THE LAST POINT: Sport the most important of the least important things
THE LAST POINT - Passing of Ciara Mageean a profoundly sad day for Irish sport
Words aren’t supposed to fail a journalist, they’re our bread and butter but there are times when all the words in the world don’t seem to make any difference. Last Sunday was one of those days when a shroud of genuine grief enveloped our fair isle, covering all creeds and classes, and the phrase that most sprung to mind is that sport is the most important thing of the least important things in our life – certainly that’s a sentiment I think Ciara Mageean wholeheartedly embraced in a life cruelly cut all too short.
Others will write far more eloquently about the passing of a young woman who seemed to touch the hearts of the nation, not because of what she achieved on the track, considerable as that was, but due to the character that shone through in every single interview; the genuineness that came through on our TV screens or leapt off the page in interviews. Driven, funny, honest, direct, uncompromising, ambitious and yet unassuming, the Portaferry athlete was the template for what we’d like our sporting heroes to embody as her ambition and talent mixed liberally with humour and self-depreciation.
The shock was profound on Sunday morning when the Connacht Athletics WhatsApp group on my phone lit up with the sad news – shock was palpable, so too was the sorrow and sense of loss, a sense not confined to Ireland’s tight knit, almost clannish athletics community. Maybe I’m a bit cynical that messages of condolences from political or public figures don’t do it for me but social media has been abuzz with personal recollections and memories from the ordinary five-eights and that’s probably the greatest tribute that could be paid to the late Ciara Mageean, that so many felt that the Star of the County Down was one of us.
What resonated about Mageean was the feeling that for all her shining brilliance as an underage runner that saw her claim European and World U20 medals, Ciara knew what struggles were – injuries plagued her early career, a tough break with coach Jerry Kiernan when she took the hard decision to move to Manchester to pursue her dreams, creating a rift that was never resolved due to the untimely passing of the Kerry man, and cruel untimely injuries that often derailed her outings at the Olympics and left her broken, physically and emotionally.
Through it all, Mageean’s sense of self never wavered and, indeed, her sense of Irishness became almost a super-power the longer she lived and trained in Manchester, her connection with home, with Portaferry, reflects what so many generations of Irish emigrants have experienced when far away from their native shore; that their love of home and hearth is never greater, nor more intense, than when one is away from family and home.
It always feels rawer when a young person dies, the bewilderment and sorrow that greeted the news of Ciara’s passing couldn’t but remind me of the days after the passing of Gerry Gallagher and Philly McGuinness, two young men taken way before their time on the football fields of Leitrim. Hard to believe it is over 27 years since Gerry Gallagher passed away at just 24 years of age after collapsing during a club, a loss that is still felt in his Glenfarne Kiltyclogher club; even harder to comprehend that 16 years have sped by since Mohill and Leitrim lost the seemingly unquenchable fire that was Philly McGuinness.
That shock was even greater on a personal level when Joanna Duignan passed away nine years ago, a shock I’m not sure that many of us who knew Joanna have ever fully recovered from. Almost a force of nature as an athlete, that force paled in comparison to Joanna’s kindness, warmth and generosity of spirit and I know that for many of her friends, returning to the track in the days, weeks and even months afterwards took almost super-human levels of resolve and fortitude. But returning to the track and honouring Joanna’s memory, amidst tears, helped get her friends through an awful time – it certainly helped me restore some scant meaning to life.
Through it all, Mageean’s sense of self never wavered and, indeed, her sense of Irishness became almost a super-power the longer she lived and trained in Manchester, her connection with home, with Portaferry, reflects what so many generations of Irish emigrants have experienced when far away from their native shore; that their love of home and hearth is never greater, nor more intense, than when one is away from family and home
Return we inevitably do, not because we forget but mainly because we remember what sport meant to those we mourn, a feeling brilliantly expressed by Dunloy hurler Conal Cunning to journalist Jerome Quinn on the Antrim GAA X feed last Sunday, talking about the passing of Ciara minutes after his team won the County title but capturing the mood perfectly - “It puts things into perspective it really does, at the end of the day, you’re thinking about a match but at the end of the day, there’s bigger things. But at the same time, it’s what you live for, it's what you do every day, you spend so much of your life dedicating yourself to hurling so when these days come, you have to really enjoy them.”
As an expression of what sport means to us, it is, as the cliche goes, the most important of the least important things in our lives; the joy and the sorrow that often comes within seconds of each other, a way to deal with the stresses in our everyday life and lift ourselves as a community, be it the smallest club or largest county in the country, sport is that unifying thread that brings us altogether and soothes our troubled souls. One of Ciara’s best friends got the news of her passing on the bus to the starting line of the New York Marathon last Sunday, news that would cripple anyone emotionally but Phily Bowden used her memory to get her across the finish line in the top 20 before breaking down in tears – that’s the power and majesty of sport that kept Mageean coming back and coming back despite all her crushing disappointments before taking European glory just two short years ago.
Ordinarily, I have used this column to laud St Brigid’s on their wonderful victory last Saturday in the AIB Connacht Junior Club Final, a victory that embraced the qualities of bravery, confidence, talent and self-belief that propelled Ciara Mageean and so many other Irish sporting heroes to the pinnacles of their sport. Congrats to St Brigid’s, they truly were magnificent but this week, you can’t help but think of those we’ve lost all too soon and, in thinking of them and honouring what drove them and inspired them, we keep their memory strong within us and that is the essence of the most important of the least important things.