Sport

It was a close-run thing, but Gaelic got the nod

SPORTING PASSIONS DAVID BRADY The Mayo footballer tells Mark Rodden he liked the fact there were no airs or graces about rugby…

Wed Aug 20 2008 - 01:00

SPORTING PASSIONS DAVID BRADYThe Mayo footballer tells Mark Roddenhe liked the fact there were no airs or graces about rugby

MY FIRST passion as a six- or seven-year-old was rugby. It helped that the local rugby pitch was only five minutes' walk from my house in Ballina. On a Saturday morning you'd have 40 to 50 youngsters there and that was their first taste of the sporting world.

That's where I started. You'd have your socks, your boots and your shorts and you'd be mad to go training at 10 o'clock. You'd walk home in the same gear, covered in muck from head to toe.

The organisation in rugby clubs around the country is unreal. I know all the clubs do a blitz at under-six, under-eight and under-10 and it's a big day out. In football, that doesn't really happen until later on and that's what got me into rugby first.

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Rugby was my main sport up to 16 or 17. Ireland were going well and Ciarán Fitzgerald and all these guys were your heroes. My abiding memory was when Michael Kiernan kicked the drop goal to win the Triple Crown in '85 and then there was Fitzgerald and his famous rallying call, which I think the whole of the country could lip-read.

I kept on going and I managed to play rugby at a decent level. I played on the wing and at fullback. Ballina got to Division Two of the AIL when it started so we came up against the likes of Neil Francis, who I think was playing for Old Belvedere at the time.

I remember playing against Keith Crossan one day and I was determined not to let him get around me but needless to say he did. I think I broke my two front teeth trying to tackle him at one stage.

It was always my passion to play rugby at some level but it all came to a head on a Friday night in 1995 when we played a Connacht under-21 football final against Sligo. It was the biggest game I had played up to then and there were about six or seven thousand people at it.

The next morning I was to go to Dublin for Irish under-21 training and that night I had to make the decision. I said, "well I'm in an All-Ireland semi-final, I'm playing in front of six or seven thousand and I mightn't even make the Irish under-21 team", so I made the choice not to go to the Irish under-21 training.

Things snowballed from there. From 1995 with the under-21s, we played in an All-Ireland final when I was 21 in '96 and we played in an All-Ireland final in '97, so it was an opportunity to play in front of 60, 70 or 80,000 people.

At that time rugby was only in transition, going from amateur to professional, and I never saw a future in it. But I know now in different circumstances that I would be saying to myself that I'd love to give rugby a go.

Football took over my life for around seven or eight years but my younger brother Ger played with Galwegians and he had a professional contract for two or three years with Connacht. He played Irish schoolboys and Irish youths and played in the under-19 World Cup.

So in the back of my mind I always kept a love for rugby and then I tried to see what I was really like and I joined Galwegians for a year.

I'd played Connacht under-16s and Connacht youths and a lot of the guys that played then were still playing so I adapted well to that, but rugby had taken off to a whole new level.

The thing about rugby is that even when it wasn't professional I remember being a student playing with Ballina and a local man paid for my blazer and you'd be looked after by senior members of the team. You'd wear your shirt and tie and your blazer and trousers, and there was a sense of importance and unity as well.

As a young fella and a student, I remember never having to put my hand in my pocket because you'd always be looked after.

I think there's a lot more pride in the Irish rugby team than there would be in the Irish soccer team. Because here in Ballina we've the likes of Gavin Duffy and you have the Connacht players and in Munster you have the Paul O'Connells and the Jerry Flannerys. Normal guys that came from normal backgrounds and they're still normal people in professional sport. There's no airs or graces about them and that's what I like about rugby.