The eloquent "49er

Mid-morning, close to Lobinstown on Wednesday of last week, and there are clear indications that spring has come to the north Meath countryside. The weather is mild and lambs are gambolling in the fields. Seated in the front room of his farmhouse, Paddy Meegan, now a spritely 87, reflects on his life and times as a farmer, writer and footballer. For a spell during the 1940s and "50s, Meegan was one of Ireland"s best-known forwards, the winner of two All-Ireland SFC medals as well as Railway Cup honours with Leinster. He gives a wry smile when he stops and recalls that it is almost 60 years since he helped the Royal County win the Sam Maguire for the first time back in September 1949. It proved to be an unforgettable day for Meath footballers who travelled to Croke Park, more in hope than expectation, to face reigning champions and hot favourites, Cavan. The Ulster champions were the form team, had won the previous two All-Irelands and looked odds-on to make it a three-in-a-row. The formbook was thrown out the window as the underdogs and Leinster champions prevailed on a 1-10 to 1-6 scoreline. Three Syddan players started on that momentous day - Meegan, Kevin McConnell and Bill Halpenny, who scored the winners" only goal. Meegan is a member of a select club - someone who made his name as a footballer at the highest level but who also likes to write poems. His writing is made up of an amalgamation of snapshots from times past, reflections on modern life, recollections of people he knew and incidents from his eventful life. His first collection of 'poems, stories and memories' are contained in his book 'From The Life Around Me", which he published last year. One of his poems, 'The Whitewashing", evokes a time from his youth when, on the first day of the school summer holidays, youngsters would be recruited to help out in giving their homes a makeover. 'Where have they gone, the whitewashed houses/We used to see long ago;/Brightening the country roads for us/With their snow-white friendly glow?/When May Day came and the summer peeped/It was time for the grand do-up,/And a strong schoolboy from the ladder worked/With lime and a whitewash brush.' A favourites poem of his is 'Cloggy", based on a character of the same name who used to roam around the countryside living off what people gave him in alms. In the poem, Meegan tried to imagine what Cloggy might have thought as he moved from house to house around Lobinstown and elsewhere. 'I leave no child to walk behind my bier/Past well-cared graves where gentle people lie/To that bedraggled corner far down the boundary hedge;/No woman"s love to mourn me with a tear.' Inevitably football inspired some of Meegan"s poetry and in 1999 he penned The Long-Gone Fields" to mark the 50th anniversary of Meath"s 1954 All-Ireland success. 'Often in my mind, I wander through the fields in which we played,/And re-live the grand excitement of those long-gone football days./The years have built their arches round us, times gone madly rushing by,/Yet the Sam Maguire silver is still sparking in our eyes.' Having lived through the depressed "30s, "40s and "50s, Meegan is unfazed by any talk of recession these days. The hardships endured by Irish people during the years of his youth provides raw material for much of his writings. Compared to those hard-pressed days, he says, these are relatively good times, although the country"s current economic downturn presents its own distinctive challenges. 'The poverty was there in the "30s and "40s, and the hardship, but people tried to share it and help out. The people who did have something tried to share it with those who didn"t. Generally speaking, people tried to help their neighbours, It was a recession all the time then. Over the last few years, we went to such a high, now we have to go back to a much lower level and it"s going to become a lot harder for people. Back then, there were no real highs and lows and they were happy times,' he recalls. There was always football to help cheer up the masses and the 1940s and "50s proved to be a fertile time for both Meath and Meegan"s club, Syddan. He played for 12 years at senior level with his county and says that, during that time, he turned out in all Meath"s championship games. His brother, Eamonn, was also highly regarded as a footballer and turned out for Meath on a few occasions. Paddy Meegan made his senior debut in 1942 and he was a long-established regular by the time Meath played their way to their debut All-Ireland SFC title in "49; the same year, Syddan also claimed the first of their four Meath senior football crowns. As a pacy corner-forward, Meegan became an integral member of the team. In the lead up to the 1949 All-Ireland showdown with Cavan, the Meath players gathered in Gibbstown for a week-long training camp under the watchful eye of Fr Paddy Tully. Then the big day arrived and a record crowd of 79,000 watched as Meath out-gunned the fancied Ulster champions. The following day, recalled Meegan, as part of their triumphant return home, the Meath players were taken for a jaunt by airplane over their native county, a novel experience at the time. While there were good times, there were also the down-days when it all unravelled for Meath and Meegan tasted defeats in the All-Ireland showdowns of 1951 and "52 (against Mayo and Cavan). Persistence paid off when the Sam Maguire was reclaimed in 1954 with a victory over Kerry. Meegan was one of eight players from the team of "49 who played their part in toppling the Kingdom that year. The defeat to Mayo in the 1951 All-Ireland decider marks one of the more unusual chapters in the annals of Meath football. In the autumn of 1951, the Royal County were due to travel to the New York to take on the local side in the National League Final. However, before they travelled across the Atlantic, they had to take on Mayo in the All-Ireland SFC decider at Croke Park in late September. To prepare them for the trip to the Big Apple, the Meath players were vaccinated shortly before the All-Ireland final. Many of the players reacted adversely to the vaccine and were unable to perform to their best and Mayo took full advantage to claim the Sam Maguire. A few weeks later, Meath eventually defeated New York (1-10 to 0-10) to bag the National League crown at the famed Polo Grounds. 'We were coming into the final stages of the preparation for the game against Mayo in the All-Ireland and the vaccination also had to be done,' recalled Meegan. 'Some of the players were unwell, their arms got sore and they were generally out of form for the All-Ireland. Even in the lead up to the All-Ireland final, the effects of the vaccination were very serious.' There were enough good days for Meegan, though, to give him plenty to write about and, on the silver jubilee of Meath"s 1949 All-Ireland win, he again put pen to paper: 'We hold hands round the bonfires once again,/Ring in the night with cheers, redeem the vanished time,/Sing merrily the songs of Forty Nine/Till the dawn light makes silver of the Boyne.'