Another All-Ireland final rolls around, this weekend, as Dublin face Mayo in the football final replay.
Paul Galvin and Colm Cooper have nine All-Ireland winners’ medals between them. Jack McCaffrey tells us “I only have the two” but he’s 22 and will have plenty more chances to add to that.
Ahead of another massive GAA occasion, we asked the footballing stars about their pre-match and match-day routines.
Colm Cooper & Paul Galvin
During our GAA Hour: Live show, ahead of the drawn final, Galvin had the audience in stitches with his well-told tale of Cooper going back to bed [in 2007] after the morning schedule of ‘Breakfast, Physio, Lunch’ on All-Ireland day.
With Kerry set to face Cork at Croke Park for a 3:30pm throw-in, Gooch slept in until 1:15pm. Galvin recalled:
“I said, ‘We’ve a game there about 3:30, if you wouldn’t mind joining us’. Gooch just stretches. ‘Ah, we’ve a few minutes yet’.
“It was like he hit the snooze button. Back asleep for five minutes. Rolled out of bed. Hit 1-5 that day.”
The night before a final, Galvin said Cooper used to relax by singing pop songs and, more often than not, getting the lyrics all wrong:
GALVIN: “Gooch would throw out a song there. He’d do a bit of Barr na Sráide or some Green Day.
“He used to have a problem with ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’. He’d come out of the bathroom and be brushing his teeth and he’d be going, ‘On the Boulevard… ‘ but he’d get the words wrong.
“I’d be saying, ‘Gooch, it’s We walk these empty streets on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams‘.
COOPER [interrupting]: “For f**k sake Paul, this is supposed to be private!”
GALVIN: “Gooch would go ‘We walked in Boulevards, on the… “
“I’d go ‘Gooch! We walk these empty streets on the Boulevard… ‘ and he’d go ‘Alright, alright. I have it, I have it’.
“Gooch would go again, ‘We walked in Boulevards… ‘. He couldn’t get it.”
Galvin roomed with either Cooper or Tomás ‘Bull McCabe’ O Sé before each of his six All-Ireland finals and credits both men’s laid-back natures for helping him relax before games.
As for the games themselves, that was a different matter.
Jack McCaffrey
“In 2013, I was only in the team and I made sure everything was absolutely perfect. I did everything I was told. I was absolutely shite and was whipped off at half-time; it was a disastrous day.
“In 2015, I was actually sick in the build-up to the All-Ireland. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t eat but I was grand. I still got subbed off now but I was fine. I was a bit better than I was in 2013.”
“The first year was surreal,” says McCaffrey. “You were going out to mark yer man, shaking his hand and thinking ‘Is this real? Am I really standing beside these guys?'”
The half back, who is currently on leave from inter-county duty, falls back on a set routine that has now served him well ever since 2013.
“I have the same breakfast before a game. I listen to the same music on the bus as we are heading in. I actually have geographical landmarks, where I now to click to the next song on the iPod.
“When you get to the dressing room, you’re straight out to watch whatever game is on before. In to play a bit of keepie-uppies. Then you go out; same place for the team photo. The [superstitions] kind of creep in but they do relax you before a game.”
It might be a few years before any of the current Mayo or Dublin players admit to singing pop songs the night before the All-Ireland final, but keep an eye out for the pre-match superstitions and quirky routines.
Will it be Mayo (or the Dubs) 4 Sam? Wooly, Paul Galvin and Conán Doherty preview Saturday’s All-Ireland final replay.
