 to around the North West this a Wednesday afternoon. Now where would you find the clubs of all the players who played in all Ireland football finals? It's actually easier said than done because first of all you've got to go back away and then try and work out all the various clubs that they've been with and back in the day it would have been often more than one club. But anyhow that was the starting point for a project that has led to a book called Chasing Sam McGuire and it's a book that Column Keys the Irish independent sports columnist and Jeremy Riley put together over a number of years and I'm glad now that Column Keys joins us on the line. Column congratulations first of all on the book. Thank you John and thank you very much for having me on. No problem and a lot of work has gone into it because you've not just outlined all the players that were involved in all the the finals but you do more besides that and we'll get to that in a moment but even just getting the players. It seems to me that the go back in the early years that players had more clubs than they would have now. Very much so John and that left us with difficulty trying to trace the clubs of these players because there is no central database in the GA. There are obviously in every county there is somebody that will have some level of knowledge of this but the further you went back clubs were very transient today. In one parish they might set up and have enough players for one year and then they'd collapse they wouldn't have enough numbers the next year through migration people moving from place to place so there was a lot more movement then and obviously transport wasn't what it was then so if you're migrating to Dublin or to Galway or wherever else it was you generally played there too there was no way back no regular way back to play with your club so they moved from place to place and the record of this wasn't great so that was the basis for our project and I wouldn't even say it was a book at the outset because Dermot Riley is a long-term friend of mine and he's a great interest in in the history of Gaelic games and all of that. He asked me one day obviously in my position where would you source the clubs and the first names because if you look at you look at any of the programs or any of the reports they're all initials so Dermot it became an obsession for him initially John to try and establish what's their first names and what clubs did they play with. I thought initially yeah that's not going to be too hard I get back to you and I'll try and try and collate them but as I looked into it I realized what a difficulty it was it was okay in some counties some counties keep good records of it others didn't and trying to trace the clubs from place to place and year to year it really was a laborious task I think we started on this maybe eight years ago there was plenty of times when I would have put down the laptop pushing away and said this this can't be done but we persisted and we added other strands and as we were researching and validating the clubs and go back through the archives so many interesting stories that I would never have heard before cropped up and you take a note of them and Dermot was the same and we trade notes and we say there's an interesting story there's another interesting story and just facts and things about the years I certainly had never read them and I had never seen them in one shall we say one book or one one web there was nothing like that that you could go to and say there's a reference for all Ireland finals in the 20s the late 20s as we have the 30s 40s 50s just a central record so we said about completing that with the Christian names of the players who are involved in the finals and the clubs and I was a laborious task but I have to say a most enjoyable one to the things I would have learned out of it and shine a light on really and we wanted to shine a light say on not just the all Ireland finalists after a while we added sections about the various championships so that brought together a lot of names and a lot of references yeah absolutely just going to say that because you've broadened it out it's not just about the the final and about the lineups in the finals it's about the championship as well because you devote two or three pages to each championship and it's it's the stories within it's the stories from the provincial championships as well as all Ireland final day that for me make this book and it's you know it's part social history almost as well as a sporting book yeah we've decided as you know when you're looking back through true our true across the archives and not only are you reading the sports pages and when you think back to the 1930s and 40s even local papers it was very very limited sports coverage so you were really it was crumbs what you were what you were looking looking at and we would have looked back in club histories and there was some very very strong local papers to it that you could you could reference but it was limited some papers might be eight or twelve pages which you'd look at the front pages and you'd see some of the court cases some of the addresses are some of the ceremonies priests would have delivered off the pulpit in certain certain areas we found it all very reflective of Ireland at a time when we tried to add in various you know not just from an Irish perspective but a global history as well and we have accounted for that with maybe six or seven snippets to each year that might have reflected that and maybe given a flavor of the way Ireland was in a global context at that time and you know there was obviously it was quite insular in the 30s and 40s and really only began to to stretch out in the 1950s and that coincided with a huge surge in interest probably from the late 40s in Gaelic games into county Gaelic games as well at that time and you could see the crowds increasing the newspaper coverage increasing through the 1950s it was really expanding and then consequently into the 60s television coverage and