Weeshie typified the best of Kerry and its people’s tremendous wit

We sadly never got to ask him which it was, but in the countless number of interviews he conducted, Weeshie Fogarty had either a tick or a tactic of asking in that endearing, warm Kerry drawl: “What does it mean to….?” or “tell me, how did it feel to…?”

Weeshie typified the best of Kerry and its people’s tremendous wit

We sadly never got to ask him which it was, but in the countless number of interviews he conducted, Weeshie Fogarty had either a tick or a tactic of asking in that endearing, warm Kerry drawl: “What does it mean to….?” or “tell me, how did it feel to…?”

It could have been anything from bringing a long-awaited divisional or county junior title back to a small parish, or being the grand-nephew of a deceased All-Ireland winning captain, or representing Ireland in an upcoming European championships in anything from taekwondo to rowing or basketball, Weeshie Fogarty was curious to know what it meant to you and how did it feel.

Invariably, in answering, the subject would name-check: “Ah, Weeshie, it means everything.” This was a measure in itself of the respect and affection he was held in, but if Weeshie Fogarty’s family ever wondered just what he meant to the people of Kerry and beyond, they’ve got their answer in recent days.

Today, we will descend in our droves on Killarney to praise Weeshie and only praise him, as he makes his final journey. While it’s the norm not to speak ill of the dead, Fogarty was that rare person undeserved of a single bad word when he was alive.

What did he mean to me? He was a godsend, a contact, but above all a friend. We attended each other’s book launches. I often called into his house. He was at my wedding. This morning, I’ll be among the thousands at his funeral.

He was a godsend in that he came into my life when I was a dedicated GAA writer with a Sunday national newspaper and relations between the Kerry team and the fourth estate were rather fraught.

Páidí Ó Sé has rightly been described as a big-hearted, loveable rogue, but even his most ardent supporters will accept that in his years as Kerry manager we only sporadically saw that side of him; instead he presented a more guarded front.

If you bothered to attend a Kerry press day, you were likely to be greeted by some player kicking a football over your head and a Darragh smirking while a pleasant, though hardly engaged, Seamus Moynihan rattled off every cliché in the book to you. On the eve of the appointment of the far more accessible, if occasionally tetchy, Jack O’Connor, county chairman Sean Walsh would admit that Kerry had become the unfriendly face of football.

But it was okay. I got by. I’d just go around the corner to Weeshie’s instead. If flying footballs shaving journalists’ heads represented some form of cute hoorism, then a chat with Weeshie typified the best of the county and its people’s tremendous wit, hospitality and love of place and life. Even when Jack ushered in an era of glasnost and perestroika that allowed us to appreciate the intellect of Ó Cinnéide, the vibrancy of Donaghy, the droll humour of Tom O’Sullivan and the candour of Jack himself, Weeshie remained a go-to person for someone like myself, writing so often about perennial All-Ireland finalists. He had more strident hot takes than any ESPN or Fox Sports panellists.

When I was doing a piece in 2003 wondering if you were to select 15 of one footballer, who would it be, he’d proclaim “Listen to me, 15 [Mick O’] Dwyers would beat 15 of anyone else!” Or, “I’m coming to the conclusion that club football in Dublin must be overly-muscular,” he’d declare to us in 2008, when I was doing a piece on Kerry’s capacity to produce at least one top-notch forward a year, the latest being Tommy Walsh, while Dublin had just been hammered by Tyrone.

Here, in Kerry, you can put a 17-year-old into the senior championship and he won’t be taken out of it. There’s a young fella playing with my own club [The Legion] this year. James O’Donoghue’s his name. He’ll win All-Irelands and All Stars with Kerry. I’m telling you now.

Being on the ground with his finger on the pulse, he could see the future years away. I remember in 2000, while doing a piece on how Kerry were shaping up for that year ahead of a league semi-final against Meath, we were walking down Lewis’s Road from his house in O’Sullivan’s Place to Christy McSweeney’s tavern around the corner. Walking up the hill was some scrawny ginger-haired kid that Weeshie saluted and who saluted him back. “Colm.” “Weeshie.” He turned to me, remarking that it was about the first time he’d seen that kid without a ball in his hand. Suffice to say, his prediction that I’d be seeing more of that kid proved to be right.

