John Joe Nerney

One of Roscommon’s Greats:
(Published in the 1998 Roscommon G.A.A. Annual. For the most part it is in his own words)
“Old soldiers never die they just fade away”, was most famously quoted by the U.S. General Douglas McArthur on his retirement.
John Joe Nerney, now at the venerable age of 77 and a former soldier of ‘The Emergency’ in the forties has little intention of fading away as the sprightly bouncy step belies his years. Even now John Joe has been going through his paces as he jogs the roads of Boyle or does his circuits of the Abbey Park. He completed half a dozen marathons including the early Dublin City ones his last being in 1988.
It is however as part of the great Roscommon team of the 40s’ that John Joe is constantly associated. He has no hesitation in confirming that widely held belief that it was one of the greatest sides ever in Gaelic football. We will let him tell his story.
“There were powerful men on that team, Jackson, Lynch, Callaghan, Carlos, Gilmartin, Hoare, Kinlough and Boland, a great man. There was not a weak link. They kinda carried me! Jamesie was a great player and a great captain. They were all great.
If you looked back down the field and saw the power of the half back line of Lynch, Carlos, Felim Murray or Owensie Hoare you would get great confidence and then Gilmartin and Boland were never beaten. I passed a lot, especially to Keenan, he was the scorer-in-chief. Up front you had McQuillan battling, in every sense of the word, with Keohane of Kerry. They were both army men then. Kinlough was a great player. He did not train much but he got the goals.
I came on in Boyle in the ’44 Connacht Championship replay and got a great reception from the locals. We should have won any number of All-Irelands with those teams. After the ’43 and ’44 double we were caught on the hop in ’45 by Mayo but I feel we were at our peak in ’46. The late goals gave Kerry a draw in the final were heartbreaking. They were great games though and Kerry were great sports, win or lose.
In ’47 we might have got to New York for the Polo Grounds final but Cavan just beat us in eh semi-final. They took off Tom Collins and Cavan’s Tony Tighe played hell after that.
Mayo came with a great team then but we shocked them in ’52 and should have beaten Meath in the semi-final. O’Malley, Eamon Donoghue and Frank Kelly were there and Boland was as strong as ever. We did not have any luck in ’53 either in the semi-final against Armagh. Boland and myself finished playing County in ’54. We had a good run. I got on for a while for Connacht against Leinster in the ’53 Railway Cup, when it meant something. I also played centre field a few times and once at wing back where I marked Frank Stockwell of Galway. I did alright!
At Club level I played with Boyle. We had some good battles especially with St. Michaels. Fuerty beat us in a county junior final. We had a tough couple of games with Eoghan Ruadhs, of Roscommon town, in Castlerea. It’s history now. I remember I was pleased with scoring a goal from a free against Strokestown in a game. Tom Shevlin was annoyed. The great Boyle clubmen then were Martin Regan, Mickey Morris, Joe Sheehan, Peter Phelan and Jimmy Sheeran among others.
We won county minor championships in ’38 and ’39 and I was a sub on the Roscommon All-Ireland minor winning team of ’39. Oddly my memory of that is hazy.
I played as long as I could for Boyle because I was fit and I enjoyed playing (John Joe played well into his fifties). I got great satisfaction training Eastern Harps when they won the ’75 Sligo, Championship.
We did not hear much back then of hamstrings and such. They might have been something to do with fiddles for all we knew. All we seemed to get were sore knees. We worked hard, walked or cycled most places so that helped. Wintergreen was our rub. The football was tough but fair. It’s faster now but we had our tactics too, the famous L.T.B.L. (keep the ball low) during one of our collective training periods in the old Infirmary (now the County Library). We had great comradeship. We are still friends and meet from time to time. I enjoyed ’91 when we were the team saluted in Croke Park. We have been well treated down the years”.
I ask how he feels talking to reporters about those times; “I don’t say much just send them to Jimmy Murray. He is still the Captain and spokesman, a great ambassador for the team. We all looked up to him and it hasn't changed. A couple of years ago I was invited down to Killarney’s Legion club where I met my marker from ’46 Dinny Lynne. We are both President’s of our clubs. Some other great times were had when Boyle went to Birmingham, London and Manchester. I remember playing with Roscommon, in Mitcham I think, London. Boland and I missed the return train for some reason! A lot of games were played for church building funds and we helped build a good few churches then! One of them was a great game, in late ‘45 for the Pro-Cathedral against the ’45 All-Ireland winners Cork. We won that one. Jack Lynch would have been playing for Cork. We had another big one against Kerry for the Liam Gilmartin fund in ’46. I think that was Gerry O’Malley’s first game for Roscommon. I don’t know why he wasn’t there in ’47. Maybe we’d have been in the Polo Grounds if he was! Did I mention Harry Connor and Paddy Kenny from Ballinameen and Doctor Gibbons?”
John Joe was born in Croghan on April 1st (a cause of amusement) 1922 and on the death of his father the family moved to Ballinameen and then to Boyle. He attended Boyle National School to masters Kennedy, Jordan and Mannion. After school he worked at a variety of jobs such as the County Council and ‘The Railway’. He joined the army in 1943 during The Emergency’ and won the ‘Army Chaplains Cup’ competition while in Athlone. After the army he joined the Post Office where he remained for over forty years clocking up the miles. He married Agnes Lane in 1958. They have a family of two girls Mary and Theresa and three boys, Gerry, Anthony and Raymond. Gerry and Raymond played county minor for Roscommon.
John Joe is a modest man who does not like to push his own contribution and from time to time says, ‘don’t print that they might think I’m bragging’. However he is not one to let the side down either and I often think, though I’ve talked to him quite a few times, that there is a tinge of devilment somewhere and that I have failed to get past his defences. The games are still being played as he steps jauntily away with a twinkle in his eyes.
In any event we of Boyle had our representative, our football hero, in that team of football heroes. John Joe would not want that accolade but he is a constant reminder that one of our own strode Croke Park with the very best.