into the 70s more so because in a way the way you the way you write it up it's a it's a reflection of you know a greater Ireland or Ireland's place in the greater world in some instances in each year and it changes as the years go on one of the things I like about the book is the little final miscellany that you do and this is just some you know little the sides a little snippets from each final and I'm just looking at the one here for 1930 and it was it was between Kerry and Monaghan and apparently a one-sided game and at the time you're right that the key counts were usually taken by one of the the full back line so it meant that the Kerry goalkeeper actually didn't see much action that day he didn't touch the ball at all because obviously Monaghan Monaghan were so far adrift in that game and the defenders took the kick out so and that was that was the common practice almost up to the 1970s I think it was probably probably around the time of Martin Furlong from Mothley Billy Morgan from Cork and Leverly Paddy Cullen from Dublin probably modernized kick outs in the respect that they actually took them rather than the nearest full back and you know it was a kick out to go as long and as far as you could but Morgan had a short kick out and he brought the placement of kick outs that you see now perfected by all modern day goalkeepers it was really Billy Morgan who brought that really to the four with that with his placement of short kick outs but at that time you're right 1930 the Kerry goalkeeper did not touch the ball in that game and another one from 1944 this was the the final between Ross Common and Kerry and on the it was well it's this is a party you're reporting on the the Lenster final actually because it was played in a tie not in Crow Park but in a tie and the Dublin County board actually relayed on the evening evening Herald to gather up the squad that's right that was the that was the nature of the notification then that they would often and that happened commonplace that if a letter wasn't sent in the post and that was the means of communication and know who'd be put in the local paper not just just a Herald but there were other instances of that where they would put a squad into a local paper and tell them the time to turn up and that was the means of communication so you set that into into a modern context you think my god how could that ever work but they were the means of communication because there was no guarantee levers were going to arrive at all the houses of all the players so they found that everybody bought a local paper in those days that was the means of communication even the even the forum where on here now the platform where on here was not commonplace at local level in any way so that was the means of communication yeah they didn't have what's happened in this nothing like that nothing like that or local radio or anything social media nothing you start and the first time ago I was played for in in 1928 and a dare mit given that he's a killed airman it was it was apt that the that was the year you started it is it's the first year that Sam McGuire was presented and really that's what we tried to contextualize is the Sam years and I suppose the significance of the Sam McGuire is that you know everybody in the country is an first name terms with this cup it's Sam the chase for Sam begins every year and it ends with the presentation and the home and stand in well it's July now obviously but it once was September so Sam has a special resonance I'm not so sure how many other cups are referred to by their first names do you think of the the William Webb Ellis cup for the Rugby World Cup that was you know last month it's not called Bill or anything like that the the Ryder Cup is not called Samuel after Samuel Ryder but the Sam McGuire Cup is regularly referenced as Sam the chase for Sam so that was that was the premise for our work and that's why we started at 1928 obviously there's a body of work to go back to the the 1880s when the All-Ireland title was were first played but actually chasing the clubs in those years and the in the in the in the 18 the late 1800s it's clubs that represented counties so the pursuit of the clubs of the counties wouldn't be as relevant but obviously the chase was now probably the impediment there is that the records going back that far of championships and to be able to produce in the format that we have produced just probably wouldn't be there it's another body of work that maybe somebody or maybe ourselves will commit to in time but it would be pretty exhaustive to try and establish those details. Ulster clubs feature prominently obviously and they they really come to the fore when when football started they go off you mentioned you know it really started to gain more prominence in the the fifties and sixties and that's when teams like Throne, Derry and Down in particular came to the fore. Yeah, in the late 1950s, Cavan and Monaghan, Cavan primarily had dominated Ulster football right through from the 20s through the 30s into the 40s and and won five All-Ireland titles in those years from 1933 to 1952 won their five All-Ireland titles but into the mid fifties their grip on Ulster started to weaken and some of the six counties became much more prominent and Throne in 1957 Derry in 1958 and then Down in 1959 came through to win their first provincial titles and really began to change the face of the game not just in Ulster but also obviously with Down's progression changed the face of Gaelic football across the country as well because Down brought a new vision for the game a new way of playing a catching kick was very much the fundamentals of Gaelic football right up to the fifties but Down brought something different they brought the idea of teamwork combination play and just kicking the ball away for the sake of letting the next man to fight for it they moved away from that and that combination worked really transformed Gaelic football in the 1960s they were pivotal in advancing the game that Down team