Memories of Eugene McGee, a champion of the midlands
If ever a man would have been comfortable cocooning, it would have been Eugene McGee, who died a year ago today.
For all of his high profile as a GAA analyst and commentator, All Ireland-winning SFC winning-manager, and newspaper proprietor, he was an incredibly shy man.
There were times this shyness came across as a bluntness or rudeness, but behind the gruffness, he was a genuine, caring, plain-speaking man, who never forgot his north Longford roots and rearing.
My first encounter with him was memorable for the wrong reasons - my car broke down in Ballivor on the way down to meet him for a job interview in the Longford Leader one Saturday in early 1998. Cue a call to my friend John Cribbin in Boardsmill for emergency transport.
I didn’t get the job, but by an amazing twist of fate and circumstances, got a second bite of the cherry. In August 1998, I was at the opening of the new GAA Museum in Croke Park. Also there was the legendary GAA figure, Peter McDermott, the ‘Man in the Cap’. An All-Ireland winning medallist, captain, manager – he even refereed an All-Ireland in between All-Irelands, he had bussed it up and walked down to Croke Park from the bus stop. To us, he was the egg and chicken man, that my grandmother sent me into for the chicken in Bakery Lane in Navan every Friday. And I wasn’t going to let him bus it home!
Hold on, he said, as we headed for the door – I want to talk to Brendan Mooney. Brendan, from Ballinabrackey, who was sitting at another table, was the Irish Examiner sports journalist who had covered Meath’s 1967 All-Ireland achievements, when Peter was manager. He was sitting beside Eugene McGee. As I waited, McGee turned around to me.
“Howaya. I’m expanding the newsroom. That job is there for you if you want it.”
He didn’t have to ask a second time. The Longford Leader was one of the highest regarded provincial papers, and he had a national profile as a GAA columnist at the time. And of course, he had famously managed Offaly to that 1982 All-Ireland success, when Seamus Darby et al put a stop to Kerry’s five-in-a-row.
It was to be the start of an almost five-year adventure in the midlands, which was most enjoyable.
Longford at the time was still a genuine, honest-to-God, no nonsense town and county, where they took their politics, sport, and community very seriously – and their local paper. Where you could see the pace of life getting faster around Meath as the commuter belt expanded and the Celtic Tiger took over, Longford was still operating at a slower, natural pace. And when you arrived in a local parish or village in a Longford Leader van, you were treated like royalty.
Between the time I accepted the job and landed in Longford in October 1998, there had been a huge trauma in our family, as my sister was involved in a serious road traffic accident, thankfully since recovered. And Eugene McGee could not have been more understanding. “If you need time off, take it.” I was only just in the door.
There were comical moments. I had a couple of columns going in the paper, under pseudonyms. One was an entertainment column, ‘The Mahogany Gaspipe’.
Reading a proof of it on the wall before printing one day, and not recognising the name on it, he turned around to the deputy editor, Joe Flaherty (now a newly-elected Fianna Fail TD), and asked: “Are we paying this guy to write this rubbish?” (Well rubbish being a polite description!)
There was a court case taken by a Department of Agriculture inspector against a farmer in south Longford over cruelty to animals.
The inspector was from around Arva or that general area around the Cavan-Longford border, and was I think, Presbyterian. The farmer was a Protestant.
Pleasantries had been exchanged in the farmyard.
“You’re nothing but a Protestant bastard,” was alleged to have been shouted across the muck.
“And you’re nothing but the son of a landlord’s bastard.”
And so it went on.
I reported on it, but in the editing process, the editor had decided there were too many bastards in the copy. He trimmed it, but in doing so must have confused which bastard was which.
The Department man – probably a near neighbour of McGee’s - wasn’t happy. He rang to complain, and I was hauled up to the MD’s office. Luckily, I had still a copy of my unedited report, which put me in the clear.
“Right,” said McGee. “I’ll ring him, and tell him we’ll print a clarification for him. We’ll clarify that the evidence heard he was called the son of a landlord’s bastard, rather than a Protestant bastard.”
Needless to say, we never had to carry the clarification.
I was hauled upstairs on another occasion. The Longford diaspora was a very important readership, and every year we covered the Longford Association of London annual gala dinner. It was my turn to go on the trip to London. But I took a detour to meet an old friend from Kiltale, Gary Dunne, who was living in London at the time. By the time I arrived at the venue, I was slightly the worst for the wear, and had lost the complimentary batch of Leaders that I was transporting. But I was there for the important part – the dessert and the speeches.
On returning home, all was grand. Joe Flah didn’t want the copy until the following week’s paper, and just carried a teaser in the immediate week’s edition. Of course, when the crowd in London saw the token coverage, they thought I had been incapable of covering the night, and were on the phone to McGee to give him an earful. As usual, I blamed Joe Flah!
Eugene McGee was always a stout defender of Longford and all things local, and with Albert Reynolds living in exile in Dublin, and retiring from the Dail, a strong candidate with the county's interests at heart was needed. There was a push on to have someone from the local business community.
I was very mischievous, and sent a press release to the opposition Longford News announcing Eugene's candidacy. Anonymously, of course! Well it was the April 1st edition. They did ring him for a comment, which was colourful - and they ran with a tongue in cheek story, ending up by saying they suspected where the statement came from. Whether he ever did or not, I have no idea!
On my departure from Longford after the 2002 General Election, McGee wrote ‘The Savage Always Returns to his Native Soil’. He probably said that to all his journalists moving on!
Returning for a moment to Peter McDermott, he told me afterwards that he had been very friendly with Fr Phil McGee, Eugene’s late brother who was principal of Moyne Latin School, and who had died young. Fr Phil was on the Leinster Council of the GAA and was always a big supporter of proposals brought forward by Meath.
My next contact with Eugene was when he was researching his book ‘The GAA in My Time’, looking back on his experiences in Gaelic football. He was looking for a match report from 1972, when he managed a Dublin under-21 team that played Meath in Dunshaughlin. Meath won 0-7 to 0-4. His Dublin side included Robbie Kelleher, David Hickey and Anton O’Toole, all of whom would win All-Ireland senior medals just two years later.
That book also featured a Dunshaughlin GAA legend, Patsy McLoughlin, who as a delegate to the Meath County Board, successfully proposed that the GAA scrap ‘the ban’ on its members playing soccer – Rule 27. The late Patsy was amongst those at the launch of the book in Croke Park in 2014.
When Meath played Longford in the Leinster Championship in Pearse Park in May 2018, I called into Eugene for a cuppa afterwards. Longford had beaten Meath for the first time in championship since 1982, to get through to their first Leinster semi-final in 30 years, the backbone of their team a half dozen lads from Mullinalaghta in North Longford.
“Those Mullinalaghta lads are the ones to watch,” he said. They went on at the end of that year to win a fairytale Leinster title, beating Kilmacud Crokes. As ever, he was on the ball.