In Memory Of My Father

(June 14th 2009)
Though he died over thirty six years ago it seems as if I am still getting to know him. I should have done it then of course but it wasn’t fashionable and I was a younger member of the family. Also I felt I knew a lot more then than I do now. In getting to grips with my father he seems to slip through my fingers. I could not but say that he was a solid, hard-working, farming man. When he arrived at the scene of a problem the rest of us stood back we were confident that he had the answers. Invariably he had. I know now that having the answers wasn’t quite so simple. He was never demanding or commanding. Indeed he was, for a man of his background, deferential. His solution might be pretty straight forward and we would wonder why we hadn’t thought it through. The answer was from his store of experience. He had his weaknesses of course and it surprises me, in a naïve way I suppose, that a genuinely solid and sensible kind of man drank too much. But I’m not here now to talk of weaknesses. I have many images of him and think of how the poet Patrick Kavanagh, so effectively remembered his parents in his poetry, particularly his Mother and more obliquely his father in his poem ‘In Memory of My Father’; ‘Every old man I see in October coloured weather seems to say to me I was once your father’. It doesn’t happen thus often to me but I can easily recall pictures of my father at his best. I can see him in the tillage field with the knapsack sprayer on ‘the barrel’s edge poised’ as he sprayed the potatoes. He was skilled in the bog with the slean slicing the turf sods or with the shears snipping at sheep-shearing. He is in the hay-field, in his latter days, winding the hay ropes or in that period also when he had graduated to the end of the threshing machine where he bagged the grain. His forte was in harvesting, from the smaller fairs of Creggs, Ballygar and such places, his kind of cattle which he brought together like a football team for the big fairs held in Roscommon town. In a sense I can only post a flavour of the growing number of pictures, as they drift back, for these paragraphs.
We shared a number of lesser things like the adventures of the Cisco Kid in The Irish Press, and occasional articles on World War Two, like Stalingrad, in the Sunday Press. I seem to remember, in his company, the radio programme ‘The Ballad Makers Saturday Night’ though I shouldn’t go back that far and listening to the Derry Boxer, Billy Kelly, being robbed by the referee’s decision against Ray Famechon. He sang regularly from his small stock of songs such as; ‘I Dream of Jennie’, ‘The Galway Shawl’, ‘Noreen Bawn’ and ‘Lovely Derry on the Banks of the Foyle’ and enjoyed Moore’s Melodies and John McCormack. He had been part of the Independence movement but spoke little of it. He was ‘a county footballer’ and followed the fortunes of Roscommon from a distance but rarely came to watch us play, which was a disappointment. I accompanied him to his last Roscommon match in Ballinasloe, around 1969, against Galway, when they did particularly badly. ‘Shadows on the wall’ he repeated as we headed back to the car in the Fair Green. There was a dividend in being the son of Pat Conboy. It’s a little ironic that I wrote about Roscommon football and the Independence conflict later and had so little information from him, who had been so involved, on those subjects. Before he went to Roscommon hospital for the first and last time, early in 1973, he had his last drink in Warde’s in Goff Street. He did not seem so ill that he was to pass away within a week. I could have stayed and been by his hospital bedside when he died and of course I regret that. Inexcusably I was to repeat that mistake later. I don’t know what he’d have made of the tricolour on his coffin and the volley of shots which were fired at his graveside. I didn’t rail against his death as Dylan Thomas did in ‘Do not go gently into the dark night’ but I missed him and would have particularly liked him to be around for some big occasions later in my life.
Next Sunday is Father’s Day so maybe some of you might meet up with your own dad in an ‘accidentally on purpose’ kind of way. Perhaps it will be in his local as opposed to yours and you could stay with him and not be impatient in rushing off to see your own friends. Make sure this time that you buy the extra drink in three. Perhaps you could ask him about some story, you’ve heard a number of times before, as if it were new. Maybe you could ask his opinion on something. He’d like that. Just make time, because it may surprise you that he’s probably your best buddy. In his mind he has wisdom to dispense from the well of life’s experience and your wellbeing is very important to him. Engage and be patient even if it is slightly challenging. Years hence you may remember the modest occasion and feel pleased by your awareness in making it happen.

