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 Dermot Earley Exhibition in GAA Museum

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Ogie
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PostSubject: Dermot Earley Exhibition in GAA Museum   Dermot Earley Exhibition in GAA Museum Icon_minitimeSat Jun 18, 2011 9:55 pm

I know there are plenty who'll be interested. The museum is class anyway but this is a massive attraction and it's there for 12 months.

http://www.daraghoconchuir.ie/blog.php?id=1153
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Gaffer
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PostSubject: Re: Dermot Earley Exhibition in GAA Museum   Dermot Earley Exhibition in GAA Museum Icon_minitimeMon Jun 20, 2011 11:06 pm

I heard the piece on KFM about this and it sounded fantastic.It has both GAA and Army displays there. A good tribute to a great man.
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ChopperDalton
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PostSubject: Re: Dermot Earley Exhibition in GAA Museum   Dermot Earley Exhibition in GAA Museum Icon_minitimeThu Jun 23, 2011 7:10 pm

ONE YEAR ON......

He said the words and he lived them. Dermot Earley’s philosophy was to do your best. Be honest and be a man. The GAA, Irish Defence Forces and his beloved family all benefited from that approach.

It is still hard to believe he is gone and yet the first anniversary of the great man’s passing falls on Thursday.

The outpouring of emotion that followed his death after illness on 23 June, 2010 was a testament to Dermot Earley’s legacy, and how his way of life left such a positive impact. Anybody who ever had the slightest contact with the Gortaganny native was left feeling better for it.

I had the good fortune to have many dealings with the former Army Chief-of-Staff. Having remembered the big deal that was made of him finally getting to play in the 1980 All-Ireland final after Roscommon defeated Armagh by six points (I was nine), and then seeing The Sunday Game footage of him being chaired off by some of his fiercest Mayo rivals after his final inter-county game five years later, I finally got to speak with him as a researcher of TG4’s ‘Laochra Gael’ series.

I recall, when gathering footage for the programme, desperately searching for a clip of him training in the Lebanon. I could have sworn I had seen it on TV as a child. Alas, it couldn’t be unearthed but I refuse to believe that I imagined those eyewateringly tight shorts running in the desert.

Around two years later, I was landing in Newbridge to become the Kildare Nationalist’s first dedicated sports editor and in time, Dermot became our expert analyst for Kildare’s championship games.

It was a task he took seriously. You’d know he had his preparation done when the phone call was made. It cannot have been easy. For a start, Dermot jnr was playing. So would some other Sarsfields clubmen, and players he would have managed in his time with Kildare. But he found a way to make a point about a performance or style of play, without insulting teams or individuals.

Once, at a function in which his daughter Noelle was receiving her 2003 All-Ireland medal along with the rest of her team-mates, he tried to recruit me for the Sash’s hurling team. What a lucky escape for them.

‘Nice’ sounds like an insult but in its truest sense, that’s what Dermot was. Genuinely so. So much so that at first I was wary. No-one can be that decent, can they? Every conversation ended with “God bless you”. But before long, it was just obvious that he actually meant that.

For a start, he looked you in the eye. He was sincere in his interest, not blathering platitudes while looking over your head.

Of course, he had steel. If you shook his hand you knew that. You don’t prosper on the football field with Michael Glaveys, Sarsfields, Roscommon and Connacht for the guts of 30 years if you’re soft and cannot make some difficult decisions. You certainly don’t become the Defence Forces’ top dog.

Make no mistake, Dermot wanted to win. He was deadly competitive. GAA president, Christy Cooney recounted a story from 2008, when his native Cork played Kildare in the All-Ireland quarter-final. With Kildare edging back into the game, Dermot got into “a little debate” with a friend of the president’s, as they disagreed over a refereeing decision.

The most animated I ever saw him was on the sideline as Sarsfields lost a county camogie final in Naas to Johnstownbridge. Noelle and Paula were playing that day. Noelle also played when Sarsfields won the Leinster intermediate club ladies football championship in 2004. Dermot gave a half-time speech and spent more time on the pitch than off it. He didn’t like to lose but once the dust had settled, he could accept it knowing that everyone had done their best.

Noelle and Dermot jnr went on to emulate him as All Stars of course, something he was very proud of, but he was proud of all his family because he and his wife, Mary, had instilled their philosophies and beliefs into them all.

That’s why Dermot jnr played for Kildare against Antrim in that famous All-Ireland round 1 qualifier, just hours after burying his father.

“I felt people might not understand it because the GAA has such a huge part in our family, it’s the centrepiece around every dinner conversation,” said Dermot Junior last Wednesday. “I think sometimes when you’re playing at inter-county level it’s hard (for people on the outside) to understand the commitment but we understand it in our family and he understood it.

“I just felt, and my mother felt and the family felt, that it was the best way for me to honour him by going out there and playing that evening. Now as I say, people might have thought that we should have been home with the family but my whole family was there. This was our home and that was the best place to do it.”

There were many tributes to Dermot senior at the launch of the exhibition honouring his career in the GAA and the military last week.

Joe Kernan played against him on numerous occasions, including the aforementioned 1980 All-Ireland semi-final, but regularly too in the league and Railway Cup.

“I bounced off him a few times,” said Kernan. “He was a colossus. Tough, honest, there wasn’t a bad bone in him. He just played the game the way it should be.

“(The exhibition) is brilliant. It must be hard on the family looking at the video clips but when you see all the medals and different things, it’s unbelievable. I think what epitomises the whole thing is the video of the Mayo boys carrying him off on his last match. Them things aren’t done and that shows the respect that their biggest rivals had towards him. That was unbelievable.”

Cooney spoke just as warmly, recalling with a smile that Dermot ‘broke the old rules a few times’ to play rugby. He wasn’t shy about telling Cooney what needed to be done to improve football either, although less vocal than Mary.

The Youghal man became visibly emotional when telling about the time Galway’s Football Board held a function to present a county jersey to all its All-Ireland winners. Dermot Earley was special guest speaker.

“Galway and Roscommon bate the lard out of each other frequently over the years,” Cooney said. “For Galway to invite one of their greatest foes for such a function was some tribute. I remember he got frightfully emotional when describing what Connacht, Roscommon, Galway, football and family meant to him.”

His legacy lives on.

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overthebar
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PostSubject: Re: Dermot Earley Exhibition in GAA Museum   Dermot Earley Exhibition in GAA Museum Icon_minitimeThu Jun 23, 2011 7:23 pm

what a quick year, time goes by so quick when your on the rollercoaster of living your life but when someone passes away it seems to go by even quicker......... nice piece there chopper, must be hard on the early family at this time, but hopefully the lads will bring a smile to there faces with a victory over the dubs on sunday.
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