I don’t usually watch Laochra Gael on Tg4 but I watched it yesterday evening because it was about Tony Hanahoe.
Hanahoe was a hero of mine when I was a young lad and he was the bane of my life being part of a Dublin football team that dominated Leinster, and thrashed Kildare regularly, when I was growing up and playing Gaelic football.
The programme told me that Hanahoe went into Croke Park every Sunday to watch the matches, regardless of who was playing. And me and my brothers and father did this too, even though we had much further to travel.
We had that much in common but that is where it ended.
Hanahoe then went to school and got on his school teams and played with his friends and then played with them with St. Vincent’s and then played with the same lads-Keaveney and Gay O’Driscoll-with Dublin.
Then they won All-Irelands and revived football in the capital city.
You could only be envious of a man who got to win All-Irelands playing alongside his school friends, and to win one as a captain and one as a captain, trainer, manager and selector.
Maybe Hanahoe had ups and downs in his life. But from the outside looking in he appeared to have a blessed life, one which ultimately culminated in a successful professional career as a solicitor.
They say nobody has everything, but Hanahoe got pretty close from my perspective.