I have only one memory of my father kissing me. I was 18 years old. It happened on the long curved platform of Kent Station, Cork, the night after the All-Ireland hurling final of 1979, when my teammates and I brought the Minor cup home.
I can recall almost nothing about the match, but I clearly remember the railway station being packed with giddy people when the train eked itself out of the tunnel and braked to a stop. A pipe and drum band was playing full blast. From the door of the train I saw my father approaching through the crowd. I felt the pull of his arms as I stepped down on the platform. I saw the liquid joy in his eyes. The startling bristle of his stubble on my cheek and the scent of whiskey from his breath are as vivid to me today as if it all happened yesterday.
His voice is hoarse with passion. “Oh, Tadhg, oh, Tadhg. I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud.”
I let him down in so many ways. I never won a county with Mallow. I flunked out of college and caused him years of worry. I never gave him a grandchild. Despite these failings he was endlessly loyal to me.
I’m sure my father kissed me as a child; he was a loving and tactile man. I remember his bedtime stories about last-minute rescues in helicopters, but I can’t remember any of those kisses. I’m sure he was proud of me on the day I graduated (eventually) from university, and on the day I got married, and the times I looked after him and my mother when they were elderly.
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But I let him down in so many ways. I never won a county with Mallow. I flunked out of college and caused him years of worry. I was never successful, financially. I never gave him a grandchild. Despite these failings he was endlessly loyal to me.
In August 1998 my father was living in a nursing home. He was 80 and had become very frail since my mother had died the previous summer. My wife Ciara and I were on our way to a wedding in Galway and, as we approached Mallow, she asked if I wanted to call in to see him. I said no, we’d keep going, and he died the following night while I was drinking and dancing at the wedding.
It isn’t surprising that I watch out for photos or videos of such kisses in the sports pages of newspapers after games.
In the epic semi-final of the All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship, in August 2017, Galway beat Tipperary by a single point in Croke Park. Joe Canning was the hero of the Tribesmen, with a score in the dying moments of the game like some otherworldly feat by a Homeric demi-god. All his life beforehand had led him up to that moment. All his life afterwards is leading away from it.
There is a picture of Joe being embraced by his mother, Josephine, after the game. The camera is on her, from behind and to the left of Joe. She looks at him; her eyes, uplifted, are radiating love and pride, her smile is motherly and tender. Her hands are raised, her fingers are touching his chest – she has already hugged him or is about to.
His eyes appear closed or downcast. Perhaps he is tearful too, we don’t know. He looks spent. Reposeful. He carries his warrior helmet in his left hand. Sweat glistens from the short hairs on his head and at the nape of his neck.
Something is passing between them. Why he does this, how he can do this. For whom he is really doing all this. For whom all sportspeople are really doing this.
It wasn’t the money, or his reputation, or the worldwide shame he had brought to Australian cricket that distressed him so much as the devastation of his father
Another image is from Ballinasloe on the day after Galway won the All-Ireland a few weeks after Joe Canning’s heroics. They bring the Liam McCarthy Cup home and cross the border at Ballinasloe. Here the bus pulls up and Micheál Donoghue, the team manager, puts the cup into the hands of his elderly father, Miko, who is sitting in a wheelchair with a rug over his lap by the side of the road. A photo of the moment shows the cup in the foreground; it shines. The Celtic engraving entwined around the silvery metal is prominent. Miko is weeping.
Miko is weeping with joy and pride and because he thought he’d never see the cup come west of the Shannon again before he died. And to think, to think that his own son, his very own Micheál made that happen. Micheál’s eyes are downcast and his lips are set to prevent him from crying, too. He has put a consoling arm around his father and their foreheads are pressed together in a sweet and timeless intimacy.
Their hugs and kisses are of a different intimacy: consolatory, bestowed in quiet corners
Another image of a father and son struck me in March 2018. The Australian cricket captain, Steve Smith, was found to have cheated in a test match against South Africa by tampering with the ball. His career was in ruins, he had lost huge amounts of money as a professional and he was utterly disgraced. Australia is not a forgiving place when it comes to sporting failure. This was a long and bruising fall; there were many striking him on the way down, including the British tabloids who nicknamed him “Captain Cry Baby”.
On arrival back to Sydney, he tearfully apologised, but it wasn’t until he mentioned the impact on his father and mother that he completely broke down. It wasn’t the money, or his reputation, or the worldwide shame he had brought to Australian cricket that distressed him so much as the devastation of his father, who was standing beside him, trying to help him through the press conference.
We regularly see moments of intimacy such as hugs and kisses at sporting events. At golf events, husbands, wives and children greet victors on 18th greens under the frenzied gaze of the media. Children rush out onto the grass to be joyfully lifted up by their champion mothers and fathers at the moment of glory. Fans cheer and smile and clap their hands in a ritualistic homage as old as time. The trophy and the glory are not the only prizes for the successful, these images boast. A beautiful wife or a handsome husband, or happy, healthy, wealthy children are included in the spoils of professional sport.
