Our columnist Frank Brandon on the tragic recent passings of Galway boxer John Cooney and Cork jockey Michael O’Sullivan, the worrying rise in crime and lenient sentencing, and musings on the success of women’s sport in recent years…
I have often talked about sport, and how important it is to people like me. It has the ability to cheer me up, lift me to euphoric highs indeed, as well as the ability to do the opposite by plunging me into something akin to depression – all depending on the result or performance of an individual or team.
However, as a rule of thumb sport is something that shouldn’t be taken too seriously, and should be mostly used and appreciated for recreational purposes, and so on this Sunday evening (as I write) it’s desperately sad to reflect on the death in Ireland over the last week or so of two very talented and dedicated young sportsmen.
On Saturday of last week, 28-year-old Galway boxer, John Cooney, passed away a week after being injured in a super-featherweight fight up in Belfast. He was defending his Celtic super-featherweight title against Welshman, Nathan Howells, when the fight was stopped in the ninth round. Subsequently John was transferred to the Royal Victoria Hospital, where after surgery to relieve pressure on his brain, he died a week later. His funeral took place in Galway during the week, and his organs were donated to help save the lives of five different people.
Evidencing how hard it can be to make it as a professional boxer, Cooney worked as a barber three days a week in Galway and trained for his boxing career the other four. His dream was to settle down and have a family with his fiancee, Emmaleen. Sadly he will never realise what was a pretty simple and normal dream, and it was poignant that the Galway champion boxer was laid to rest on St Valentine’s Day.
Then today, Sunday, comes the news that jockey, Michael O’Sullivan, a native of County Cork, has also passed away after suffering serious injuries in a fall in Thurles on February 6th. The jockey, who was only 24 years of age, was already hugely successful, with several big winners to his name, including two successes at the Cheltenham Festival.
After coming to prominence in 2023, he was regularly called upon by the king of National Hunt racing, Willie Mullins, to partner some of his superstar horses. That in itself tells us how highly he was rated in the sport.
Mullins, paying tribute to the young jockey, said he will be much missed in Mullins’ Closutton yard and that Closutton will be a much poorer place without him. Everyone talked about how talented he was, and that he would have had a great career ahead of him, but sadly it wasn’t to be. His organs were also donated so both of those young men will have made a huge difference to other patients and their families.
I suppose the truth is that both of the sports they were involved in would be classed as high risk, but there are many other sports out there that could be considered dangerous – rugby, hurling, motorsport and cycling would spring to mind, but thankfully fatalities in any sport are very rare.
It’s almost unprecedented to lose one sportsman to injury. To lose two in little more than a week is terribly sad. My deepest sympathies go to the families of both hugely talented young sportsmen. May they rest in peace.
Crime without punishment
It’s Monday morning, and law and order is on my mind, as to all intents and purposes it seems to have almost completely broken down in this great land of (once upon a time) saints and scholars. In September 2024, to great fanfare, an order was brought in by then-Justice Minister, Helen McEntee, to increase the maximum sentences for four different knife-related offences. Ms McEntee said at the time that the changes to the law would “further help to keep knives and other offensive weapons off our streets”.
Now I have no doubt that the minister meant well, and that she really felt that the new punishments would make people think twice about carrying knives – and sadly being prepared to use them in the event of conflict – but from what I can see barely a day goes by without someone somewhere in Ireland suffering either very serious, or even fatal injuries as a result of a knife-related attack.
Among the high profile stabbings that have occurred on our island in the last while was the attack on an army chaplain in Galway, the terrible multi-stabbings on children in Parnell Square in Dublin – which led to a five-year-old girl being critically injured and spending almost a year in hospital – and in the last week or so we had three men injured after being randomly attacked in Stoneybatter. All three victims were totally innocent, one being slashed across the neck as he opened the front door to his home. All three were hospitalised, two with serious injuries.
Then on Friday night in Dublin City centre, we had a 30-year-old male being stabbed to death after some type of altercation, with shocking video footage showing a masked man brandishing a large kitchen knife more or less running wild prior to the incident on South Anne Street.
And so the evidence would suggest that the measures taken by our legislators are simply not working, and the punishments need to be much tougher for not only knife crime, but for crime in general.
I have said it many times before but some of our judges seem to go out of their way to be kind to some of our worst criminals, with often bizarrely lenient sentencing.
Then this week, in a totally different type of crime, but a crime nonetheless, we read where fake porn images of Grainne Seoige were circulated online prior to her election bid in November.
For Ms Seoige, the decision to enter the race for the Dáil, and a subsequent failed bid to get to the Seanad, seems to have had a detrimental effect on her life, and she now says she is unemployed for the first time.
The bigger picture tells us that nobody is safe from crime, be it online scams or fake pornographic images or physical attacks. All told, everything adds up to a society where law and order seems to me to have broken down. We are used to almost non-stop coverage of the problems in the HSE and of the housing crisis too. Let us hope our new Government don’t overlook the fact that crime is a huge concern to most law-abiding folk in the country.
Even though the knife crimes I highlighted happened mostly in the cities, rural Ireland feels very vulnerable and isolated, and many lonely older folk who are living on their own are terrified that criminals will target them and subject them to often horrific ordeals in their own homes.
And finally…
Of the many social changes that have taken place in my lifetime, one of the most rewarding has been the emergence of female sportspeople and their justified recognition as superstars in many different sports on the world stage.
In the past, the participation of women in contact sports was frowned upon, so much so that in 1947 (a few years before my time) the English FA banned a referee who was associated with a ladies team because “women’s football was bringing the game into disrepute”. Rugby and Gaelic football were around, but there were very few active clubs – it is only in later years that both of those sports have really taken off in Ireland.
On Sunday in Creggs, there were three rugby games involving Creggs teams: a hugely important game for the men’s senior team against Tuam, a big cup match for the 18.5s against Connemara/Oughterard, and finally, an U-14s girls cup match against Buccaneers. Now I had seen both of the earlier games (each of which, by the way, Creggs won), and I am the first to admit that I was on my way home when the girls took the field.
However, I decided to stay put and watch them for a while – and what I witnessed totally amazed me.
The quality of the play from both sides (but particularly Creggs) was quite brilliant, and these young girls played rugby as if they were at it all their lives! And maybe they have been – because being 60-odd years older than them, I (of course) didn’t know any of them. But they sure could play rugby, and they completed the hat-trick of wins on our home pitch.
Sometimes when I look around and see what a huge entity Creggs RFC has become, I don’t deny that I wonder can a little village like ours sustain it. Well, on Sunday on every front, but especially with regard to the U-14 girls, I was reassured. And while I will certainly not be around to see it all, I think the club will be on solid ground for the foreseeable future!
Roll on this Sunday, when the senior men’s team play Castlebar in another must-win game – I can’t wait!
‘Til next week,
Bye for now
