Boxing School
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At least in the old days the ref was safe!
In this classic, Ger Manas, Resident Expert recalls salad days at School as there was no craic like a good row.
This week resident expert Ger Manas recalls his memories of schools football and wonders if it’s the same game at all.
I was invited along there to speak to one of them McRory Cup schools to talk to the young lads about my experiences in football down the years and to give them bits of useful advice. I was told not to let on which school it was in case they would all be looking me. Not that I have a problem with that. It’s funny nowadays the way young lads is coached and trained. These buckos were sittin’ in a lecture theatre – they were bigger than I remember cubs a few years back and they were all gluggin’ away on big bottles of water or that Lucozade sport shite. The dentist toul me not to be drinking that cos number one it was rottin’ me teeth – what teeth I have that is – and also I was getting’ a fierce oul gut on me and I’d been off the drink. The granddaughter’s friend is one of the nutritionists and she was tellin’ me that a youngster drinking that stuff and doing no exercise can put on a couple of poun’ a week thanks to all the carbohydrate in it. If I see the grandsons drinking any of them things now I would give them a boot in the hole and tell them to drink water. Was good enough for me da and it’s good enough for me.
Anyway these lads – them all f***in long legs, big forearms, the hair all cut up short and shining with brylcreem or whatever shite they puts on it nowadays were louchin’ about. They looked like they’d been sponsored by a white trainer company – every man wearing an O’ Neills shirt of one sort or another – the club, the school, one of the Universities you name it. Pile of county development lads, county minors – the odd gobshite that I knew by the look of him would maybe be lucky to be the water boy. The more I chatted to them the more I thought it’s me should be doing the listenin’ here.
They started asking me about burnout and I told them I thought is was a load of shite if fellas had the balls and the wit to tell coaches and mangers they wouldn’t be doing all they were lookin’ them to do. You wanna see the manager fella lookin’ at me. I think he was the bad cop in the good bad routine. He wasn’t too happy that I had maybe suggested that lads shouldn’t be doing all the manager might want them to do but when you think about it players operate on different cycles and unless ye understand that ye are wasting yer time. Take the Derry minor lads, they require a different approach when they report back to Maghera or wherever than a few lads that’s been sittin’ on their hole since the league ended. I remember the da of a player that had won an all Ireland minor med a few years back telling me that he and another lad had asked the school McRory manager for two weeks off as they were knackered and wanted to enjoy their win. Not a f***in bit of it, yer man had them running the roads along with a load of other boys till the lights went out- the lads eyes the da said were like black coals in his face and after that he kept pickin’ up injuries here and there. Nothin’ serious you understand but enough to rule him out of playin’.
I was chattin’ later to a couple of fellas that played McRory way back in the eighties and it brought me mind back to some of the goin’s on then. At the time I had done a bit of work with a McLarnon team in Donegal and we played these lads in a friendly. Turned out the match had been set up as a morale raiser before some do or die f***in clash in the McRory – you know the sort – and our boys were the lambs for the slaughter. The other team had been playin’ dung and their manager thought cannon fodder would be the remedy. Well you could nearly predict what happened. At half time the McLarnon school was batin’ the McRory school and their lads started to take it a bit thick. The ref for the second half was a civil big lump of a PE teacher from the McRory school and at one stage he sent one of his own players off and then toul him: ‘OK ye can stay on but don’t do it again….’ Course yer man does do it again but nothin’ happens. Next thing on a kick out the McLarnon school lads bursts the big midfielder from the other school and a boxin session breaks out. Well the big midfielder lad had done a bit of oul boxin’ in his day and he lines up three boys in a row and wham – bam bursts the whole lot of them right on the nose on after another. Next thing, the first lad made a go to tackle him from behind – now at this stage you understand both sets of subs and supporters and all were tearin’ in for a piece of the action, twas great craic boys getting an afternoon out of school for this. Seeing the lad about to level his team-mate from behind, the other midfielder runs up behind this young lad and takes off and kicks him as hard as he could in the hole. Well, that was the end of the row – everyone started laughing and the oul ref you never seen a man as happy to blow a whistle.
I dunno if things like that happen much anymore at schools matches. I know the lads from both schools in my day got a quare bollockin’ and were well warned. But sure ye have to do these things from time to time. When I told the lads I was talking to the other day about this story – they looked confused – it was as if I was from another planet and another time – and I suppose in a way I was.