Perhaps Weeshie’s great legacy though is how he preserved and celebrated Kerry, constantly documenting and referencing the past by linking it with the present. I don’t think I’d heard of Tadhgie Lyne before Weeshie mentioned him as part of the lineage of nacky towny forwards that Gooch was following in. I certainly hadn’t heard of Tom ‘Gega’ O’Connor; when a Dub questioned us the other week on Twitter, bemused that we referred to Bryan Fenton as potentially the best non-Kerry midfielder there’s been, it was obvious the man hadn’t been educated by a Weeshie on the merits of everyone from Gega to Darragh.

He always had some project on the go, outside the mandatory tasks of commentating games and presenting ‘Terrace Talk’. In that same chat we had about the Kerry forwards conveyer belt before the 2008 All-Ireland semi-finals against Cork, he mentioned a “very interesting competition being launched by the Kilgarvan club”. They were selecting the 10 best living Kerry forwards. To help them, Fogarty was able to tell them there were 57 living All-Ireland winning Kerry forwards, as he presented his shortlist of 20.

Another time he mentioned a deceased Kerry All-Ireland winning captain, one of either two or three Kerry captains buried abroad, and the thought occurred: Where else but Kerry would you have won so many All-Irelands as to be able to categorise between those captains buried abroad and those buried at home? And who else but only Fogarty would have been able to identify and document those two categories?

For a moment there writing this, my reflex to clarify how many captains it was that had been buried abroad was to just call my friend. But I couldn’t. He couldn’t tell me. And yet he will.

On Monday, I started watching a DVD he sent me six or seven years ago called Secrets of Kerry: A Captain’s Story, documenting the story of every All-Ireland winning Kerry captain. Weeshie had a generous habit of doing that; sending you a copy, be it cassette or CD, video or DVD — he always moved with the times — of a recent interview or documentary he had done, posting and packaging it with all the love and attention as if it were some obscure precious bootleg, like Prince in Den Haag ’88, you’d craved.

Truth be told, I didn’t listen to or watch them all, but watching the various captains’ stories for the first time on Monday was as delightful and beautiful as hearing Prince’s soaring ’88 guitar solo on ‘Just My Imagination’, not least just to hear his comforting voice again.

The first captain to bring the All-Ireland to Kerry was Thady O’Gorman in 1903, though the final itself wasn’t played until 1905. Thady had an identical twin brother on the team, Jamesie, the team’s other corner-forward.

Prompted by Weeshie’s gentle, compassionate questioning, Jamesie’s grandson Jim recounts how Jamesie suffered a bit of a rough treatment from his marker in the first half of one of those 1903 All-Ireland finals against Kildare. At halftime Thady, being a good bit spikier than the reserved Jamesie, suggested they switch corners. When Jamesie’s tormenter tried it on again early in the second half, he was met by a bit of his own medicine. God, you’re a different man in the second half, the Kildare man would wince, not knowing just how right he was.

What follows is also pure gold, like seeing Weeshie in Glenmore outside the house and school of Phil O’Sullivan, captain in 1924; like ‘Gega’, he’d be buried in the States, having never returned to Ireland after meeting his wife when she was 18 playing piano on a boat bringing the Kerry team to New York.

What’s striking, though, is the warmth and trust Weeshie elicits from his subjects, be it the grandchildren or sons and daughters of those captains who have passed, or those who were still alive. The first of the captains still around to tell him their own story was Gus Cremin. Gus was captain for the drawn final in 1946, then dropped for the replay, but came on to kick the winning point. He lights up recalling that score: “I could see the goal widening and I steadied myself.” He then remembers the hurt of not being able to lift the cup: “I came home before the rest of them.” Then, you realise it’s not everyone a Gus Cremin would have been so pleased to talk to and so candid with.

Something else that’s poignant looking now at those interviews is a leading question Weeshie has for several of the children of those deceased All-Ireland captains. “And he got a huge send off?”

Such matters he’d clearly thought of.

He’s going to get some send off himself today.

For the launch of his first book, the vitally-important biography of Dr Eamonn O’Sullivan, Weeshie chose Mícheál Ó Muircheartaigh as MC: Game recognises game. When Weeshie was handed the mic, he thanked the people who had helped him with his book, but he offered three words of particularly high praise for the night’s compere: “A national treasure. A national treasure.”

Fogarty himself was a county treasure. Thankfully, that gift wasn’t the preserve of Kerry alone, but for any of us lucky enough to listen or meet or know him.

How did he make us feel? What did Weeshie mean to us? In signing my copy of his Dr Eamonn book, he addressed it to ‘Kieran – a true dear friend’. Of course, he probably signed every copy that night with that. But we all believed him. That’s how he made us feel.

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