that won back to back All-Ireland in 1960 and 1961 and then Donegal came into the scene in the in the 60s very competitive beating beating actually the the reigning champion's cavern in in 63 but this then leads through to their first success in Ulster in in 72 with with a very famous player manager yeah Brian McAdep obviously who has been instrumental in so much of Donegal football for more than half a century now obviously because he you know he he he he charts back to those years but he was player manager at the time you might say player manager was a strange concept he was 29 but obviously he was drawn to it there was obviously leadership qualities there but he was drawn to it but it was a common practice at the time uh in Sligo Cavern or Sligo would have had Burns Murphy but primarily Mickey Kearns would have also been a player manager and actually Mickey Kearns was a sole selector of the Sligo team at one stage Tony Hanna who after Kevin Hefferns departure in Dublin in 1976 Tony Hanna who was player manager of an All-Ireland winning team the Dublin team that won in the 1977 so it was quite a common concept right across the country uh Paddy Doherty and Gabriel Kelly would have managed playing player managers marking each other in a game in 1971 as well so it was a common concept of the it's it's moved away from that at the time but it wasn't unusual Brian McEnif was player manager and very instrumental in guiding Donegal on the field and off it to that first Ulster title in in 1972 and another well known um uh personality if you like involved in that uh Ulster winning side Martin Kearney Martin Kearney that's right and he subsequently subsequently moved he subsequently moved to uh he subsequently moved to Mayo so uh but he was he was uh he was a very prominent player midfield forward wherever wherever it was he was very very prominent uh for Donegal in those years for sure and actually previous to that Donegal uh for one game only in 1969 I found this interesting Sean Mead who was such a prominent player for the Galway three in the row team played one game for Donegal he moved to Bali Shannon played with the local club and he played one game in 1969 against Antrim now they didn't win it so they had an all Ireland winner playing for them at that time 69 and and and finally a column one game that you you cover in the book as well is a famous or maybe infamous one in 1973 and they called it at the time the battle in Bali buffet yeah so most a lot of people in Donegal would be very familiar this nice of both but not so much across the country but in 1973 a particularly fractious game an Ulster quarter final there um Neely Gallagher got a very very bad sustained a very bad injury I think it was after around 12 minutes but there was a particularly uh nasty atmosphere according to all reports around Bali buffet that day so much so that the Donegal substitutes reputedly refused to warm up there was such hostility in the terraces with rocks and bottles were reported to be thrown in on the pitch and there was just a real edge edge the place so much so that the front page of the Donegal Democrat when we were researching this the front page of the Donegal Democrat had an entry with a Donegal official at the time suggesting that Donegal in the future might consider playing their provincial football in Connacht now it didn't materialize there was an investigation by the Ulster Ulster council they did uh issue a suspension relating to some of those incidents to one of the Tarone players subsequently Tarone did win that Ulster title but the following year Donegal came back went to Oma and beat the champions and beat them and obviously that was a a revenge mission but Donegal and Tarone had quite a rivalry obviously they still have quite a rivalry now but in the early 70s they certainly played across those three years and in the two of the three years that Donegal won the Ulster title they beat Tarone and they went back and beat them in Oma and obviously progressed to win to progress to win uh that 1974 Ulster title one of the things I found interesting about 1974 was Seamus Bonner's eight goals in that championship campaign he scored four against Fermanna now I don't know as quite possible it did happen I don't have definitive on this but eight goals in a championship campaign is right has to be right up there with any goal scoring feat in any championship campaign I was just looking back in it Kylian O'Connor from Mayo for context he's the championship the record all-time record championship score and in 2013 he scored two hat-tricks one against London and one of course against Donegal and there were six goals he scored and obviously championship campaigns are longer now there's more games available for Seamus Bonner in that 1974 campaign I think three of the more penalties and they had extended the penalty area in 1974 so penalties became much more prevalent that year and Seamus scored three but to score eight goals in a championship campaign was a fantastic achievement some scoring indeed well listen all that and much more contained in the book it's called Chasing Sam McGuire and I'm just guessing here but I'd say that there's a second book in the offering or in the making there is indeed John we hope to obviously we split it such was the volume of material that we brought together that we took this decision sometime back to split it into two and bring the second part up to date when Sam is presented in the 100th anniversary it will be presented for the 100th time in 2027 but the 100th anniversary is 2028 so by then hopefully part two will be available which obviously features Donegal's two All Ireland title wins and who knows John there could be a third or a fourth there in the coming years given given who's in charge of what's happening well we hope we hope we hope and yeah it's out now in a Brian Fress it's called Chasing Sam McGuire go on keys thanks so much for having a chat with us appreciate it thank you John thank you I ran the Northwest with John Breslin