But what about the losers? What about the golfers who have blown the four-shot lead, to come up short? What about the goalkeepers who have conceded soft goals, the strikers who have missed crucial penalties? The rugby players who have been sent off after moments of madness, disgracing themselves?
Their hugs and kisses are of a different intimacy: consolatory, bestowed in quiet corners, as fans and media lower their heads and look away, offering a respectful and sympathetic privacy.
In June 2018, after Tipperary’s final round-robin match in the Munster Hurling Championship, I watched my television as ecstatic Clare fans invaded the pitch after a dramatic win. Tipperary were out, beaten on their own patch, in the most agonising of circumstances.
As the Clare players jumped around and hugged each other and were swamped by adoring fans, I caught a glimpse of a Tipperary player on his knees, crying inconsolably. I won’t say his name. I could see a middle-aged woman trying to console him. The camera moved on and I did not rewind to have a closer look, although I wanted one. It wouldn’t have been right.
I was amazed at how quickly the woman had reached the player and I wondered if she was his mother, or another concerned Tipperary woman, or even some Clare fan who could see his distress and tried to console him in the moment. I’ll never know.
Parental love and kisses are one thing, romantic love and kisses are another.
The Fifa Women’s World Cup in the summer of 2019 was a wonderful and significant occasion on many levels. At last, the great women footballers of the world got the attendances at games, the viewership and the media attention they deserved. There were other significant elements to the championship, to do with sexism and homophobia.
It is a perfect moment of shared intimacy, joy and love, granted to these two people by sport.
The best team in the world, the USA, deservedly won the cup and, after the final, several of the players ran to the fans’ zone reserved for family and friends, to celebrate. The fans are in a raised stand above the pitch and the players have to step up on the backs of chairs and stretch to get close to their loved ones.
One of the players, Kelley O’Hara, a native of Georgia, has to lean forward awkwardly to kiss her girlfriend – in effect, O’Hara was coming out by this kiss, she hadn’t previously declared herself as gay, unlike 41 of the other players involved in the tournament. To prolong the moment she pulls herself up by a metal bar and holds herself suspended a few feet over the ground.
The photo that drew me in most was the one taken just after the kiss. Our view is from the side and behind and we cannot see O’Hara’s eyes. Her upturned head looks almost supplicating, desperate for approbation. Her hair is long and ponytailed, and slick with sweat at the side. The faces of the two women are touching. O’Hara’s girlfriend is above her and she has cupped the footballer’s neck with her left hand; a thumb around the ear. She has gold rings around her middle and wedding fingers. A pendant is hanging from her neck, mid-air. Her eyes are almost closed, with what looks like the remnants of a tear below the left one. Her lips are slightly parted, in the beginning of a smile.
It is a perfect moment of shared intimacy, joy and love, granted to these two people by sport.
“Family is everything,” Micheál Donoghue said in an interview, trying to maintain his composure, when the cup came home to Ballinasloe on that September day, in 2017. What he didn’t say, but what was said in the image of him and Miko (and in the other images) is that sport and love and family are as bound together and intertwined as the Celtic engraving on the Liam McCarthy Cup. Micheál became the coach of the Galway hurling team so that he could have such a moment of intimacy with his father.
I don’t have a daughter or a son and so I will never pass on my father’s kiss. In reality, that kiss dies with me
I write about sport because of my father’s kiss in 1979. And because of all the other kisses, by all the other fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and friends and wives and girlfriends and husbands and boyfriends and coaches and teammates and delirious fans.
But my father’s kiss is not only the reason I write about sport – it’s the reason I write at all. I am writing to find a way to pass on my father’s kiss.
I wrote about such a kiss and built a story around it (“Dúchas”) and built a book (The First Sunday in September) around that story. Because I can never have that kiss again, I was compelled to write one. I wanted to give thanks for it and to mourn it. My book was published on the 20th anniversary of my father’s death and I allowed myself to confer some significance in that.
I wrote a story where a man kisses his son, who has captained his county to an All-Ireland championship. The kiss is witnessed by the hurler’s birth father, who gave him up for adoption as a baby and realises that he will never bestow such a kiss to his son. I know this sense of loss. I don’t have a daughter or a son and so I will never pass on my father’s kiss. In reality, that kiss dies with me. My writing of it is an attempt to pass it on. A pale shadow of the real thing, but in that writing I don’t feel so alone, or so lost without my father and my children. I am writing to find a way to pass on my father’s kiss.
This essay ‘Kisses’ is an extract from The Game: A Journey into the Heart of Sport by Tadhg Coakley, published by Merrion Press on June 7th
