Brothers in Sport

by Donal Keenan

  ‘The other difference and something that we need to learn here is that the players are incredibly flexible and their level of agility and flexibility is far superior to ours because they spend so much time on injury prevention programmes and recovery sessions. The science and knowledge has developed to the extent that they realise it’s important to train hard but to train smart and to have a proper recovery. The physical make-up of the individuals is such that it allows them to play for a number of years and avoid injuries as much as possible.’

  Paul had further experience of the professional game in Australia after his own playing days had ended here in Ireland. He moved to Sydney for three years between 1996 and 1998 and became involved with the Swans AFL club. It was quickly apparent that they had made huge advances in every aspect of preparing a professional sportsman to do his job to the best of his ability at all times. He recalls their attitude towards injuries. ‘They had developed what they called an SIPP, which was a Specific Injury Prevention Programme which was designed for each player. They would assess each player through the season and if somebody had a hamstring problem – if their right hamstring was at 80 per cent of the strength it would be at their peak, they would have a specific programme for that player to get back to 100 per cent. And they wouldn’t let him back playing until he was 100 per cent. In an amateur context if the hamstring is deemed okay or nearly there, the next game is most important. What happens then is that a minor injury can become a chronic injury and become a problem for three or four years.’

  Paul did assist in the movement of a number of players from Ireland to Australia and is well aware of the concerns among sections of the GAA over ongoing recruitment efforts which have been capturing the headlines in Ireland for a number of years. ‘I don’t know Ricky Nixon [the agent most publicly associated with luring Irish players to Australia] so I don’t know what he is doing. I did have an involvement with Tadhg Kennelly going to Australia and I was involved with Marty Clarke going over. I haven’t had any involvement in the last three or four years for a number of reasons, largely my involvement with coaching development with the Leinster Council and I haven’t had the time. My only interest in doing it was to maintain the links and give some guys who are interested an opportunity to do it and to explain to them and their parents what’s involved, the pros and cons. I think it’s important to keep the link alive because it is the closest game to Gaelic football on the planet and because we have learned so much from them.

  ‘I wouldn’t have the same worries that others have. The stats prove the vast majority of the players come back and when they do, they add value. Anthony Tohill came back and was a top player for Derry for many years. Colin Corkery brought great value back to Cork. Brian Stynes in Dublin and Dermot McNicholl in Derry were two others who were much improved footballers when they came back and gave great service to their counties. Brendan Murphy is back and will be a big addition to Carlow. Marty Clarke is back and he will be a massive addition to Down. In many ways we have gained more than the Aussies have because they have invested a lot of time and money in the players who are now back here. Keeping the link alive is important for coaching as well, to allow us access to the most modern methodologies and practices.’

  He hears the arguments about professionalism in the GAA from those who oppose the notion and those who would love to embrace it. But he would love a more coherent approach to examining how the GAA should progress in the future; what is possible within the amateur framework that currently exists or whether the GAA could support and sustain any form of professional sport. ‘I don’t know the answer about the way forward and I know there are polarised opinions out there,’ he admits. ‘I would love to see someone commissioned to do a study on it. There’s a discussion every week about it – can the GAA go professional or go semi-professional. Every player, if he is being honest, will say he would love to play full-time. If they are asked in an interview they say no because it is politically the right thing to do. But all of them would love to play without the pressure of work. It is an incredibly demanding task at the moment to be a county footballer. The study would examine if it was sustainable; what impact would it have on the traditions of the GAA; is it financially feasible? It probably isn’t unless there are radical changes to the way the GAA is run.’

  He reflects on the tenure of Liam Mulvihill as the director general of the GAA and regrets that more heed was not taken of some of Mulvihill’s musings during his term of office. ‘Liam Mulvihill always had interesting stuff in his annual reports and they never were implemented. I remember particularly one report when he talked of moving away from the county system and to a cluster of teams such as Sligo and Leitrim merging, or Roscommon and Longford merging. You could call them the North West Tigers or something. You would have similar amalgamations around the country and it would be interesting to see what impact it would have.