Derry City, ‘Where Hope and History Rhyme’
(April 2007).
Just a few short miles over the Donegal border lies a very different Irish City, Derry the Maiden City. It is a unique City, a city in transition, recovering from great traumas where today the mood is one of hope. Anything else is too despairing to contemplate. History and its legacy seeps, perhaps weeps, from its walls. My visit was supposed to be just ‘a break’ not a polemic, but immediately I was enveloped by history and the underlying shadows of mood and resonance. They are unavoidable, they are in the air. One needs to get some idea of this City’s story to get some understanding of what is in train.

The High Walls of Derry:
In other cities like York and Chester their walls are now elaborate, impressive features of a bygone age but in Derry they are an enveloping, perhaps smothering, tapestry of history.
Derry is a Plantation City from the early 1600s’ when it was enclosed by its Walls. During the War between William of Orange and King James the city declared for William and when a force for King James arrived to occupy it, a group of ‘Apprentices’ closed the gates declaring ‘No Surrender’, a term which echoes down the centuries. There followed the Siege of Derry from December 1688 to August 1689 which was broken when a number of supply ships managed to get through.
Derry became one of the great ports of emigration from the North West region through the 1900s’. As a consequence of the Treaty settlement of 1921, Derry, a predominantly Nationalist City, came to be ruled by Stormont and by a Unionist dominated City Council, through gerrymandering and manipulation of the voting system. This also led to strident discrimination on many levels. Some former students will remember Seamus Deane’s bleak portrayal of those decades in ‘Reading in the Dark’. During the Second World War, Derry played a significant part in ‘The Battle of the Atlantic’, against the German U Boat threat. It also acted as a base for thousands of Americans. With post-war education and the example of the American Civil Rights Movement the mood for change and the fight for equality emerged with the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement. However those in power were not willing to make concessions. More radical young people revived the near dormant I.R.A. This led to what is referred to as ‘The Troubles’ but what the radicals readily describe as a ‘War’ with the dominant Unionist majority backed up by the British authorities. While there are many sad markers since the late sixties, ‘Bloody Sunday’, on January 30th, 1972 stands out. On that day, in the Bogside area of Derry, 13 people were killed by the British Army.

