A time when everything was just a black-and-white issue

There are probably few people outside of Galway who will give the Connacht champions a reasonable chance of winning next Sunday’s All-Ireland showdown with Kerry in Croke Park, but in days of childhood innocence, I remember a time when those roles would have been completely reversed.

Those were the days of black-and-white televisions – and very few of them – back in the early to mid-1960s when Galway were poised to enter their most glorious period in the history of Gaelic football, reaching four successive All-Irelands and winning the last three of them.

It was the John ‘Tull’ Dunne era of Gaelic football in the county when the Ballinasloe man practically did everything from organising trips to Dublin for teams to managing them on the sideline, while it was rumoured at one point that Galway had 15 selectors. Apocryphal or not, I don’t really know.

In terms of media revolutions, what happened in the early 1960s with the opening of RTE television in December 1961, was on a similar scale to the arrival of the mobile phone. As young lads with barely our backsides down on the cold timber of primary school seats, word quickly spread that those matches could be seen on television.

All very well, one might say, but in the more Spartan times of 1963, the slight issue arose over access to the black-and-white TV screens, for they were truly few and far between. It was a bit like the meeting of the mice when one bright spark floated the idea of putting a bell around the cat’s neck to warn of his imminent arrival, only for elder feline to pose the question: “And, which mouse will perform this task?”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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