Sixties football hero’s big part in county’s finest era

GALWAY great Bosco McDermott is ‘Old School’ and proud of it. It is not that he does not buy into the workings and structures of modern sport – he does – but he strongly believes that no matter what you do in sport or life it always comes back to getting the basics right, respect and, of course, character.

It’s easy to whittle away an hour or so with McDermott, the three-time All-Ireland senior football winner with Galway between 1964 and ’66 who will be presented with the Galway Sports Stars prestigious Hall of Fame award at the Galway Bay Hotel on Saturday night.

A teak tough corner back in his day, McDermott’s contribution was immense in a defence that never conceded a goal in their All-Ireland victories over Kerry (twice) and Meath. Indeed, over those three successful campaigns, the Tribesmen only coughed up a goal once in Croke Park – that against Cork (1-11 to 1-9) in the 1966 semi-final.

By now, the story of Galway’s most successful team is engrained in the DNA of local and national GAA. Defeated 1-9 to 0-10 by Dublin in the 1963 decider, the Westerners bounced back to sweep Kerry aside by 0-15 to 0-10 the following year. They beat their Munster rivals again, 0-12 to 0-9, a year later before completing the famous treble with a 1-10 to 0-7 win over Meath.

“We were lucky,” recalls McDermott, “that each of the fellows from one to 15 brought a different kind of ability. There were no two players the same. They all had different talents but they pooled them into the team. There was a tremendous togetherness and a lack of ego. If ego stuck his head up like a weed, it was . . .” His hand mimics the dynamics of a slash-hook.

“We were aware that you couldn’t win unless you were playing as a very tight unit. That time, Gaelic games were different in the sense that you got a square on the pitch that you were responsible for. And you got a man who you were responsible for and each man had to do a specific job,”

McDermott notes, in effect, that Galway team consisted of artists and miracle men, from goalkeeper Johnny Geraghty to corner forward and his good friend John Keenan, a former Hall of Fame winner who will be joining the McDermott family to celebrate Bosco’s induction on Saturday night.

“He (Keenan) was a brilliant corner forward who could win his own ball and then we had big guys like Mattie McDonagh and Noel Tierney. I don’t think I have seen anyone in my time who was a better full-back than Noel Tierney.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.