  ‘I know if you put it out as an idea now you would get some very entrenched views. Some people would mock it. But look at what has happened in rugby in Ireland; look at Munster and what they have achieved. It is a modern phenomenon. Look at Leinster. It’s a franchise. Leinster have started winning and they are gathering great support, something they had never experienced before. They have people from every sporting background following them and they are playing in front of huge crowds every time they play at home.

  ‘I have no doubt if Sligo and Leitrim got together and started winning, or if Roscommon and Longford got together and started to be competitive, then they would galvanise a support base.’

  * * *

  There was no one in Ireland as proud as Dermot Earley when the All Star football selection for 1985 was announced in November. His own career had brought him two of the coveted awards. Now, in the year in which he had finally retired from the game, his twenty-one-year-old brother Paul joined him in the famous roll of honour when he was named the All Star full forward. Paul’s career trajectory mirrored that of his illustrious older brother. He had played for the Roscommon minors for three years; he played in an All-Ireland under-21 final, though in Paul’s case it was a losing experience, against Donegal. He had also enjoyed success in 1985 with Michael Glaveys when they won the Roscommon Intermediate Championship. ‘That was one of the real highlights of my career,’ he insists.

  His senior career with Roscommon, however, was littered with disappointments in the latter years of the 1980s. He played in four Connacht finals, plus one replay, between 1985 and 1989 and lost three times to Mayo (‘they paid me back in spades for those years when Roscommon beat them when I was a schoolboy’) and once to Galway. The loss in 1989, after a replay, by just two points, was particularly frustrating as they watched Mayo go so close to winning the All-Ireland final against Cork.

  In 1990 they finally got it right and beat Galway in the provincial final before losing to All-Ireland champions Cork in the semi-final. A year later Paul helped Roscommon to another provincial title. Meath, champions of 1987 and 1988, provided the opposition in the All-Ireland semi-final. It was a tight, tense affair, the highlight of which was a brilliant Derek Duggan goal. It was not sufficient. Brian Stafford’s free-taking proved the undoing of Roscommon. ‘Looking back,’ says Paul, ‘you realise that when you lose a number of finals and then win one, the satisfaction levels are much higher. I had lost four, so to go on and win two Connacht finals back to back was incredible.’

  By then his body was showing signs of wear and tear. He played on until the mid-1990s, but it was a struggle. ‘Because of the number of injuries I had I didn’t enjoy it as much. If I had some of that time over again I would have retired earlier because I was in so much pain that I didn’t enjoy it.’

  Between 1987 and 1991, Dermot served as deputy military advisor to the secretary general of the United Nations, based in New York. Despite a schedule that brought him to the strife-torn corners of the earth, Dermot kept himself informed of events back in Roscommon and in Paul’s career. On his return, he immersed himself again i
n the life of the Sarsfields club in Newbridge and paid close attention to Roscommon. When a managerial vacancy arose at the end of the 1992 Championship, Dermot was approached and subtle pressure was applied. Paul’s presence on the panel made the decision a little easier and, though success eluded them, the Earleys enjoyed their short period together in different roles. Dermot also managed Kildare and assisted at different levels and in various roles with Sarsfields.

  His eldest son David enjoyed prolific success with the club, winning county titles at minor, under-21 and senior level. Dermot Junior began to mock the supposed burden of a famous name when he won a Kildare Minor Championship in 1996 and by 1998 he was a member of the Kildare senior team under the management of Mick O’Dwyer. Despite being one of the best supported counties in football, Kildare had not won a Leinster title for thirty-two years. But the Earley family was out in force in Croke Park on 2 August when Dermot Junior played a major part in their victory over Meath. They beat Kerry in the All-Ireland semi-final and played a huge role in one of the most entertaining finals of the modern era, losing narrowly to Galway. He joined his father and uncle Paul on the All Stars roll of honour that year and won a second award at midfield in 2009. Uniquely, the youngest Earley, Noelle, was named on the Ladies’ Football All Stars selection just weeks later. Dermot and his wife Mary have three other children, Conor, Paula and Anne Marie.

