Colossus was fuelled by a ferocious work ethic
Defender set the standard by which Galway players are judged to this day
BEFORE the 2012 All-Ireland hurling final between Galway and Kilkenny, the double-winning Galway crew of 1987-88 was honoured as part of the traditional jubilee team celebration.
Looking at Tony Keady as he strode out on the Croke Park pitch, it was as if he’d been preserved in time: lean, fit, features still sharply honed rather than softened through middle age. Bar a touch of grey to the hair at the sides, it looked like he might just still be able to do a job at number six, in the jersey he carved out such a stellar reputation.
Time didn’t seem to have affected him at all. Perhaps it’s for that reason that the news of his untimely passing, at the age of 53, carries such a sense of shock.
Here was one of Galway hurling’s most venerated sons, suddenly gone, just when it looked like he would bear witness to the torch finally being passed on to the current generation of players.
He was at Croke Park last Sunday for the semi-final against Tipperary, his former manager Cyril Farrell recalling his buoyant form. ‘He believed if there was 70,000 in Croke Park then they came to see him playing. He’d say “This is what we’re training for…” He was a free spirit.’
He was full of mischief and fun, a great man for a sing-song and someone to light up a room. Noel Lane, too, captured the spirit of his old team-mate yesterday while also vocalising the devastation felt by those close to him, particularly his wife Margaret and children Shannon, Anthony, Jake and Harry.
He stayed involved in coaching at all levels — club, school and county — and resisted the temptation to issue some public home-truths on the county’s failings at senior level down the years, preferring to do his bit quietly behind the scenes.
That he made hurleys as a hobby tells a bit about how the game inhabited his life, with Killimordaly and then with Oranmore-Maree.
There’s a strange, sad symmetry in how he buried his own father three weeks before the 1985 All-Ireland decider, in which he would make his first final appearance in only his second Championship game.
After losing a lifetime’s battle with emphysema, his father’s deep love of hurling pitched him to train the night of his funeral just to honour that devotion.
But then, his grá for the game came from that same source. A relaxed air and light approach to life belied a ferocious competitor that was present right from Under 14 level when the Connacht Tribune put up bikes for every player on the winning team of a Galway tournament.
In ‘Voices From Croke Park: The Stories Of 12 GAA Heroes’, he recalled how Killimordaly were awarded a 65 near the end and one of the club’s venerated mentors Bill Joe Creavin, pipe in mouth, dangled a further incentive.
‘I’ll give you 10 shillings if you put it between the posts,’ he prompted.
‘That day, I had a hurl with the handle cut straight across the top,’ recalled Keady. ‘And I had a stone on the top of the handle, taped on for a grip. Back then, they had none of the technology they have now for making lovely handles. You just taped something on the top to give you a grip. Anyway, I put the 65 over and we went on to win the bikes. But I never saw the 10 bob from Bill Joe!’
On the eve of the Leinster hurling final against Wexford, he was the star attraction at the Bord Gáis Energy Legends tour of the stadium, happily recalling some more of the days that made the man, still slinging 65s over in 1988 when he was crowned Texaco Hurler of the Year.
The story of how he wasn’t on hand at the team hotel for The
Sunday Game post-match banquet the night of the ’88 final has become part of the legend. Instead, given that he shared a house in Phibsboro with Brendan Lynskey during the glory days, working in the bank and even doing a bit of boxing with Finglas boxing club to stay fit, he decided to head for The Hut — his local pub — where the pair were being treated to a champagne reception.
Galway manager Cyril Farrell had to accept the honour on his behalf. Asked by Ger Canning where his player was, he replied with a straight bat: ‘All I can say Ger, is he’s such a dedicated player he’s probably out training for next year!’
It had taken Farrell’s quick mind to see that a player who did most of his hurling at midfield or centreforward underage, had the game to broaden his horizons in the number six shirt.
Gearóid McInerney’s tour-deforce in the second half last Sunday against Tipperary — a bullish, unyielding presence as he plucked balls from the sky — was a throwback to the man and the standard by which every centreback who wears the maroon and white since has been judged.
Indeed, all Galway half-back lines are held to that standard.
On one shoulder stood Pete Finnerty, a teak-tough enforcer who represented a physical and psychological challenge for any opposing forward before even trying to stop him hurl. On the other shoulder was Gerry McInerney, adding a touch of ‘Made in America’ glitz and glamour with his long hair and white boots. That McInerney was operating like a J1 student in reverse — leaving work and home in America to head back to Ireland for a summer of hurling — only added to the legend.
Their chemistry thrilled the public far beyond county boundaries.
Ironically, it was a different type of trip to America that will forever be associated with the Galway player.
‘The Keady Affair’ had all the elements required for a story that made national headlines: a star talent based in America who never imagined picking up a year’s ban for playing hurling in New York without appropriate clearance; petty political pointscoring in the corridors of power; all against the backdrop of Galway’s 1989 semi-final against Tipperary and the bid for three-in-a-row.
When Keady’s case was heard, his cause was defeated by 20 votes to 18, ruling him out of what would prove to be a sulphurous semi-final, Galway left to rage against the machine and the further decision to send off both Sylvie Linnane and Michael ‘Hopper’ McGrath.
Keady was made an example of in terms of big name players featuring in the New York championship. ‘Back then they wanted to stop this and they wanted to make a scapegoat of someone who would be well-known,’ he later recalled. ‘And what better fish to catch only myself.
‘People wonder would we have won the All-Ireland if it hadn’t happened, but maybe the cog was broken anyway, I don’t know.’
Keady, though, had one of the most important intangibles on a field: presence.
TG4 once interviewed him as part of their Laochra Gael series. He was asked what would be an appropriate inscription on his headstone. ‘They should have let me play in ’89!’ he answered, capturing the sense of simmering injustice that still hangs over a county’s failure to add to that famous double since.
His absence will hang heavy over the build-up to the All-Ireland final as Galway look to build a bridge to a time when the celebrated number six strode the Croke Park pitch like a colossus.
He refused to issue some home truths Back then they wanted a scapegoat
DARKNESS fell over the world of Galway GAA yesterday when it was announced that one of their greatest ever hurlers, Tony Keady, passed away just before midnight on Wednesday surrounded by family and friends at University College Hospital. He was 53.
Keady, a stylish centre-back, was one of three Galway men to be named Hurler of the Year, when he received the Texaco award in 1988. He had been in Croke Park last Sunday to watch Galway beat Tipperary in the AllIreland semi-final but took ill suddenly at home in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
However, a pall has now been cast over what should have been a joyous week for the Westerners as the county struggled to come to terms with losing one of their iconic figures of the 1980s.
‘People are shocked,’ stated Galway GAA CEO John Hynes.
‘A week that started with such joy as our seniors and minors reached the All-Ireland