You wouldn’t be slipping off on a session again any time soon…
Kieran McGeeney was an absolutely fierce, driven competitor when it came to his GAA career and it got him, his club and his county far.
‘Geezer’ would rarely settle from 100% from his teammates, coaches and himself when it came to every aspect of the game. Stevie McDonnell found out all about it not long after he had broken into the senior Armagh panel.
The former Footballer of the Year recalled one unforgettable night of inter-county training that left him and a couple of his teammates black and blue. McDonnell told The GAA Hour:
“The Ulster final is always around the time of my birthday. One of the particular years we [Armagh] won Ulster – and we had won a few years at this stage – the manager, Geezer and Paul McGrane were happy for us to go out celebrating that night.
“But there was a strict ban – no more drink after tonight as we’re preparing ourselves for an All-Ireland quarter final. But the Monday after the final happened to be my birthday so myself, Marty O’Rourke and Paddy Watters went on the drink. We weren’t back training until the Wednesday night and we had an extra day to recover but Geezer got wind that we were on the drink.”
“We were coming into Callan Bridge for training, us three boys – we were still young at the time, 24 or 25,” McDonnell continued. “We were going out to train and Geezer and Paul McGrane pulled us [aside] and nailed us on it.
“‘You stepped out of line and it’s never happening again’, they said. Made us feel like wee boys.
“But the big thing that happened in training, that night, was that Geezer circled the senior players – Diarmuid Marsden, Kieran Hughes, McGrane, John Toal – and said, ‘Nail them boys in training tonight, at every opportunity that you get’.
“I’ll tell you now – we walked off the training pitch that night knowing that we had stepped out of line. We came off black and blue, blood dripping from us, but that’s the way it was. We had to accept that. That’s fair punishment.”
Crikey. Not for the feint-hearted.
There were no more Sunday sessions bleeding into Monday.
Player-led justice, carried out under the floodlights at Callan Bridge. Not a lesson anyone involved forgot in a hurry.
*The full story from Stevie McDonnell starts around 19:05 below…
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