Neil Ewing: Raise a toast to the sports heroes who won respect if not medals
Hurdler Cillian O'sullivan (left) And 100m Football Irish Sarah Sportsfile Lavin Pictures: (right) Meath
THE Christmas season sees plenty of awards handed out and medal winners recognised for their achievements during the year. Most fans judge sportspeople by their medals. Sportspeople judge sportspeople in a more nuanced way. Medals are tangible currency, but the gold standard is respect. Game judges game by the level of respect they have for them. Respect for them as rivals, or as teammates or as predecessors in the arena.
The awards season will see the medal winners get the due credit. While lauding their achievements we should acknowledge some, among a multitude, who had a 2024 which will have earned them a lot of respect from their contemporaries.
In 2023, she tragically lost her boyfriend, Waterford rally driver Craig Breen in an accident at a pre-event test for the Croatia Rally. Despite the unimaginable toll Lavin, the Irish 100m hurdles record holder, persevered with her Olympic preparations before toeing the line in a semi final this summer in Paris.
Ireland’s most enjoyable sport’s interviewee, every time Mageen talks to the media there is insight, openness and basic determination in most syllables. The 32-year-old has had an injury blighted career. A gold medal in Rome at the June European Athletics Championships suggested an athlete peaking for their overdue chance to attack an Olympic final. With a medal in mind. Agonisingly close to her Paris starting gun, history was to repeat itself. Like in Tokyo 2020 injury intervened, and she was forced to withdraw from the Olympics.
Rugby has become a game where front rows do not play 80 mins. Certainly not 36-year-old props. Archer has never been the most celebrated player. Two Ireland caps despite close to 300 appearances for Munster reflect his consistent relevance but rare celebration. Science suggests he should be in the impact substitute era of his propping career. Despite the candles on his birthday cake, he has become crucial to Munster. A trend of 6-month contract extensions speaks to a man doing more for Munster than Munster are doing for him.
The Meath forward missed this year’s National League but returned to start three championship game. He missed the league as he was recovering from a recent MS diagnosis. A very successful year.
Paul O'Donovan and Fintan McCarthy are not easily impressed. The gold medal winners demand a lot from themselves but also from their coaches. The Irish Olympic and Paralympic teams lit up our summer as they pushed performance expectations to unprecedented levels. Eamonn Flanagan is the lead Strength & Conditioning Consultant with the Sport Ireland Institute where he manages the S&C support to Ireland’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes. The glory we see every four years is cooked up using recipes Flanagan contest for our athletes training. In a post-Olympics chat with OTB, O’Donovan and McCarthy acknowledged how hard they can be to coach and how much they value the expertise of Eamonn Flanagan in meeting their demands and idiosyncrasies. A mountain of Michelin star work by S&C coach Flanagan, all done beneath the surface away from our eyes.
The 44-year-old mother of two and runner took some time away from the sport in her mid-20s. She returned to running as she and family watched her newborn son endure a serious illness. Alfie came through and Ann Marie quietly kept up the training. The training saw her go on to become National Marathon Champion in 2023 and retain that tile in this years Dublin Marathon. Three weeks later she won the National Cross-Country Championships. Wow.
The former Ireland WNT coach has had a remarkable career. The former Cork City captain and manager played European football with Celtic and represented his country 13 times. In April this year Colin and his kids Arran and Hollie lost their wife and mum, Kelley. Perspective.
We bemoan the lack of Irish players fielded by Premier League teams. Many ignore the fact that the Premier League in the 1990s and early 2000s was not the global pinnacle it has now become. Reminiscing on the so-called glory years of Irish players mixing it with largely English and Scottish peers in the PL creates a mindset where we ignore a silent cohort chiselling out careers in the English leagues outside the circus. Scrapping for contracts year on year to fund their families, wages a fraction of what some in the PL get weekly, an injury away from an unpaid mortgage and bleak future. Seamus Connelly was the first person I heard speak Irish on a GAA pitch. Galway v Sligo minors, Milltown 2006. Eighteen years later, the Connemara man is making a living in the jersey of League Two Accrington Stanley. As a snapshot into the workload this cohort see as routing - Accrington play six games between December 16 and January 4. That said, Seamus will try and find a minute in that time to look forward to their FA Cup game v Liverpool at Anfield on January 11.
A GAA club founded in a non-traditional GAA area on the back of a May 2024 tweet by Dave McGreevy. The success of the club is not that it is thriving in terms of playing numbers and on field success. The success of the club is that the simple humanity it has normalised in its true inclusiveness for every race, religion, ethnicity and any other difference you can imagine. Humanity is underrated. They persevere with their simple pursuit despite of horrific intimidation, vandalism and small-minded anti-humanity. Fair play.
The Tyrone footballer lost his 30-year-old brother Caolan to a car crash in March. Spoke to the GAA Social podcast about returning to training 2 days after the funeral, playing versus down the following weekend, the anguish of driving that same stretch of the A5 on his journeys between home and the Tyrone GAA training base. The GAA community locally have been long and vocal backers of the need to upgrade the stretch of the A5 which has claimed over 50 lives since a planned upgrade was announced in 2007.
The All Ireland winning Meath footballer didn’t make the final cut for the Ireland rugby 7s squad for this summer’s Olympics. Disappointing after stepping back from her GAA commitments in pursuit of that dream. Not many better ways to bounce back than heading to Australia to win an AFL Premiership with The North Melbourne Kangaroos.
Down footballer had a horrific knee injury in 2023 which required a triple reconstruction of knee ligaments. Recuperated to return to Ulster championship action when coming of the bench against Armagh in April. Lasted 14 minutes before doing his ACL. The long rehab journeys are much more difficult than the training/games journey of a season. The arduous one is also much less lauded, even recognised.
Both former pros now coach in St. Mochta’s, Clonsilla. Prunty (44) was forced to retire at 28 due to a heart condition. Hawkins (47) was diagnosed with a rare cancer in 2023. Prunty raised funds for CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young) by climbing the highest peak in each province within 44 hours. Hawkins raised funds for Cancer Care West by running a blitz at St Mochata’s. Both are working hard to encourage others to be proactive with their health and preaching the criticality of early detection and awareness.
In December 2022, the former Shamrock Rovers underage player and Carlow senior hurler was chatting with friends outside a coffee shop when he was struck by a car. Lucky to survive as he was he was still in for a long recovery from heavy bleeding on his brain. A spell in intensive care followed and then huge support from family, friends and Acquired Brain Injury Ireland allowed him recover to a stage where he could return to his job as a teacher. This year he returned to the hurling field, two lost county finals with Mount Leinster Rangers intermediates and seniors do not take anything from an amazing year for Murphy.
Cork would have liked to end a 19-year gap without Liam spending Christmas by the Lee. After extra time Clare defeated Cork to win the Liam McCarthy Cup. It was and enthralling game. Johnny Murphy as referee facilitated this, of the thousands of decisions he made that day he made some mistakes, as did every player on the pitch. Pat Ryan was intelligent enough to recognise this. The spirit of Ryan’s post-match comments should be a creed all coaches, at all levels, in all sports abide by in 2025. “Obviously there are a couple of decisions that go your way and don’t go your way. At the end of the day, Clare are the champions, and we won’t be giving out about any of that stuff.”