Tipperary Hurling Tipperary GAA Premierview

Article on John Leahy Vincent Hogan Irish Independent 2002



BEEN reading a lot of late, now that winter's become embedded in the bones.
Saipan memoirs mostly. Old hat really but, then, the trick is in the telling. Good ghost-writing has much to do with good listening. It's about elucidating a single voice, not chasing some skewed compromise between two.
Saddest thing about Roy Keane's autobiography is that it makes the most interesting person in Irish sport sound one-dimensional. The narrative rarely rises above caricature. Just Captain Angry railing against mediocrity. A largely dull, chronological history of his career is riven with shards of polemic and interminable self-justification.
Keane is an infinitely more compelling figure than either Niall Quinn or Mick McCarthy, yet his book hardly reflects this.Quinn's, by contrast, is a joy. Honest, self-deprecating, humorous. Beautifully crafted, it tells the story of a life lived to the full, albeit recklessly on occasion, sometimes clownishly even. Yet, one always seen through a wide lens.
McCarthy's offering is a little stolid by comparison, yet still impressively measured. Most impulses to editorialise are eschewed in the interest of a straight, factual audit of summer happenings in the Far East.
The most striking image is of the pre-war civility between Keane and McCarthy, the picture of player and manager affably sharing a hotel lift on May 20 (Keane expressing the hope that he hasn't been "too hard" on McCarthy with his criticism of the missing skips), of them then breakfasting together the following morning "we chat amicably for an hour or so." Later that same day, Keane would make his first announcement of a desire to return home.
Reading, you get a sense of incredulity and, ultimately, exasperation from the Irish manager.
Having consumed the literary works of Messrs Keane/Dunphy, Quinn/Humphries and McCarthy/Dervan, I find myself wondering about Roy again. He is due in Cork this week for a number of book signings and, in the so-called 'Peoples' Republic', the emotional dynamic will hardly be a complex one.
But, for me, a line in Quinn's book goes to the nub of the so-called 'Keane affair.' Quinn is lamenting Roy's absence from World Cup 2002.
He writes: "It's like the drink, though. We all take responsibility for ourselves. Roy left us, not the other way around, and he punished himself more than any of us by not coming back. For what it has done to him, I have him down as another victim of the game. He wouldn't see himself that way but when is the last time you saw the guy look happy?"
It is a question worth asking. Greatness brings no apparent fulfilment to Roy Keane. If anything, it leaves him hostile. Every sunrise comes up pale, every rainbow curves towards a trap-door.
He reminds me a bit of John Leahy a few short years ago. The same desolate focus. The rage packed tight like high explosive. The veering curve of his moods. The glare that could make paint peel. The walk that blurs into a swagger.Above all, the compulsion to be hard.
Leahy's world fell apart one night during a needless row in Manchester. He almost did time for his madness. Might well have done but for the friendship of men like Nicky English and, believe it or not, Niall Quinn.
Soccer-heads may scoff at a comparison between Roy Keane and an amateur sportsman. But Leahy at full pelt, like DJ Carey or Brian Whelahan, makes a lot of the Premiership millionaires look cloddish and ungainly. He has a gift bordering on genius. The Leahys, Careys and Whelahans of this world would have been special in any sport. It is just hurling's blessing that their childhoods evolved in places like Mullinahone, Gowran and Birr.
But John Leahy's never been an eagle scout.
In his prime, he lived closer to the shadows than the rest of us. It was as if he was fenced off. A black wind seemed to blow across his story. I always imagined that when he lay in bed at night, John believed he was looking up at a starless Heaven.
For a time after Manchester, he was treated like a gangster. I remember, especially, a night in Tralee. The summer of '96 and Tipp playing Kerry in the Munster Hurling Championship. The following day, Clare would be dethroned by Limerick at a packed Gaelic Grounds. Tralee was no more than a curiosity, a trivia question.
Maybe 1,000 souls slipped into Austin Stack Park that night, giddy and ambivalent. They applauded sympathetically when the luckless English hobbled off with yet another injury. Tipp were ambling, already out of sight. Then the teams strolled in at half-time and, by the tunnel entrance, a vulgar baiting started.
Suddenly, on a languid Kerry evening, eerie cloud formations began knitting overhead. Leahy was the magnet. He walked by, as if in solitude, all manner of aggression raining down upon him. Imagine. John Leahy in Tralee on a summer's evening, hurling folk craning to get closer, stretching to vent their spleen. Kerry hurling folk? Hard to say.
Strangest time though.
Recently, I had lunch with John. Like Keane, Leahy turned his back on alcohol many moons ago. It's not an easy thing to do in the hard, laddish domain they both exist within. But, he's managing. Actually, he's thriving. Like Keane too, Leahy has battled back from a cruciate knee injury, though with none of the props available to a Manchester United captain.
Two months ago, most people believed John was finished as a hurler. I certainly did. He was still walking with a limp. Still doing deals with pain. Mullinahone had named him 'player-manager' but it smacked of a compassionate title. John, we surmised, was needed exclusively on the line.
Yet, in his own vernacular, Leahy "stuck at it" and, last Sunday, he hurled beautifully in the Tipperary county final.
At 33, a return to county colours may be a long-shot but, with Leahy you never know. Over our recent lunch, he talked excitedly of future plans. Not as a hurler, but as an addiction counsellor. John Leahy won't get rich from the work.


But he knows how to smile now. And, for him, that's wealth in itself.