  Paul also caught the coaching bug. He returned from Australia in 1998 and immediately became involved with the Allenwood club in Kildare. ‘I had no experience at all but I tried to combine all that I had learned during my time with Roscommon with what I had learned from the professional game in Australia and I thoroughly enjoyed my three years with the club.’ During that time, Allenwood reached the Kildare senior football final. Inevitably, their opponents were Sarsfields of Newbridge, for whom Dermot Junior and David Earley were playing, with Dermot Senior a selector. Sarsfields took the laurels. Paul enjoyed another three-year spell with the Celbridge club and they progressed from playing in Division Two of the League to reaching the quarter-finals of the County Championship. Now, as a Level Two coach, he is assisting the Leinster Council of the GAA in their coach development programme.

  During 2008 he had his first experience of inter-county management when he took on an emergency role with Roscommon following the resignation of John Maughan. While the Roscommon County Board sought a permanent replacement, Paul agreed to take temporary charge. ‘I loved the job even though I only did it for a month, but I just did not have the time to take it on for any longer.

  ‘I would love to be an inter-county manager and maybe some time in the future it will happen for me. But it is a full-time job and I already have one of those [he works in the financial services industry]. I have a huge interest in coaching, but I see what the commitment to the inter-county scene is and at the moment I could not give it the time. I was interviewed a few years ago for a manager’s job and I told the county chairman involved at the time that I could only do it if the post was offered on a full-time basis. Of course that was not possible, but I thought I had to be honest.

  ‘The inter-county manager’s job is a sixty-hour week. I really admire the guys who are doing it at the moment. To combine it with work and a family life is really difficult. [Paul and Mairéad have three children, twins Ailbhe and Lea, and Declan]. At the moment I’m afraid I just do not have the time to give it the sort of commitment it deserves. Hopefully that will not always be the case.’

  Five decades have passed since the Earley name first seeped into the public consciousness and this story is not yet completed.

  All Stars: Dermot Earley Jnr celebrates a player of the month award with his mother Mary and father Dermot Snr. © Brian Lawless/SPORTSFILE

  The Lowry Brothers

  Seán Lowry, winner of three All-Ireland senior medals with Offaly, pictured during the 1981 final against Kerry. © Ray McManus/SPORTSFILE

  Some days are more inspirational than others. Imagine those that immediately followed Offaly’s All-Ireland Football Championship final victory in October 1972 when the players took the Sam Maguire Cup on the traditional parade of the schools of the county. The team captain Tony McTague was especially in demand, but there was no more important visit than that to the national school in Ferbane, his home place in west

  Offaly. Accompanying him on that visit was his twenty-year-old team-mate Seán Lowry, another former pupil at the school.

  They carried the famous trophy through the familiar gates and walked the corridors from memory. They exchanged greetings with teachers they knew as friends. And they recognised in the excited faces of the children the features of their parents, many of whom Tony and Seán worked with or played with. Two of the faces among the boys from fifth and sixth classes were more familiar than others to Seán Lowry. They were his brothers, Brendan and Michael, and their smiles were as broad as any in the school and their beaming faces were full of pride for their oldest brother.

  ‘I felt like I was ten foot tall in the classroom that day,’ Michael remembers fondly. ‘Seán had the cup and it looked huge, it was full of Cidona and to us it was the greatest thing in the world. I had a dream that some day in the future I would bring the cup into our school. There’s no harm in a young lad having his dreams, is there?’

  But even during those exciting, fun-filled and happy days when it felt absolutely as if dreams could be fulfilled, no one could possibly have imagined what the future held for the Lowry clan, the All-Ireland hero and his kid brothers. Ten years later, on 19 September 1982, Seán, Brendan and Michael Lowry would play together for Offaly in one of the most famous All-Ireland final victories of them all when they stopped Kerry’s bid for a historic five consecutive Championships.

