for a "goal", one for an effort over the bar but between the posts and have 15-member teams.

For the purposes of this piece, "football" is the 15-a-side Irish stew and "soccer" is for elevenses. Since this is Ireland, however, it should be added that football is played principally with the hands.

Patrick flew Ryanair to the semi-final against Fermanagh but, much to his anguish, will be missing from the final countdown - Mayo Day - with Kerry.

It clashes with the Great North Run, in which he and his family are taking part to raise funds for St Cuthbert's hospice in Durham.

"People have suggested that I could finish the run, dash to the airport, catch another cheap flight to Dublin and still make the four o'clock start, " says Patrick. "Unfortunately I'm not that fast any more." Instead, assuming the recovery position in Mayo's green and red shirt, he'll watch the final live on television at the Tyneside Irish Centre ? across the road from St James' Park.

All Ireland being a pretty big place, the cup not only attracts teams from 31 of the 32 counties but from London and New York - where Mayo were drawn in the first round. "Unfortunately I couldn't quite make it, " says Patrick, who has a relative in Mayo's hurling team.

"Unfortunately it's a weak hurling county. Comparing us with the big teams is like comparing Darlington with Manchester United.

"Traditionally people would say that hurling is the rougher game because you have those bloody great sticks being wielded over your head but there's a lot of pretty strong physical contact in football, too, even if there isn't supposed to be.

"The notion of football is fielding and catching a high ball and in that sense it's similar to rugby, but there are some soccer skills on the ground and tactical play, too. Marking and shielding are rather like basketball. "I think the rules are probably quite straightforward, though I don't pretend to understand them all." The final is at Croke Park, Dublin, Europe's fourth biggest stadium, from which soccer and rugby are expressly excluded.

"Soccer is an alien game, a foreign game, " says Patrick.

"The Gaelic Athletic Association, which owns Croke Park, is about the whole nationalistic movement and about the revival of Gaelic traditions and customs.

"There's a community and cultural allegiance to football and hurling and a very strong identity with your county. That's why you see so many flags flying in Ireland." So where would he be if the All Ireland final clashed, not with the Great North Run, but with Sunderland in the Championship play-offs?

There's no hesitation. "I love Sunderland but Mayo is home. There really is no place like it."

PATRICK Conway wasn't second choice to kick off today's Backtrack, simply not the first person who came to mind. On and off the bench, the column knows the feeling.

On Tuesday evening we addressed the birthday bash for Barnard Castle Townswomen's Guild - a lovely, lively bunch. "I have to admit, " Guild chairman Sue Alderson told her guests, "that our speaker wasn't my first choice." The preferred option was Sister Josepha, head teacher of St Vincent's primary school in Walker, Newcastle, and probably the best known Newcastle United supporter who also happens to be a nun.

"I became a nun so I could wear black and white," she has been quoted as saying, so well in at St James' Park that she is reckoned to have Alan Shearer's mobile number.

Sadly, the splendid Sister Josepha - who teaches the Walker bairns both football and football songs - had to bow to high blood pressure, doubtless what comes of a lifetime's religious devotion to the Magpies.

"Reverend Mother told me to take it a little easier, I think she was right, " she confesses, though Sir Bobby's departure may little have helped.

"I was a bit disappointed with the way it was handled. It's not a way to treat your heroes and they really have to question themselves about the way they did it, " says Sister Josepha, whose picture with the former Magpies manager hangs in her study.

"He's a fantastic bloke with so much credibility, he could have been an ambassador for the club. I'm not very proud of the way that Newcastle United handled a great man like that.

"As a head teacher you learn about relationships and how to handle people and they could have done it so much better.

How nicer if someone had just had a quiet word." Her absence from last night's UEFA Cup match was entirely for work reasons, however - football practice and a meeting about the 50th anniversary of the parish. "I'm disappointed about what happened, " says Sister Josepha, "but I'll always be Newcastle."

ON Wednesday to Brandon United, where the insomniac Vince Kirkup - 29 heroic years on Stanley hill top - is now team manager, and without his worries to seek.

Vince remains upbeat, despite a 5-1 defeat - less severe than it sounds - to surprise Albany Northern League leaders Newcastle Benfield Saints.

"I honestly believe people thought we were going to turn out five-a-side, " he says. "We're not just three bus drivers, two shepherds and the lad who runs the corner shop. We're much better than that."

AFTER spending a substantial fortune to sustain the living, millionaire philanthropist Brooks Mileson has crossed over, we hear. He now has a share in a private crematorium.

It's in Dumfries, along the road from Gretna with whose Scottish League club he is heavily involved. "It's a wonderful place, acres of parkland, all very Swedish, " enthuses the Sunderland-born former four-minute miler and chairman of the Peterlee-based Albany Insurance group.

"If you have to die, this is definitely the sort of place you'd want to be sent off from."

THAT 1950s Pathe Newsreel handed into Oxfam's Darlington shop proves even more attractive than earlier columns had supposed.

As well as highlights of Newcastle United's 1951 FA Cup final victory, it also includes footage from the 1952 and 1955 finals plus a couple of Charlie Chaplin films, a Laurel and Hardy special and shots of the garter ceremony at Windsor Castle.

Oxfam shop manager Marion Cowper even finds herself adopting the colours. "We won them all, " she says. Offers still invited.

And finally...

Tuesday's question fooled no one. The only player to win full international honours while with Hartlepool United was Ambrose Fogarty, signed from Sunderland for £10,000 in Novermber 1964.

Pool were reckoned still to be paying off the instalments several years later.

When last seen - by Paul Dobson in Bishop Auckland, anyway - he was manager of Athlone Town ("a team of fearsome men with grey beards") who lost to Sunderland on the Isle of Man in 1984.

Readers may today care to identify the only two men who've played for the same club in every season of the Premiership.

With the news that King Charlie has just returned to the call, the colummn returns - Hurley on hurling - on Tuesday.

Published: 17/09/2004