Late one glorious Saturday morning in the summer of 1994, I arrived at the European Club in search of a game of golf. Although the timesheet was quite full, Miss Ruddy assured me that if I didn't mind waiting 45 minutes or so I could probably play with the Canadian Ambassador. Which is how I came to meet Mike Wadsworth.
Major Wadsworth arrived in due course, accompanied by a fellow who had been one of his college football team-mates at Notre Dame some 30 years previously. Having been thus provided with something of a common ground, we spent a pleasant afternoon on the links at Brittas Bay, not to mention a profitable one: with the passage of time, I cannot recall whether His Excellency played off 16 and I relieved him of 15 quid or vice versa, but those numbers remain (almost) indelibly etched in my mind.
It was several months later that I read, somewhat to my surprise and amusement, a wire-service story reporting that Dick Rosenthal, the long-time athletic director (AD) at Notre Dame, had decided to retire. The story went on to say that Rosenthal had agreed to remain in the job until the following spring, when his successor, Major Michael Wadsworth, completed his term as Canada's Ambassador to Ireland.
Now, as difficult as this might be for the uninitiated to imagine, in certain quarters this transformation - from serving as one's emissary to the Irish to overseeing the conduct of the Fun and Games Department of the Fighting Irish - was viewed as a step up in the world. And there seemed little doubt that the image of the Golden Dome and Touchdown Jesus was at that time in need of a fresh makeover.
A year earlier I had been in South Bend for 10 days or so, straddling the period between Notre Dame's win over Florida State in the 1993 version of the "Game of the Century" and the shocking, last-second loss to Boston College the following Saturday. The football coach at the time, the legendary Lou Holtz, was attempting to hold things together in the face of a brewing mini-scandal. At least one player had tested positive for steroids, and the word on the street was that he might not be the only one.
The Fighting Irish were practising indoors that week. Those of us who comprised the "out-of-town press" were not allowed to view these preparations, presumably on the grounds that one of us might transmit a bit of espionage to Bobby Bowden, the Florida State coach. We were asked instead to remain in a holding area off in another corner of the gym as we awaited our audience with the great Holtz.
Not 10 feet from the designated spot where we had been instructed to wait stood a large table, which, once the practise session concluded, rapidly began to fill with glass vials containing urine specimens, collected from an ostensibly random sampling of Notre Dame players as they filed off the floor. There was little doubt that this exercise was being conducted for the benefit of the visiting media. Drug testing had become a spectator sport.
It was into this wholesome atmosphere that Mike Wadsworth stepped, replete with his concept of reform and an ambitious five-year plan designed to restore Notre Dame's athletic reputation to its traditional position of grandeur.
It proved a more difficult task than even he had imagined. It is generally accepted that Holtz's decision to resign came after some gentle nudging from the new AD. An age discrimination suit filed by sacked assistant Joe Moore also blossomed into an unwelcome front-page story after Wadsworth had assumed the reins. Nor did it do much for Wadsworth's cause when the Irish went 5-7 last fall, a record that represented Notre Dame's worst football season in decades.
Although Wadsworth was able to put his stamp on certain matters - suffice it to say that Notre Dame would never have played a regular season game at Croke Park under one of his predecessors - he found himself increasingly at loggerheads with the college administration. Just last year, when he attempted to hire Rick Majerus to succeed John McLeon as basketball coach, he was rebuffed by the Rev Edward A Malloy, the university's president.
In the end, though, it was neither a losing football team nor a disagreement over hiring practises which proved Wadsworth's undoing. Rather, it was Kimberly Dunbar.
Lest the reader jump to untoward conclusions, Ms Dunbar was most assuredly no Monica Lewinsky. Indeed, the evidence at hand suggests that she was nothing more than an overzealous if somewhat deranged Notre Dame supporter. Described as a worshipful "booster" in both court documents and the subsequent NCAA investigation, she had, it developed, embezzled funds in the amount of $1.2 million from her employer, and spent most of it lavishing gifts on a dozen Notre Dame players over a five-year period more or less coinciding with Mike Wadsworth's watch.
In the eyes of Father Malloy and the university administration, the unforgivable aspect of this transgression was not the criminal act itself - Ms Dunbar had stolen $1,200,000 from her employer - but rather that she had distributed the funds in a manner which compromised the athletic eligibility and amateur integrity of Notre Dame players. When the NCAA, for the first time in Notre Dame history, slapped the football program with probation (with the concomitant loss of two scholarships), Wadsworth's fate was sealed.
This week Father Malloy announced that, "by mutual agreement", Wadsworth had agreed to end his tenure with the expiration of the five-year contract he had signed when he left Ireland, but Wadsworth made it clear that he would have preferred to stay for at least another year.
"But there is a broad perception that there's a problem, and perception is very important," sighed Wadsworth. "The best way of dealing with this is to turn the page and start afresh."
The Major could, one surmises, always return to the Canadian Foreign Service, but after his five-year brush with the Big Time, life as a mere ambassador will seem like very small potatoes indeed.