  They would do it with panache and style, fierce will and possibly the most famous goal ever scored in the football Championship. ‘An awful lot has happened since that day,’ says Seán. ‘A lot of teams have won the All-Ireland for the first time, there have been great matches and great teams, but hardly a week goes by that someone does not ask me about that final. You could go to a funeral and be in the process of commiserating with someone and they will say “I was looking at the 1982 final on TV the other night”. It’s amazing.’

  Almost thirty years have passed and the Lowry name is back in the sporting headlines, not just in Ireland but around the world. Shane Lowry is making his exciting way in the world of professional golf, an Irish Open title won when he was still in the amateur ranks. As the world gets to know this talented youngster, the media consistently refer to him as the son of ‘the famous Offaly footballer Brendan Lowry’.

  * * *

  Like so many young couples of their generation, Ned and Margaret Lowry left Ireland in the 1950s to find employment abroad. They based themselves in Manchester where the first few of their eleven children, including Seán, were born. They kept in close contact with their families back home, always listening for news of employment opportunities in a homeland that was embracing the modern world. The Electricity Supply Board was expanding and one of its major projects was the opening of the power station in Ferbane. Ned Lowry saw his opportunity to return to Ireland and secured employment at the plant. ‘I always say that only for the power station in Ferbane I would have ended up playing for Manchester United instead of Offaly,’ jokes Seán.

  Ireland was changing rapidly as a country. The ESB and Bord na Móna were among the major employers. ‘Without them a lot of the people in Offaly and other counties would have had to look elsewhere in the country or more likely out of the country for work,’ Seán explains. ‘And it is hard to imagine that Offaly would have been winning football All-Irelands in the 1970s and 1980s if those jobs had not been made available.’

  Back in Ireland and settled in Ferbane, the growing Lowry family was comfortable among family and friends. They worked hard and found respite with football and hurling. Ned Lowry was a passionate football man. His brothers Art and Joe played for Offaly. Art farmed in Clo
gherinkoe and his son John later played for Kildare against an Offaly team that included cousin Seán. The maternal gene also contained plenty of football DNA. The Horans of Ballycumber were a renowned football family. ‘We were reared on stories of club games, the hitting and the fights. They’d call it dirt now, but then it was regarded as manly stuff,’ explains Seán. ‘My Uncle Johnny always told me to keep my elbows up to protect myself.’

  The swinging 1960s began with Offaly winning its first ever Leinster senior football title. The county became transfixed with the fortunes of a hugely talented group of footballers who would inspire Championship-winning generations to come. They might have won an All-Ireland title themselves had they managed to avoid the crusading Down team that emerged from Ulster to claim Sam Maguire and bring his trophy across the border for the very first time in 1960. The team of Kevin Mussen, Dan and Jim McCarthan, Joe Lennon, Paddy Doherty and Seán O’Neill thwarted Offaly in the 1960 All-Ireland semi-final and the 1961 final after a replay.

  But those Offaly giants awoke a county. Willie Nolan, Paddy McCormack, Greg Hughes, Phil O’Reilly and Mick Casey were just some of the heroes. Ned Lowry went to all the games. Tim Egan in Ferbane owned a car and he had a regular load to travel to Portlaoise, Croke Park or wherever Offaly were playing. Young Seán also secured a ride. ‘It cost my father five shillings for himself and two and six for me.’

  On summer evenings on the green in front of the terrace where the Lowrys and their neighbours made their homes, the boys learned their football skills. They played all sports, whatever was the fashion of the week, but football was dominant. They would start around 4 p.m. and might not finish until close to midnight. Those were carefree days and skills were honed during the long hours. ‘We had no gear then,’ Seán says. ‘That led to a few problems if you came home to your mother with the toe off your shoe, a tear in the knee of your trousers or a green grass stain on your good shirt. It was a struggle for our poor mothers to keep everything right. But we were always doing something.