Interview/ Séan Óg de Paor:Having unearthed the Irish dictionary, Keith Dugganmeets the Galway stylist and first-time autobiographer
Seán Óg de Paor could not have imagined putting his name to a biographical book when he quit the Galway football team before the 2006 season. By then, he had over 10 years of mostly terrific memories and was happy to leave it at that. But when the opportunity arose to publish, in Irish, a comprehensive story of his sporting life he found himself drawn to the idea. His natural modesty was overruled by the chance to reminisce in his native language and to maybe leave some sort of tribute to the influence of his family and his native Carraroe in the process.
"Not that I would be a fanatical Gaeilgeoir but it is something I am proud of and the idea of a book appealed to me from that point of view," he explained over a lunchtime bowl of soup in Ward's hotel in Salthill this week. St Mary's, the famous Galway school where he teaches, is just a five-minute walk away and when de Paor strolled into the hotel, he looked as trim as in his days of rampaging along the left wing in maroon.
But the man regarded in his playing days as the epitome of dedication shook his head in mock disgust as he admitted he has moved a notch or two on the belt since then. An entire wardrobe has fallen into disuse now he has let go of his boxing weight. He happily allows, however, that he does not miss in the slightest the thought of January training, and when he worked on this book with his sister, the journalist and teacher Aoife de Paor, it made a welcome change to running sprints against Declan Meehan.
But now that Lá An Phaoraigh has come out, he sometimes feels a few butterflies reminiscent of those caged-up minutes in the dressingroom on roaring championship Sundays.
"You don't want anyone to read the book and come away thinking, 'well, feck him.' So I just told what I remembered. And I don't think I fell out with many people along the way. At least I hope not. But there is an element of being self-conscious now that the book is out there. I'm a bit afraid of getting a tap on the shoulder and a box across the face from someone who maybe I've upset - or someone I did not mention at all.
"There is always that danger. But generally, I am happy it is done and proud of the fact that it is in Irish."
De Paor's book was published by Cló Iar-Chonnacht and will be one of a series on people from the Gaeltacht prominent in their field. But given the Carraroe man's vivid and memorable contribution to a Galway team that won two All-Ireland titles in four years and lost a sensational millennial final to Kerry after a replay, and given the vogue for GAA biographies, surely it would have made commercial sense to bring out an English translation?
"The number of people who have asked me am I bringing out a translation has been amazing," he grins. "I just say no. Unless I get a deal like Cecilia Ahern or someone like that - which I doubt. But the Irish was the appeal of the thing and maybe it will encourage a few more people to try and read in Irish."
De Paor's generation of Gaeltacht players smashed the perception that Connemara football was superfluous to the requirements of the Galway game when they won the senior club championship in 1996. Seán Ó Domhnaill played on that team, as did goalkeeper Pat Comer and the dashing Mayo forward Anthony Finnerty.
The victory was generally acclaimed as a fresh and welcome development but de Paor always felt his club were implicitly cast in the role of outsiders.
"Absolutely. It is not as obvious now as when I was growing up. I suppose lads with bigger clubs would have a bit of assurance about them. Even now, local fellas might feel we get a bit of a raw deal when we play teams from north Galway. And I saw there that Seán Bán Breathnach (Irish-language officer with the Galway County Board) said recently that some referees, when asking a Gaeltacht player's name when he is booking him would say, 'C'mon, what's your real name?' if the player replies in Irish.
"So maybe it's the way we present ourselves. I don't know. I think our winning in 1996 was generally welcomed. It was novel. But I suppose if we kept on winning, it wouldn't have taken long for that to change."
Nonetheless, de Paor's journey through St Jarlath's College, the Galway minor team of 1988 and the UCG Sigerson Cup-winning team of 1992 meant he was among a select few young Galway footballers with significant promise by the mid-1990s.
Galway was the perpetual sleeping giant of championship football then and de Paor played a major part in that reawakening, earning his colours when the county began to stir under Bosco McDermott and Val Daly and then blooming into a model figure as John O'Mahony set about shaping a team of style and self-expression married to a fierce team ethic.
It is no small praise when O'Mahony declares de Paor was "one of the most dedicated, committed and focused players that I have ever trained or managed". His UCG trainer Tony Regan says, "There was a beautiful rhythm about everything he did and there was no sweeter sight in football than Seán Óg in full flow."
Peter Canavan has described him as "one of the best - if not the best - wing backs of his generation."
These are more than casual tributes; de Paor's longevity and supreme ease on the ball meant he was often the most eye-catching individual on a team of footballers for whom aesthetics were important. But it is not false modesty when de Paor claims that he feels his sporting story is unremarkable - apart from the fact it is written in Irish.
