Brothers in Sport by Donal Keenan Read Free Book Online Page A

club and they progressed from playing in Division Two of the League to reaching the quarter-finals of the County Championship. Now, as a Level Two coach, he is assisting the Leinster Council of the GAA in their coach development programme.
    During 2008 he had his first experience of inter-county management when he took on an emergency role with Roscommon following the resignation of John Maughan. While the Roscommon County Board sought a permanent replacement, Paul agreed to take temporary charge. ‘I loved the job even though I only did it for a month, but I just did not have the time to take it on for any longer.
    ‘I would love to be an inter-county manager and maybe some time in the future it will happen for me. But it is a full-time job and I already have one of those [he works in the financial services industry]. I have a huge interest in coaching, but I see what the commitment to the inter-county scene is and at the moment I could not give it the time. I was interviewed a few years ago for a manager’s job and I told the county chairman involved at the time that I could only do it if the post was offered on a full-time basis. Of course that was not possible, but I thought I had to be honest.
    ‘The inter-county manager’s job is a sixty-hour week. I really admire the guys who are doing it at the moment. To combine it with work and a family life is really difficult. [Paul and Mairéad have three children, twins Ailbhe and Lea, and Declan]. At the moment I’m afraid I just do not have the time to give it the sort of commitment it deserves. Hopefully that will not always be the case.’
    Five decades have passed since the Earley name first seeped into the public consciousness and this story is not yet completed.

    All Stars: Dermot Earley Jnr celebrates a player of the month award with his mother Mary and father Dermot Snr. © Brian Lawless/SPORTSFILE

The Lowry Brothers

    Seán Lowry, winner of three All-Ireland senior medals with Offaly, pictured during the 1981 final against Kerry. © Ray McManus/SPORTSFILE
    Some days are more inspirational than others. Imagine those that immediately followed Offaly’s All-Ireland Football Championship final victory in October 1972 when the players took the Sam Maguire Cup on the traditional parade of the schools of the county. The team captain Tony McTague was especially in demand, but there was no more important visit than that to the national school in Ferbane, his home place in west
Offaly. Accompanying him on that visit was his twenty-year-old team-mate Seán Lowry, another former pupil at the school.
    They carried the famous trophy through the familiar gates and walked the corridors from memory. They exchanged greetings with teachers they knew as friends. And they recognised in the excited faces of the children the features of their parents, many of whom Tony and Seán worked with or played with. Two of the faces among the boys from fifth and sixth classes were more familiar than others to Seán Lowry. They were his brothers, Brendan and Michael, and their smiles were as broad as any in the school and their beaming faces were full of pride for their oldest brother.
    ‘I felt like I was ten foot tall in the classroom that day,’ Michael remembers fondly. ‘Seán had the cup and it looked huge, it was full of Cidona and to us it was the greatest thing in the world. I had a dream that some day in the future I would bring the cup into our school. There’s no harm in a young lad having his dreams, is there?’
    But even during those exciting, fun-filled and happy days when it felt absolutely as if dreams could be fulfilled, no one could possibly have imagined what the future held for the Lowry clan, the All-Ireland hero and his kid brothers. Ten years later, on 19 September 1982, Seán, Brendan and Michael Lowry would play together for Offaly in one of the most famous All-Ireland final victories of them all when they stopped Kerry’s bid for a historic five consecutive