It Occurs To Me: Rory’s winning matches

Big Danny from Doocharry hugged me so hard, I had to count my ribs afterwards! Eoin from Letterkenny was caught between us, but he survived and commenced hugging everybody available! 

The setting was The Irish Viking Bar in Lanzarote, Rory Gallagher’s fantastic new pub, and it will long live in the memory as the Donegal supporters went wild…wile altogether, as we say. The Viking is a most appropriate name, as the men and women from the North, staged a mass invasion that Brian Boru himself could not have repelled! 

The craic had all started the night before when Rory performed non-stop for two hours, and when he launched into Jimmy’s Winning Matches, it nearly took the roof off the longboat. We had watched the brilliant Munster Hurling Final earlier, in the company of people from Cork, Waterford and Tipperary. I asked Dermot from Tipp who he was supporting, Limerick or Cork? “I hate them both equally!” he laughed. I was reminded of the Cork man I met a few years ago over there, who was appalled at the notion that he might support his neighbours in the All-Ireland Final. “The only time I’d support those Kerry hoors” says he, “is if they played Rangers!” 

I’d also watched the Celtic-Rangers match in the company of a Glaswegian Bhoys fan who regaled us with stories of Larkhall, where the locals smash green traffic lights and objected to Asda and two other major stores, because of green in their lettering. Before we departed, he cautioned: “Be careful, big man, when you’re passing the Bluebell (a staunch Rangers pub in Puerto Del Carmen)…the pavement is worn out with all the knuckle dragging!” Ouch! 

Anyway, back to Clones…albeit from a sunny distance. Rory launches into Las Vegas in the Hills of Donegal and the Vikings go stone mad. There are tears and laughter, roars and banter… Big Danny is beating the counter like Thor’s Hammer and an energetic and emotional woman “frae Manor” takes me out for a jive. After six or seven birls, I seek sanctuary on the high stool until Rory reprises Jimmy's Winning Matches, and the Northern invaders go clean mad again. God, it’s great to be from Donegal. 

Frank Galligan with Rory Gallagher in his new pub, The Irish Viking Bar in Lanzarote

One bewildered craythur from Mayo meets me in the toilets and says: “I wish I could bottle this and make our crowd sup it in Cashelbar!” Ah, but our Jimmy didn’t bottle it, nor did the fifteen plus heroes. When Jimmy Mc comes on the telly, the crowd goes buck mad again, and I have to wait until later to hear what he actually said. And it’s worth it…I said a few weeks ago here that he has an uncanny ability to instil confidence, not only in his team but in Donegal supporters. Okay, there were times when Armagh looked like they might snatch it, but there was no despair or pessimism evident in the Irish Viking. Jimmy’s winning hearts and minds too. When it came to penalties, Shaun Patton’s Finn Harps experience was surely a factor in that wonderful save. Earlier, Rory wondered if there were any Kilcar people in. “I’m 50%” says I. “Ah, that’ll do!” he laughed. When Paddy McBrearty scores, we high five…I feel 100%.

Good luck to him in the new venture. He’s a warm, engaging, funny, and a very entertaining man, and he reminded me that his first radio outing was back in 1995 when he, his parents Mary B and Paul, travelled up to Derry to be special guests on my morning programme, and he still remembered what he sang…and sung it again! It was Runaway Train, the Grammy Award winning million seller by Soul Asylum in 1993.

Chorus:

Runaway train never going back

Wrong way on a one way track 

Seems like I should getting somewhere

Somehow I’m never here nor there

Well, Donegal are on track…Jimmy’s Winning Matches and it’s a train that knows precisely where it’s going. Early on Monday, I ran into one of the Vikings…he was hoarse and looked like he was dragged backwards through a fence in Clones. He managed to squawk, “Wile night, sir” before he lurched towards a wile feed. I was reminded of a very articulate friend years ago who always pronounced ‘phenomenon’ as ‘phenomenomenon’. “Boys a dear”, he’d say, “that Michael Murphy is a phenomenomenon” ( Fay nom ay nom enon)

I agree…but much as we love him, Michael’s ghost was exorcised in St Tiernach’s Park last Sunday. This is a new dawn…thank you Jim, you’re a phenomenomonon.

 I put up the video of Rory on my own Facebook and on Highland Radio. There was a great reaction, bar one Dub who hissed: “Sure he’s only won one All-Ireland Ffs!” (And you beat Louth…just!) Some people just don’t get it…don’t get Us at all. Personally, I think Dublin and Kerry, maybe Mayo too, should be invited into the Ulster Championship. Now that would be a competition!

                           Meanwhile in Malmo…

While Rory G was entertaining the masses on Saturday night in Puerto, the Eurovision Screeching Contest was happening in Malmo. Nobody paid a blind bit of difference, the telly was put on late and was thankfully muted, to facilitate a kind of morbid curiosity in the Irish result. It didn’t matter…most of the ‘songs’ sounded like chalk being scraped over an oul blackboard. As my old friend and former Derry footballer Tommy Doherty used to say in the Squealing Pig in Muff when a singer wasn’t up to scratch, “You’d make a crow cry!” 

It Occurs To Me: What time does the right ‘rise’?

It is no longer a song contest…even the political stuff backfired with Israel a place ahead of Bambie from Cork. I wonder did she know her county had hurled Limerick out of it? That would have given her a wee lift. It’s about time we had mouths that sing, not loudmouths. May I suggest that if we are going to continue with this farce, we get Jimmy Mc to represent us, not as a singer, but 5 minutes of motivation from the Glenties man would surely sway the voters! 

It’s being held in Switzerland next year so no matter how mad this year was, 2025 will be ‘cuckoo’ altogether. 

                                       Away with the pharaohs

Mention of Switzerland reminds me of a wonderful story from ‘In-Through’ in the early 70’s. Although The Troubles had hugely affected anyone with UK armed forces connections coming to Ireland on holidays, a gang of retired RAF men came for a bit of fishing and the locals let them get on with it, although the guards kept a discreet eye.  One local character joined them nightly and benefited greatly from their largesse, getting copious glasses of whisky as they loved his outlandish yarns. No matter what wartime derring-do they shared, your man matched them with great flights of fancy. 

One jealous local got fed up with him and decided to nail him thus: “You’re some buck to be talking about Spitfires…you couldn’t row from Teelin Pier to Cladnageragh!” To which your man famously responded: “Listen you, you wastard, not only was I in the RAF, but I bombed the pyramids in Egypt, and on my way home to this God forsaken country, I stopped off in Switzerland to see men making clocks!” 

Legend has it that the whiskered gentlemen increased his whisky allowance!