"That story there," he says, pointing to the copy of the book sitting on the table, "it is not really any different from a lot of fellas' stories. You could pick 10 lads in most counties with the same experience of national school, boarding school, minors, la-la-la-la-la, the usual highs and lows. But I got the opportunity to tell mine because of the Irish-language factor. And I suppose I was - and am - a bit conscious still that lads I played with and against would be thinking, 'Who does your man think he is?'"
The answer to that is that de Paor was a consummate, attacking wing back on a team that, at its peak, had the game's dominant midfielder in Kevin Walsh, a forward of thrilling brilliance in Ja Fallon, a supreme marksman in Pádraic Joyce and an unschooled genius in Michael Donnellan, individuals that achieved synchronicity under O'Mahony.
De Paor was a pacifist in a dressingroom with plenty of strong personalities. And like all of the best players, he was irreplaceable.
He shrugs when asked if he believes Galway 1998-2004 achieved the status of "greatness" and if they might have won more: "I think the turning point for us was losing the All-Ireland quarter-final to Donegal in 2003. If we had won that day, we would have faced Armagh in the All-Ireland semi-final and it would have kind of ignited our bigger players. I think the way people weigh things now is that a good team wins one and a great team wins two. It is a very simple formula. But what I am very proud of is that we won those two All-Irelands playing football that was pleasing to the eye. Individuality was allowed come to the fore - we had a game plan but guys weren't strait-jacketed.
"2003 was our last chance to win a third title. We had played Donegal about a fortnight before the game and we destroyed them. But we couldn't do it in that championship then. We often laughed about it, but we were a kind of moody sort of a group. We often needed something to get us going. So Armagh in Croke Park - that would have sparked us. Some days we were brilliant and other days we looked very watery."
And that was the enigma of Galway, particularly in the seasons after their crusading "back-door" All-Ireland title of 2001. De Paor was famously abstemious during that period. It took him years to live down his fierce rejection of Tomás Meehan's friendly offer of a Tic Tac mint as the team travelled to Croke Park before the 1998 All-Ireland semi-final. De Paor agrees he did it all by the book under John O'Mahony. He rarely so much as chanced a biscuit with his coffee - "or if I did, it was a low-fat fig roll."
That is why the most surprising element of the book are his revelations of a liking for the nightlife in his younger days - as Seán Ó Domhnaill told him after reading the book, "God, Seán, you're making yourself out to be George Best here."
But there are a few surprising escapades, most prominently when he went on the tear at Ja Fallon's wedding on the Friday night before an International Rules match.
"It was just after we had lost the All-Ireland final replay to Kerry. I was wrecked and I was trying to have a quiet night. But Séamus Moynihan was a guest there and we got talking and I just thought, feck this. It was a five in the morning job and then I had to get the train to Dublin. The next day, I was standing in this packed stadium waiting to meet the President. And I felt guilty because I knew there were footballers who would have given anything to be out there but I felt nothing and wished I was watching it with the boys in the pub. It was too soon after the All-Ireland and I am not proud of it, but it happened."
It was a rare slip, though. We recall the days of isolated brilliance during Galway's slow fade, such as the 2004 league semi-final shoot-outs against Tyrone in Omagh and Salthill.
"Oh yeah. I know it was only league. But it was also something beyond that. We were still up there and Tyrone were the emerging team. There was a fierce draw up there and it just captured the imagination. And it was great and then we went out and lost to Kerry in the league final. So that was typical of us."
De Paor was injured for most of Peter Ford's first season as manager but earned 10 minutes as a substitute against Mayo in Castlebar that summer. He received a text from Ford the following autumn but waited until the night before the squad was due to meet before he declined the offer to return: "I knew it was over. You could make a fool of yourself if you kept going too long. I suppose I wanted to prolong the idea in my head that I might come back, but no."
In any case, his last season with Galway was utterly overshadowed by the illness and eventual death of Aisling, who was next in line to Seán in a family of nine children: "There were a few times that year when I came close to saying I hadn't the heart for it. But Aisling fought until the end, so who was I to drop out?"
By a curious succession of tragedy, de Paor's All-Ireland-winning half-back team-mates Declan Meehan and Ray Silke have both lost a sibling in recent times also. The families could draw some comfort from the team and from the GAA in general in the days after those bereavements.
For de Paor, the men on that Galway team will always be part of his life and he bumps into them often. If they want to read what he says about them, though, they may have to sort through the old schoolbooks for the Irish dictionaries. There will be no exceptions, no translations. As the radio men often said during excited championship broadcasts, Seán Óg de Paor does it by the book.
Lá An Phaoraigh by Seán Óg de Paor agus Aoife de Paor, Cló Iar-Chonnacht (