On a plaque on The Walls overlooking the site of Bloody Sunday are inscribed telling lines by Seamus Heaney:
“My heart besieged by anger, my mind a gap of danger
I walked among their old haunts, the home ground where they bled
And in the dirt lay justice like an acorn in the winter
‘Til its oak would sprout in Derry, where the thirteen men lay dead”

Derry Today:
The Bogside:
This is an area outside and overlooked by The Walls. It is a Catholic area which through discrimination has been economically deprived.
With the current peace process firmly in place, outsiders are calling to Derry. I did the City bus tour with Australians and ‘The Walls’ with Canadians. In The City Cemetery, on the slopes of The Creggan Hill, I visited the burial place of the victims of Bloody Sunday. I had been at their funerals over thirty five years ago.
I walked the area of the atrocity in the Bogside, now marked with memorials, hoping I was not just a voyeur. A number of the surrounding walls are covered with Murals, by the Bogside Artists Group, relating the story and struggle of the people from this area. Here also is the iconic remaining gable of a building inscribed with, ‘You Are Now Entering Free Derry.” Nearby ‘The Museum of Free Derry’ endorses the theme. It is a pity that this tragic site is traversed by a busy motorway.

A Fine Museum of Contemporary History:
The new Tower Museum, underneath The Walls (everything is beneath The Walls) tells the city’s story in a concise and understandable way. A large section illustrates a history which is of our time and which has impacted on our lives and consciousness. The two trenchant strands of the City’s story are delicately balanced. Indeed balance and middle ground is a present and future challenge. This is most evocatively represented by a sculpture of two figures with outstretched hands almost touching. The hope is that those hands will, in the not too distant future, touch as a symbol of final and lasting reconciliation.
The Tower Museum, which I recommend strongly, was being ‘Officially’ opened when I was there. While waiting to enter I met Bishop Edward Daly the handkerchief- waving priest of Bloody Sunday. Also present was Mark Durkin, leader of the SDLP, an honourable Party of the centre, the Party of Hume and Mallon, now marginalised by the ungrateful and forgetful. The centre didn’t hold.

Distinguished Citizens:
Derry has a number of notable alumni through the years and especially in recent times. St. Columb’s College can uniquely boast two Nobel Laureates in Seamus Heaney, from Bellaghy, and John Hume whose name is entwined with the history of modern Derry.
In literature it can nominate Brian Friel and Seamus Deane though I saw no obvious reference to them.
It also has a proud musical heritage with a Eurovision winner from 1970 in Dana (Rosemary Browne) and a notable composer of songs such as ‘Ireland’s Call’, in Phil Coulter. The original script of his iconic song, ‘The Town I loved So Well’ adorns a Museum display. Outside The City Hotel, where I stayed, was a copper sculpture remembering Joseph Locke (or his real name Joseph McLaughlin) and Hear My Song. Some people might even remember a group called The Undertones’.
It has its sporting heroes too especially in boxing with the Kelly family, Charlie Nash and currently John Duddy.
Derry City is a successful soccer Club while nearby is the GAA’s Celtic Park both in the Brandywell.
A number of fine sculptures are by Maurice Harron who is responsible for ‘The Chieftain’ sculpture, between Boyle and Sligo, on The Curlew Hills which I see from my window. Mister Harron taught in Roscommon town for a number of years in the seventies and early eighties. His most significant piece is to be seen in the centre of a Derry City round-about. It is of the two figures, with outstretched hands nearly touching, representing the coming closer of the communities. Continuing this theme the Dove of Peace is to be seen in a Bogside Mural and in a small Waterside Peace Park. The Waterside is a staunchly Unionist area east of the river Foyle. Interestingly west of the river there is a small Unionist enclave, visible from The Walls, called The Fountain. It is readily identifiable from its Murals, Union Flag and the red, white and blue kerb stones. Oddly there was little or no flag-waving of either hue.

Competing Spires;
Towering over the west side of the city is the spire of St. Eugene’s while dominating the skyline from within The Walls is St. Columb’s Cathedral with its defensive features. In its grounds is a monument to ‘The Siege Heroes.’ There are many churches of various denominations. The angle-grinding dismantler of the last British army bastion graciously gave space to the Guide as he suggested that, ‘there are not many old buildings in the City due to the bombing campaign down the years. At one time over sixty percent of the buildings in the city were affected through bombing” mentioning one as, ‘the most bombed building in Europe’ and referring to some rioting activity as, ‘recreational rioting’ or ‘the standard Derry riot’ of times hopefully past. Words like hope emerge regularly. Then we continued along The Walls with their impressive array of canons and the tales of Walker and Lundy, Apprentice Boys, the burning of effigies, humiliation and provocation. The army is no longer ‘installed by that old gas yard wall’. The Guildhall seems empty now that the Saville Enquiry, into Bloody Sunday, has ended.

