It Occurs to Me: No Rae of sunshine for Donegal at Croke Park

I met Michael Healy-Rae before the final last Sunday. I reminded him that my niece Ciara Doherty had spent some time with the clan in Scartaglen in 2013 when she fronted a then TV3 documentary called ‘At Home with the Healy Raes’.

The late Jackie congratulated her for not ‘patronising’ them like some Dublin broadcasters tended to do. Ciara is a proud Donegal woman and felt so at home in Kerry. I know the feeling. We were in Croke Park with two friends from Dingle who had sorted our tickets, and as disappointed as we were, we stayed with them afterwards as they savoured Gavin White lifting the Sam Maguire.

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Around the time I was chatting with Michael-Healy Rae, the only decent tackle on a Kerryman on Sunday was being made (allegedly!) by a guard on his brother, Danny, in Cathedral Street. I was reminded of the lines from the great poet William Blake - “Great things are done when Men & Mountains meet.

This is not done by jostling in the street.”

My friend from Dingle was telling me of a great character from his town who only rises from his county out on All-Ireland Final day if his beloved Kerry are playing. When the Dubs beat them by two points in 2023, your man summed it up the following day by declaring: “We had the hare in the bag! But we let it out!”

There was no shortage of hares in blue jerseys in Croker, but my memories of 2025 will be of the excitement in Clones at the Ulster Final and the magnificent win against Meath in the semi-final. Losing an All-Ireland is a blow but Jim McGuinness and the lads have given us so many wonderful moments this year. Unlike Cork, whose non-appearance in their home county was an insult to their fans, Donegal’s homecoming was warm and gracious, and an acknowledgement of the overall heroics this year.

Listening to Jim afterwards reminded me of a pessimistic friend from Roscommon who described life as “Pushing a bus up a hill with a rope”. Jim talked of Donegal trying to push “a boulder up a hill,” but that was in reference to one game … please God the Hills will sing again! As Christy Gillespie writes in his introductory line to the wonderful ‘The Road to Glenlough’ a few years ago (quoting American poet Muriel Strode), “I will not follow where the path may lead, but I will go where there is no path and I will leave a trail.”

WAS MARTY’S PARTY AN OMEN?
The one area in which there was overwhelming consensus between Donegal and Kerry supporters was that RTE’s ‘Up For The Match’ was the worst for many years.

A friend from Kerry said he was embarrassed by it and that RTE were lazy in picking Rathmore Club, the only criterion being that it was only a 40-minute trip for presenter Anna Geary, who’s from over the border in Milford in County Cork. And who thought it a good idea to put Daithí O’Shea beside Brian McEniff? At least Brian knows his football, but once again, this obsession with celebrities overwhelmed the programme, Matthew Broderick and The Rose Of Tralee being typical examples. Marty Morrissey was literally fawning over the Hollywood star and because of the initial communication problems, the Kilcar Pipe Band, despite travelling in their regalia, were left twiddling their thumbs in the wings. Disgraceful!

There was no proper acknowledgement of ‘cultural’ Kilcar…did the researchers think of checking out John Joe’s pub and listen to the brilliant fiddlers etc.?

Rory Gallagher gave the programme a great musical lift, and as well as James McHugh, Eamonn McGee and Frank McGlynn, it was great to see two great Kerry footballing icons, Ger Power and Mikey Sheehy.

One of Broderick’s better movies was the 1986 film, ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’...last Saturday was ‘RTE’s Night Off.”

MOST HEAVILY POLICED IN THE BRITISH EMPIRE
The mention of Glenlough also reminds me that Rockwell Kent often quoted the aforementioned ‘Great things…’ line by William Blake. I had started to re-read Christy’s book of late, and was looking at the photo taken at Kent’s ‘Big Night’ in Port in 1926.

As Christy relates: He was on a flight to the US and “The in–flight magazine article was accompanied by a selection of Kent’s Irish paintings along with a number of photographs that he had taken back in ‘26. One was of a group standing outside of a low-slung thatched cottage, dressed in their Sunday best and accompanied by two fiddlers. The occasion was a ‘Big Night’, a coming together for dancing, singing, storytelling and drinking, which was held in the artist’s honour shortly before he departed Glencolmcile for home.

I immediately recognised this group photograph as we had a copy of it in our own family album at home. When I arrived back from the States, I was to discover that my maternal grandmother Bridget was standing in the middle of this group photo. Like the American artist, she too had only recently been married. Also present were her two sisters and a brother, my great- uncle Andy Mc Ginley, who was one of the two fiddlers supplying music on that Big Night. He stands there frozen in time with his musical instrument set proudly under his chin.”

That maternal grandmother Bridget was also my granny and Christy’s discovery blew me away. According to Christy:

“It is most likely that the Mc Ginleys, the first family to come and settle in this valley, were centrally involved in this smuggling operation. The incoming ships would have needed a lookout which would explain why the Mc Ginley cottage, the first permanent dwelling to be built in Glenlough, had a north- south orientation looking out towards the sea.

This is as distinct to all the other thatched houses in the area which were sensibly erected east–west with their gable ends facing into the prevailing wind. We also have evidence that one Charlie Mc Ginley, the first of this clan to be recorded, had his rowing boat moored at Poll an Uisce and may well have acted as a pilot for the vessels as they came in to dock.13 Once a ship had berthed, there would also have been a pressing need for someone to act as messenger to let the local merchants and traders know that their illicit goods had landed.

“This lucrative smuggling operation was causing obvious consternation among the British establishment due to the significant loss of revenue to their exchequer. Having finally managed to defeat Napoleon and the scourge of the French following a long and expensive campaign, they now found themselves very short of money and so began taxing alcohol and tobacco in successive budgets. As a direct result of this report, this stretch of coast was to become one of the most heavily policed and regulated in the British Empire.

"Five coast guard stations were established in close proximity, three of them in the parish of Glencolmcille alone. These stations augmented the three Napoleonic watch towers which had been erected just twenty years earlier, designed to give swift warning of an imminent invasion by a French fleet. Each new coast guard station was to be manned by twelve men equipped with two boats, and armed with guns and ammunition. Both day and night, a very vigilant eye was to be kept on land and sea from this network of buildings.”

My late father, who loved his time as a guard in Glen, would have been tickled pink by the notion that he was wearing a uniform in an area that was once the most heavily policed in the British Empire.