Larry was one of a kind
Paul Fitzpatrick
One of the first times I ever spoke to Larry McCluskey, he had just taken over as chairman of Cootehill Celtic. I was working on the Road To Breffni GAA annual and each club section had a short note from the respective chairman.
I called Larry to ask could he send me in a photograph of himself to accompany the short piece he had submitted. He paused for a second then let out a mischievous chuckle.
“I’ll email you one now!” he laughed, “but make sure you include the whole thing.”
A few minutes later, the mail dropped in my inbox and there was Larry, under a cloudless sky, sitting atop a camel in the Egyptian desert, the great pyramids in the background as he waved to the camera.
The caption he included was as follows: “Greetings from Cootehill. Celtics chairman Larry McCluskey pictured on the outskirts of town recently.”
It was typical of his gregarious nature. He was great fun but, behind it, was an intelligence and an appreciation of the arts that was rare and wonderful.
Larry passed away last Tuesday. I was shocked and greatly saddened to hear it. He was a sprightly 78, sharp as a tack. In football parlance, he was still very much on top of his game until very recently.
When I had the idea of writing a book about Charlie Gallagher, he was the first person I called. I was considering the idea; by the end of the conversation, such were Larry’s persuasive powers, I not only had decided to go ahead but actually felt compelled to do so.
The book could not have been written without his help and encouragement but that was typical of the man. It is a pity Larry did not write a book of his own. He had a beautiful way with words. His column on these pages in latter years was required reading.
Witness how he once used a story about push-penny long ago in St Pat’s as a segue into explaining international economics.
“The ‘pitch’ was one or other of the varnished window-sills on the Top Corridor of what was then called The New Wing, opposite Classrooms 1 to 7 - 8, 9 and 10 with the Big Study Hall on the floor beneath, below that again The Basement where we togged out for football, the main subject those days when Fintan McKiernan would horse fellas like Kevin Blessing, Frankie Kennedy and me out of the way as he charged out - with or without the ball.”
Push-penny was, he wrote, “a game played with two large pennies (a hen with chicks on the face, a big harp on the back) and a half-penny, a smaller coin (with a pig and litter on the face). The shilling (a bull) was seldom in evidence in college and the half-crown (a horse), also called a ‘half-dollar’, a rarity.
“I digress. Goalposts were gouged out at either end of the sill and a comb (called a ‘feck’ in Cootehill toss-pits) was used to push the penny to strike the half-penny towards the opposing goal. I forget what the game was up to – maybe first to three won the other guy’s penny.
“It was a foul to push the half-penny off the sill – the other player got a penalty for such infraction.
“This is my way of introducing the important subject of international trade, tariffs and competition. Usually, goods and services compete in the market – the buyer seeks the lowest price, the seller the highest, and where those two desires intersect, deals get done.
“If America can buy 10 tons of cocoa with one car, and it costs Ghana more than ten tons of cocoa to make a car, a deal is on – assuming America needs chocolate and cannot produce it cheaper than one car, and Ghana needs cars but cannot make them for less than 10 tons of cocoa. There you have the whole basis of international trade and commerce.”
Alas, Frankie, one of Larry’s great friends, is gone now too, as are Sean Foy and Dessie O’Sullivan, local football gurus in the Cootehill area whom I also interviewed for the Gallagher book. In the last 12 months, we have lost too many great football men.
And Larry was that. While he played a lot of golf, was a fluent Gaeilgeoir and a passionate supporter of amateur dramatics; football, I believe, was his first love.
His father was principal of St Michael’s NS in Cootehill and, in time, after teaching in Africa for three years, Larry would become a principal too before graduating to become CEO of Monaghan VEC. He had a great affinity for Monaghan, teaching and living there for years, but remainded a Cavanman to the core - and that meant football.
Larry grew up steeped in the game. Imagine being a teenager in 1950s Cootehill and not being in thrall to the green and white hoops.
His first memory of the local club was of a bonfire at the ‘high corner’, outside Brady’s Bar, to welcome home one of Cootehill’s magnificent Senior Championship-winning teams.
In time, he became a very good player himself, winning an Ulster minor medal in 1959 and scoring a goal in the All-Ireland final in Croke Park, something no other Cavanman would achieve until Conor McClarey found the net in the 2011 U21 final.
That team regularly held reunions over the years, where the craic was mighty. “We’ll soon not have a quorum left!” he laughed to me just before Christmas. It’s poignant, in hindsight.
Some years back, he told the story of that minor team on RTE’s Sunday Miscellany. It was beautifully crafted but then, few could relate a story as well as Larry.
One of his early heroes was, of course, Charlie Gallagher. When he was studying at St Pat’s teacher training college in Drumcondra, he was a regular attendee at the Dental College in Lincoln Place, where Gallagher was learning his trade.
“I visited Charlie there,” he told me. “He was affable and competent (his fillings lasted decades!) and seemed senior and well-liked. After freezing, he and others would go off to the canteen to smoke or drink tea – Michael Fay from Cootehill was there at the same time, a year behind Charlie, I think.
“Once or twice, I saw Charlie come into the Metropole Ballroom in O’Connell St – he cut a dash as he made his away along one side of the ballroom.”
Years later, when Charlie had returned to practise in Cootehill, he hooked Larry’s lip as he removed a dental instrument.
“We both laughed – but also recognised the sharpness of the Dental College of 25 years before had blunted,” he recalled.
That is superb writing. Simple and powerful; there is so much imagery in those few lines. What a gift that was for anecdote, for showing not telling.
I knew him through football but he shone in the arts, too. He regularly brought his successful one-man show, Awhile with Seamus Heaney, to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it earned glowing reviews. And he was friendly with the Heaney clan, and John McGahern and other Irish literary royalty, although he himself, despite being widely-travelled and well-read, never lost his common touch.
As chairman of his local GAA club, he was a familiar figure at county board meetings, where he was the scourge of the top table.
At the 2014 convention, the management committee were working through some housekeeping, pushing through motions and tidying up loose ends. Harmless stuff, you would think, but the bould Larry didn't agree with one, motion four.
“All opposed, raise their hands,” asked secretary Liam McCabe. One hand – Larry's, inevitably – shot up.
“You're against that too, Larry,” joked McCabe, “sorry, you're just out of sync with everybody else but you're entitled to do that.”
McCluskey didn't miss a beat.
“One person in the right constitutes a majority,” he asserted, to riotous laughter.
At last December’s convention, he was at it again. After another joust with McCabe, he flashed “I’m sorry but in logic, what you’re saying is nonsense.”
Yet there were no hard feelings. I happened to be in Liam’s company a couple of months back and informed him that Larry was in hospital and, upset by the news, he instantly got on the phone to find out more and send on his good wishes.
His many, many friends will have been dismayed to hear of his passing, a feeling exacerbated by the inability of his family to give him the send-off he deserved due to restrictions around this cursed virus which is stalking the land.
One of those is the brilliant Cavan footballer of the 1960s, Tony Morris. Larry wrote about bringing Tony to see Charlie Gallagher’s final resting place in St Michael’s cemetery in Cootehill.
“I showed him the grave – in the gate and up right, along the hedge,” he recalled. “A poignant, silent moment for two fellow-players, one Club, one County. Many still linger there.”
Now, the man himself rests there too. And like Charlie, ní bheidh a leithéid arís ann.