Reaching Out:
Like Maurice Harron’s reconciliation sculpture perhaps it is time for us too to reach out and by visiting communicate our tangible support for this new era and direction.
It will take a considerable length of time for Derry to recover and arrive at the bustling note of say, a giddy Galway. Many big employers are gone and investors have heretofore been wary. Unemployment is high at a reported fifteen per cent with some social employment acting as a safety net. Oddly housing prices are very high where there has been a dramatic increase in more recent years than ours. McGee College has finally been given the status of a University as a constituent of The University of Ulster a status long and controversially denied. There are a number of fine hotels including The City Hotel, which was opened in 2002 by Sir Reg Empey of the then ‘Power-Sharing Executive’. It was developed, I was informed, by a group of city business-men with the opening plaque denoting grant aid from a variety of agencies National, E.U and U.S. While the street shops have yet to blossom there is the fine Foyleside Shopping Centre. There is an impressive entertainment venue in The Millennium Forum. Twin bars Peadar O’Donnell’s and The Gweedore Bar offer regular, if loud, music. I was told there are plenty of fine restaurants but some, like The Exchange, are shy and may be missed in a short visit. While the City has a number of generous open areas such as The Diamond, Guildhall Square and Waterloo Place there is no defined heart as such. Finding the Tourist Information Centre is a worthwhile challenge. The Bus Tour was not as fulfilling as The Walking Tour.
The people are welcoming and pleased to see visitors. I am certain that the tourist industry will be one of considerable growth. I left Derry, driving across the lower deck of Craigavon Bridge. If one stretched metaphors perhaps this acted as a contrast to the clear perspective from the new Foyle Bridge. In any event I was pleased I’d come back and I departed with a much to reflect on;

“History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed for tidal wave
of justice can rise up,
and hope and history rhyme”
(Seamus Heaney, Doubletake from The Cure at Troy)

Kells...The Secret of:
(From February 2009)

The Saturday vision of cameras carried through with me to Sunday evening as I trod the red carpet at the premiere of Paul Young’s animated film ‘The Secret of Kells’ at the Savoy cinema in Dublin. Paul Young is the son of Sean and Anne Young of Boyle. With Tom Moore they run an animation studio in Kilkenny called Cartoon Saloon. They are responsible for a current series, which young people may be familiar with called Skunk Fu. However 'The Secret of Kells’ is a huge endeavour which has been in the making for a number of years. On Sunday evening we assembled in the Gresham Hotel, which, with the competition in hotel pricing, plebs such as I can now enter. There many of those involved in the film gathered. The Young family were out in force with Sean and Anne, their children, Joseph, Liam, Katherine, Aileen and the grandchildren and other family members. There also were two of the principal voices, of the films characters, Brendan Gleeson and Mick Lally. Then it was time to transfer to the nearby cinema. A battery of paparazzi was on hand to record the entrance of Messrs Gleeson, Lally and the other principals. I kept a discreet distance and then like a corner forward made the mistake of scurrying over the red carpet instead of doing a slow deliberate walk and milking the moment. Finally the film hit the screen. I was more than a little anxious that the film was good and well received. In describing the film subsequently I arrived at a one line response which I repeated a number of times in the post film discussions; “The Book of Kells is one of the great works of art, this film is also a work of art". The finale was met with sustained applause.

In summary the film is based around the production of the final part of The Book of Kells by a young Brother Brendan under the guidance of Brother Aidan (voiced by Mick Lally). Brother Brendan needs an extra empowering dimension to enable him to be able to do this –the secret - and survives adventures in its acquisition while constantly drawing down the wrath of his superior brother abbot who is preoccupied with building a defensive wall for the community, in anticipation of a destructive Viking raid. The Abbot superior is initially afraid to embrace the beauty of the book. All this activity is enhanced with a strong theme music and magical graphics. I have to draw the veil over the film’s progress so you will have to pursue the secret yourself. It is said of the Book of Kells, that it was produced, not by man, but by angels. Its trauma of its birth is well represented by the artists of Cartoon Saloon.

