Country Living with Francis Farragher

It mightn’t be September . . . there’s no stacks of oats in the haggard . . . and there’s no Sam in the bag either, but it’s still the week of an All-Ireland football final, when Padraic Joyce’s bunch of soldiers try to get Galway into double figures on the roll-of-honour list.

As one slips into older years, a look back at the fortunes of our county footballers seems in a way like a little dairy of our lives with each passing decade [and aren’t they flying!] being bookmarked by the fortunes of our county teams.

The only little issue about growing up as a child of the ‘60s was the firmly held belief [at the time] that Galway were going to win the All-Ireland every year.

There was of course that little stumble in 1963 when I was told to take my brother’s hand and he’d bring me to see a match on television where Galway were going to win the All-Ireland.

Our destination was a bungalow by a single man by the name of Mickey Collins just off Abbey Road and what a trauma that poor man had to endure as men, women, teenagers and children crowded into his kitchen where a 19-inch televisions, probably a Bush, had us all enthralled.

The outcome though didn’t work out in our favour and I didn’t really have a clue what was going on when ‘the big people’ roared and screamed about Dublin forward, Gerry Davey, being in the square, when he scored what turned out to be the winning goal for the Dubs.

By the time the following September of ’64 came around, our ‘cinema destination’ had changed for some reason to a house in the opposite direction which overlooked the Brooklodge Church and Monastery.

To say that the family in question ‘went out of their way’ to facilitate the travelling hordes of supporters is something of an understatement.

The woman of the house, an elderly lady by the name of Sarah Furey lived there with her son and daughter, Tommy and Eileen, but they also had a lodger for many years called Bill Barry.

He occupied one of the two upstairs bedrooms and had decided to reward himself with a television set, a development which came to the attention of the locals.

Pictured: That winning feeling!