A GIANT has fallen. News that our laoch náisiúnta Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh has passed at the tender age of 93 stopped me in my tracks. Those of us lucky to meet him will be sitting this week and weekend sharing pics and stories of one of Ireland’s greatest sons.
The Féile competition for under-14s is one of the GAA’s jewels in its illustrious crowns. Rounding O’Connell Street, when my son was part of St John’s GAA Féile team, to hear the booming voice of the master, who knew every club that marched down past the GPO, speak of the special nature of our club was an experience none of us will ever forget and will always cherish.
Mícheál O Muircheartaigh was the soundtrack of our summer Sunday afternoons. His non-stop explanation of the matches, the players and the joy of the games on our Opel Manta’s radio was only broken by my father thumping the steering wheel in joy or despair. He brought everyone listening, young and old, on a journey of pride, hope and tragedy in his unique Kerry accent.
He came from a generation which laid the foundation for what a new Ireland might become, of keeping Irish pride in our language, and our national games alive, as the country faced the overbearing forces of poverty and emigration. When some chose to run down our post-colonial context, he was a one-man Gaelic revival, interspersing his beautiful native Irish into colourful adopted English. His was a unique broadcast where there was never an ounce of cynicism, or partitionism, as he valued every single team from every province of his country.
When some preferred to swerve right or left at the border Mícheál visited every club at every request. He was there in the 1990s when Ulster football came to dominate, defeating not only the teams in front of them but the partitionist snobbery of some in GAA circles. But listening to his commentary on those days you would have never known of a border. The Gaelic revival of Ulster was in full swing, and Mícheál O Muircheartaigh’s Dún Chaoin was our Fear An Tí.
He opened St Enda’s Gaelscoil and two new pitches in 2012. He understood that this GLC had suffered from the conflict like no other, and the significance of these hallowed grounds asserting a Gaelic future for the Gaels of that area. He stayed for two days and enraptured all of those around him. He knew that the future could be better than the past, but that the past will not only inform our future, but always be held as precious.
Some of his insights were for the ages. There is many a Fermanagh hurler whose souls are burned from the time he spoke of Cork’s Seán Óg Ó hAilpín: "His father’s from Fermanagh, his mother from Fiji, neither one a hurling stronghold." But the very pride with which they recount this tells us the love and esteem in which he was held.
As we visit now with own pasts, in which he will reside in reverence, it is impossible to rephrase or better his own words: “Go mbeirimid beo ar an am seo arís. No matter who wins, whether it be everything or nothing, may we all be alive and well on this day next year. Le cúnamh Dé, that’s all we can ask for.”