Afterwards it was on to a post film reception in the Long Library of Trinity College, once the home of the Book of Kells for over four hundred years. A new custom adapted exhibition area is now its home adjacent to the library. If this film gains the broad distribution that it deserves then Trinity College should benefit in terms of visitor numbers as is the case where successful films have raised profiles. This is an Irish film produced by Irish artists of whom we can be proud. That pride is multiplied by the fact that we know these people. Another interested party, the Mayor of Kells, was also present with his chain of office drawing the welcoming curiosity.

Brendan Gleeson on Monday’s R.T.E. afternoon Seoige Show commended the film as follows: “It is stunning to look at and may be something of an antidote to the present times. It shows what we are creatively capable of and now what the movie-going public need to do is to support that effort, in their own way, by just going to see it”.

Perhaps we will have a local premiere in nearby Carrick-on-Shannon. In any event it was great to be part of the launch of The Secret of Kells and smile as one’s name rolled on the extended credits!

Brendan Gleeson

(October 2009)
In talking to the actor Brendan Gleeson the terms ‘generosity of spirit’, ‘integrity’ and ‘making the right choices’ crop up pretty often. Brendan has, like us all probably, had to make a number of life-changing choices in his road ‘less travelled’. He has now arrived at an elevated level in his chosen acting career. His generosity of spirit was exemplified in his giving me an interview which he might have given to more luminous commentators. I have been friendly with Brendan for many years and this was a token of that friendship. Brendan has been coming to the Boyle area for over thirty years. When I asked him how this happened he explained thus; “ I was into music and had been down the country a number of times and wanted to explore new horizons. At that time I was working for the Health Board in Dublin and asked a Roscommon lady working with me if she knew of an area where there was music and she nominated Boyle. I went down and discovered Grehans and the Ceili House Bar and I have been coming since. I found an openness, a generosity of spirit and a welcome that might not be present everywhere, especially for a Dub! I tapped into that and have made very good friends in Boyle”. Here he pursues one of his passions playing music with his local musical friends. So Boyle has continued to be a place to recharge the batteries between high profile projects.
I first asked Brendan about his most recent project, for which he won an Emmy award in Los Angeles in September. That was playing Winston Churchill in the Home Box Office (H.B.O.) film ‘Into the Storm’. This depicted Churchill’s time as British Prime Minister during World War Two. It posed an interesting challenge since Brendan had given an outstanding performance in playing, an earlier nemesis of Churchill, Michael Collins. This was in the Irish T.V. Series ‘The Treaty’ in the early nineties.
His reaction to the Emmy award was that; “It was a bit of a surprise but because of the number of nominations it got I felt we were in with a shout. You also have to consider the quality of the other actors who were nominated and who I admire greatly, Kevin Bacon, Kevin Kline, Sir Ian McKellan, Kenneth Brannagh and Kiefer Sutherland. To take one, Kevin Bacon is a great actor and one I admire greatly. He makes brilliant choices”. ‘Choice’ is a word that crops up from time to time in our conversation. In his Emmy acceptance speech he expressed his particular appreciation to the film’s producer Frank Doelger for allowing him to show an early print to his mother who was ill and has since passed away. She was a great influence in Brendan’s ‘choices’
I asked Brendan about the lesser known traits in the Churchill character that he became aware of. “Taking on the character of Churchill was challenging perhaps because of our history and his role in it. People have their own images of him. He was a bully of sorts, a completely different class, age and mindset. He was almost everything I wasn’t. He drank a lot, worked through the night….he was an extraordinary mixture. His wife Clementine was his confidante. He was an actor, journalist author. He had made big mistakes and hadn’t distinguished himself, in relation to Ireland for example, earlier in his career. But he had been warning about Hitler and this was his time. He gave the people a trust that defeat wasn’t in his equation of prospects. It is noteworthy also how he accepted the defeat in ’45 in saying that ‘This (democracy) is what we fought for’. He was such a contradictory man. He lived by his lights. Yet for me there was the challenge and that is what is involved in acting. It presented a new arena”. The film is due to be shown on BBC in the near future.
