FROM THE ARCHIVES: OCTOBER 28TH, 2002: TOM HUMPHRIESgoes down memory lane and recalls his days shivering on public pitches and the hardships of reporting from freezing Ballinascreen

OUT OUR way it’s been a leaf storm all week long: the wind roughs up the trees, the rain pins the golden leaves to the ground, we pad around on this slippery new carpet. Of course it’s relentless too. Never a little snap storm and then a return to blue winter skies. Just this eternal grey and the rain blowing so hard that when it’s only drizzling it starts to feel tropical.

Great little country. I still haven’t got the warmth back into my body since the second International Rules Test. Whatever happened to the great promise of global warming? Do we need to go to the top deck in Croker and simultaneously point our aerosols at the ozone? If it has to be done then it has to be done.

Weather like this reminds me of being a kid. Most of you will remember that, with the exception of two sunny days, and a lot of bitter frost, the weather was exactly like this from about 1969 to the early ’90s when I got a job, thus inadvertently ending my epic childhood. Those of us who walked to school suffered frostbite, hypothermia, mugging and the narkiness of stray huskies.

On arrival we assembled our anoraks into a steaming heap on top of the ancient radiator and moved like cows in a parlour until we could get some part of our buttock area pressed against that same radiator. There we’d stay until such time as the teacher would stride in and request duine éigin to open the window.

Wednesday was a big day in our lives back then. The GAA fixtures for the weekend would appear in the evening papers on that day, a thrillingly comprehensive service which even delved into the murky world of B-grade football and hurling. Wednesday was also the day Dublin Corporation would begin decreeing whether or not their pitches would be playable for the weekend.

The second half of the week was therefore a race against the elements. Generally the urine of an incontinent cat was sufficient disaster for a pitch to be dramatically declared “waterlogged” and for all fixtures to be called off. Actual rain at any time in the first half of the week made the Corpo look dubiously at the prospect of any games being played anywhere.

On Thursday or Friday ominous little notices would begin to appear on the back of the Evening Press. “The following Corporation pitches unplayable this weekend”, or “All Corporation pitches unplayable this weekend”.

In those days little postcards used to arrive in the school or home informing the recipient that his selection had somehow occurred for the under-15F game against Erin’s Isle and that his presence was required at the corner of Griffith Avenue on Saturday at lunchtime. The desire to get a game was so great that often we fooled ourselves into thinking these postcards overrode the power of the Corporation and some of us would trudge to Griffith Avenue despite having seen the Corpo notices.

We’d arrive and huddle hoping the Erin’s Isle’s pitch would be available or that we could sneak a game in somewhere else or there had been some mistake.

It seems like a small, perverse pleasure now but the greatest joy was when it would stay fine(ish) until about tea-time on Friday and then start bucketing down. We’d head off to Sillogue Park or Saint Anne’s or some such oasis of charm and get dressed under the scant cover of open car boots and then play a game in the driving rain and wind, getting so cold we had to have our boots removed by surgeons or fire brigade men afterwards.

The territory stretching out beyond the small square would be a quagmire the like of which they left after they fought battles in the first World War. Never mind losing a sliotar in that mud, you could lose a small corner forward. All that guff you hear about how speed tells on a hard surface, it’s all theory. For years we thought a mentor was just a man with an umbrella.

Win or lose you could go home feeling as hardy as any generation that went before you. Your legs, from ankle to upper thigh, would be encased in mud. You’d slip your drainpipe jeans on over this new skin and all the way home as it cracked it felt like you were having your legs waxed very slowly. When we’d get home most of us washed at least an acre worth of Corporation land down the plugholes of our baths.

In this manner we’d get up to half a dozen games played during the winter and then all competition would be suspended to make way for the allegation of summer. Oftentimes in those far off days we’d wonder would a Strategic Review Committee ever be established to look into this situation and somehow move summer to the wintertime so that actual competitions could be played.

Once, by mistake, I played rugby for a winter. The Corpo were so assiduous about cancelling matches that you could have alternative careers as a rugby player and a Russian cosmonaut going on in the winter months and nobody would notice. Anyway, the rugby didn’t depend on the Corporation and the colder and more mucky it got the better it seemed to be for the rugby fellas.

I knew I wasn’t going to be making a career of it when they brought us to Greystones and introduced us to the concept of the wind-chill factor. I was standing there shivering when one of them gave me the ball and the rest then fell on top of me where they remained in a gasping heap until such time as my head had completely adhered to the muddy surface. I could see the trade-off. You got to share body heat, which seemed sensible, but you had to surrender all the oxygen in your lungs, becoming so impaired that you enjoyed the post-match rugby songs. I got out before it was too late.

I’ve always wondered though (fabulous example of unimpaired intellect coming up) why as a nation we don’t entice other similarly blighted countries into joining us in an Olympiad of games to be played in miserable weather. Not Winter Olympics, which is just clean snow, but games to be played in rain, wind and mud on public pitches. We’d excel.

You could see it last week at Croke Park. Tall, tanned, fit professionals should have minced us. But they didn’t. The sort of weather you wouldn’t put a cat out in was our ally. As I sat shivering, I tried to think which was the coldest, most miserable GAA ground in the country to stand in on a winter’s day. I gave it to Ballinascreen, outside Draperstown, just ahead of Fintra, where Killybegs play. Fintra at least looks beautiful.

Anthony Rainbow, who was playing last Sunday, once had to be treated for hypothermia after a game in Ballinascreen and many are the tales of players stepping into the showers in their gear.

There are other pitches around the place which are surely more miserable and ugly but I’ve never been anywhere colder than Ballinascreen on a cold day. And, as regular readers will know, my experience of misery is considerable. I was in Clones for that Ulster final in the early 1990s when it rained for 40 days beforehand and 40 days afterward.

The Ulster Council were just beginning to refurbish the ground and they stuck the poor media on a lorry-trailer on a bank. In the torrential rain a Down minor broke his leg slipping on the surface and the bank on which the trailer was placed began to disintegrate and slip. We made, our escape and stood precariously on chairs as the rain drove down.

I’ve been miserable in Casement Park and in Bruff. Soaked in Fraher Field and Ballybofey. Shivered in Mullingar. Once in Longford it was so cold the county secretary went to the pub and came back and handed two bottles of whiskey into the press box. As for Brrrrrr in Offaly.

You are wondering, of course, what’s the point of all this. Well, LockerRoom has moved house and has no central heating as yet. He is cold and fell to wondering about the coldest venues. Profound but sharing.

Thanks for your time.