Resident Expert Ger Manas on Paul Galvin. Bitchin’ stuff!
Talking Balls
This week Resident Expert Ger Manas casts an admiring glance southwards and reckons that the CCCC might get their way but the summer will be a quieter and more boring place with no Paul Galvin.
Now lads you know as well as I do that things happen in football matches that shouldn’t - fellas make a balls of things and maybe get the line or get subbed or whatever. How many times have ye been took off and toul the manager what an oul bollix he is on the way off the field. Or maybe the referee sends ye off, ye know rightly that you shouldn’t have punched yer man in the balls or grabbed that f***er by the hair but sure what’s done is done and what’s lost is gone for ever as that spacer Joe Brolly used to sing when he won anything which wasn’t that often thank f***. There’s nothin’ puts everything in the cold light of day than a lonely oul sit, on yer own on the bench or worse again in the dressing room. Gradually as the heart slows down and the blood cools you realise you’re a stupid bollix - every other man’s out there bustin’ his hole and you’re in with the wintergreen, spare socks and empty juice bottles looking down at your boots, maybe an oul tear tripping down onto the laces. What have I f***in done goin’ through the head.
Every team I ever was involved with needed a character in it. There’s men cruising about the place with ice in their veins and I have all the time in the world for the man like that. He’ll deliver the stiletto to the heart of another team time and again for you but you need the man with the volcano ragin’ inside to stir them up first. Some man who goes round with one of those jerseys marked heart on the sleeve. Brick walls, f***in concrete slabs, Ulster defence units - you name it you need a man who gets the ball where it’s good and dirty. Usually in a melee of men, a man who can tussle his way out and offload neatly and correctly. A man that breaks the tackle, sorts out the boyo on the other team throwing his weight around. This sort of fella’s usually the sort of fella that your team and supporters love but every other bollix man, woman and child hates the sight of. He might be the nicest fella in his own right but they hate him because of what he does on the football pitch. But if he was on their team - he’d be their star man. That’s folks lads, that how fickle they are. But if you appreciate the finer things in football you’ll appreciate this sort of man.
Which brings me to that fella Paul Galvin. It seems for every manjack out there likes Paul, there’s thirty one hates him. By coincidence they’s mostly not from Kerry. Galvin was roughhousing himself round the field as usual last week, bustin’ a gut to get back at it after spending the winter getting’ over injury and managing that Sem crowd to the Hogan Cup Final. He was appointed captain of Kerry because Feale Rangers won the championship and he gets the honour to lead the lads out. They’re going for three in a row and for my money there’s no better man than Paul Galvin to have in the trenches if you’re after that. When I was down working thunder with Jack O’Connor he was glowin’ about Galvin and what he’d brought to the team. He reckoned he was an Ulster footballer transplanted to Kerry the way he went about his business. All snarling up in your face but by f*** he delivered the goods big style time and again. He went up to the All Ireland Junior with his club Finuge and bate Stewartstown. Fergal Logan toul me one day before me and him went into court one day I was up for using a bit of red in the car that Galvin was the difference that day. I got the grandson to watch it on that YourTube - Jaze there’s some quare good lookin oul yokes on YourTube if ye press the wrong button on the machine. I though the grandson was talking about his smarties before he showed me this video of Kelly the Nogue doing this thing with a buckin bronco horse. I gave him a good boot in the hole and told him to get me Paul Galvin.
So Galvin’s doin’ a bit of skelpin’ to Clare fellas that from what I saw were at the same themselves. Next thing Paddy Russell produces the book. Now I have to say Russell annoys me hole - ever since he done the dirty on Tyrone in 1995 in Croke Park I can’t stand the hoor. I’ve no love for Tyrone I’ll tell you but he got that decision wrong and as well as that he couldn’t even manage to send that gobshite Charlie Redmond off the field. Charlie kept poppin’ up like one of those fairground jobs ye hit with a mallet. Many’s the time I wished I’d a mallet when Russell was about but anyhow - Galvin loses the oul head now and I honestly don’t think he meant to slap away the note book before he did the Johnny Cash. As the man says he was remonstrating. Twas Paddy Russell’s own fault for being so close to him I think. And as for the proposed suspension - six months in me hole. There’ll be worse things done this summer and the hoors’ll get off scott free. There’ll be f***in DRAs and what not on the job. Course Galvin’s problem is he has previous. He had a run in with yer man John Toal when he was bringin water on the field in 2006. Well, Toal shouldn’t a been there and he deserved it. Armagh folks mightn’t see it that way since Toal’s a saint to them but he shouldn’t have been there. Paul Galvin’s getting the shit cos of who he is. And the way he plays his game. Yer big lad Tom Humphries from the Irish Times done an interview with Galvin and he reported how youngsters from Tyrone with a megaphone chanted ‘Galvin is a wanker’ at him from the sidelines at the Hogan Final. Well I know number one who the wanker was that day, and it wasn’t Galvin; number two what I would do with the megaphone and number three where the surgeon would be extractin’ it from. But Galvin, did he do a Trevor Brennan and bust the lot of them? No, he’s a teacher and he didn’t. He says to me himself when he crosses the white line: “I’ve done things that have got me into trouble. I’ve got away with things too. I’ve had things done to me and I never go bitching. You take it. You give it. Is it deserved the reputation I have? It probably is, really.”
Paul Galvin would be one of the first names on my sheet if I was the manager. I hope he gets off because he’s a f***damn fine footballer and if his reputation is deserved it’s for that as much as the other shite. Will he get off? Probably not. He might get back for an All Ireland semi and d’ye know what? The rest of the country might have even more reason to hate that f***er Galvin cos I think he’ll be taking Sam home with him in September. He’ll have his regrets certainly but better to have lived like a lion for once in your life than to pockle about like an oul f***in sheep and get eaten. That’s what I think anyway.