Of course the project close to Brendan’s heart is transferring the quality of the Flann O’Brien book ‘At Swim-Two-Birds’ to film. This is a project which Brendan is passionate about. This becomes evident in his demeanour as describes its initial influence on him when he first read it at seventeen and ‘rolled out of bed at its anarchic humour’. In talking to Brendan there are moments when his own great sense of humour is accompanied by his infectious laughter. He has enlisted the interest of the Irish actors guild in terms of Colin Farrell, Gabriel Byrne and Cillian Murphy. They’ve had a preliminary reading and gelled so next year holds out the hope of advancing the idea to completion.
Brendan likes to do at least one piece of artistic merit what might be referred to as challenging piece of work each year whereas he refers to his role as Mad Eyed Moody in the Harry Potter series in lighter fun terms. He is no snob in terms of work however and talks kindly of his early encounter with Hollywood scale in the film ‘Far and Away’ and the plastic cobble stones in Temple Bar before the real ones were installed.
Another work which he refers to in glowing terms is ‘The Secret of Kells’ the Cartoon Saloon (Kilkenny) animated feature which was released earlier in ’09.This too has Boyle connections with one of its producers Paul Young coming from the town. Brendan with Mick Lally provide the voiceovers for two of the main characters. He refers to it as; “Absolutely brilliant, a massive achievement and so rooted in what we can do well”.
In Bruges has been a great hit and apparently is now at the status of a cult movie. This has propelled Brendan more into the public limelight which he finds a little uncomfortable but is as he says; “The price for doing what I love to do”. In Boyle, however, his privacy is respected and he appreciates that and it is among the reasons why he continues to visit the area.
Brendan is firmly rooted in Dublin’s north side. He played Gaelic football for St. Finian’s and is a great supporter of ‘the Dubs’. He became a teacher and was heavily involved in semi-professional theatre for years. Indeed he has built up a really impressive catalogue of varied work. All this involvement meant that a serious career choice had to be made by Brendan who was then in his middle thirties and in a ‘secure’ teaching position. With the encouragement of his wife Mary he took the leap into full time acting and ensured that he “was going to make it happen and not wait for it to happen”. He has not looked back since.
Brendan Gleeson has that great presence, a fine sense of the ‘anarchic’ highlighted often by a fulsome laugh which demonstrates an obvious zest for life. He is an intelligent man with a great sense and love of his country, a country which frustrates him at times. He has articulated those frustrations very publically and effectively on occasion. Yet he reiterates the importance of the arts especially at this time and of returning or continuing to do what we do well and for which we as people are so regarded. However it is the work, the challenge, the quality of the work that drives him on to the next hurdle; “The more you do something the better you get” he says. While the body of work which Brendan has accumulated to date is impressive the future holds its possibilities. Perhaps ‘At Swim’ will see, with his Irish peers, the confluence of those generous talents

Tony Conboy Blog Introduction

My name is Tony Conboy. I come originally from Castlecoote, five miles west of Roscommon town in County Roscommon. I have been in Boyle since 1972. I was a teacher of St. Mary’s College Boyle. I am currently employed, on a seasonal basis, as a guide at Boyle Abbey. I feel that I have found my niche there. My most consistent social interest through the years has been the GAA. This is an inherited regard. In 1990 the History of the GAA in the County, of which I was Editor, was published. If I saw a copy of it for sale now I would buy it! Over the years I have written a number what I’ll call essays. I have wanted to collect them for some time and perhaps put them between covers. This is the reason why I am embarking on this blog. I make no claims for the quality or consistency of these pieces and would be interested in feedback. I have opened, somewhat unusually, with a piece by someone else i.e. Father Henry Tonra writing on his experience of a morning as headmaster at St. Mary’s. I have always held Father Tonra in the highest regard and his history of Ardcarne Parish is just great. A number of these pieces were up on realboyle a number of years ago but I am going to try and do better this time. How many times have I used the phrase, ‘could do better’? There will be glitches here as I navigate and get to grips witht the nuances of a few technicalities! Hopefully I'll be able to delete that sentence soon!