Book review by P. M. O’Sullivan, editor.

Doing the past justice

I have long thought John Keane’s life would make a memorable film in the high European tradition. His last days are a haunt. Late 1975, after years of heart problems, when he would not consent to amputation of a leg, the 58 year old Keane decided on a journey to meet some friends, former opponents on the hurling fields of Ireland. First Kilkenny, so as to see Jim Langton. Having returned to Waterford, he travelled the next day to visit Jack Barrett in Kinsale. Then to Tralee, where Jackie Power, one of Limerick’s greatest, was living. Next stop was Mick Mackey, the greatest. Keane felt ill between Tarbert and Limerick. Courteous to the end, he knocked on the nearest door, asking the woman who answered to call an ambulance. He died on the way to hospital.

I first read about this journey in Brendan Fullam’s Giants of the Ash (1991). It was easy to imagine the film’s opening moments, the car carefully steered to the verge. Then an intent unsteady walk, the startled face, apology. An Eastern European master – Kieslowski, perhaps – could do the moment justice. He would catch the ordinary final strangeness of it all, a mixture of long shots and close ups. Nothing in medium distance, nothing knowable. The following two hours would show why John Keane went driving that lonely road on his own, fulfilled in every way except the one that sent him there. He died on October 1, 1975, father of five, a successful businessman, famous for nearly forty years. Renown shook his hand after Mick Mackey was neutralized in a 1937 Munster Championship tie. Eventually, after much struggle, Keane had done it all, establishing Mount Sion as one of Ireland’s foremost clubs, centre-forward when Waterford won their first Senior All-Ireland in 1948, training Waterford to a second title in 1959.

Mackey, the playboy of the 1930s, was ebullient, electric in a world of paraffin lamps, unstoppable. He had scored 5-3 in the 1936 Munster Final, a game during which he supposedly bared his buttocks to the crowd as a provocation to the Tipperary supporters. Garrett Howard, who had won his first All-Ireland in 1921, said: “The likes of Mackey should have five wives, for his breed should never be let die out.” John Keane gave the matter thought. A question by journalist Séamus Ó Braonáin as to how he mastered the task brought an engaging reply: “Well, he said, I was a terribly long time thinking about it. God forgive me, even at Mass it used to come into my head.” Keane determined he would lance in front, quelling flying sliotar on his hurl. Queried about the risk, about the consequence of letting Mackey through on goal, Keane was deadpan: “Ah, but that’s the thing, you see, said John as though speaking to a rather dense child, I wouldn’t miss.”

He was 20 then, born on February 18, 1917, the splice of ability and intelligence already his hallmark. Early, he roused fascination. His childhood home was five minutes from Waterford City’s Gaelic Field, soon a place of daily resort. One evening, as a group of youngsters were tangling with makeshift sticks, a man named Maurice Lucas handed John Keane a proper hurl. He had seen into the future.
David Smith’s wonderful biography of his maternal uncle takes care to include well known material, such as the Ó Braonáin quotations, but everything we know is reconfigured by superb research and sensitive writing. The Unconquerable Keane: John Keane and the Rise of Waterford Hurling is about as good as cultural history in GAA inflection gets. It is one of many felicities that the farsighted generosity of Maurice Lucas is not lost. Smith has done the past, however contingent, justice. While there are many angles on John Keane beyond hurling, this welcome book would not have appeared if its subject had not been so transfixingly good on the pitch. Smith offers an appendix containing 11 teams, chosen between 1955 and 2009, of the ‘greatest ever’ variety. John Keane is on each one. Only Mick Mackey and Christy Ring are in the same category.

A pleasure of The Unconquerable Keane is that it documents other filmic moments, singularities that somehow open a life’s quick while holding dreamy and aslant. Having finished hurling with both Mount Sion and Waterford in 1951, Keane stayed with club football until 1955. That last year, they met Brickey Rangers in the Senior Final. The game, before a record crowd, was a draw. Keane scored a goal. Hundreds of truculent supporters invaded. Order was restored, only for two horses to appear, scattering players. The horses were eventually driven off and the concluding five minutes allowed. Frankie Walsh equalized for Mount Sion from a free. The replay had to be abandoned after more fighting. The refixture was never held and John Keane was done with that life. Ten years earlier, he had been struck viciously on the head in a game against Erin’s Own. The rivalry between the clubs was poisonous, largely because Erin’s Own felt they had been supplanted on their own ground. They took nine Senior titles in a row before Mount Sion beat them in 1936. The great man was sitting, dazed, on the ground. David Smith writes: “A neighbour of the Keane family, who was the mother of an Erin’s Own player, approached John who rose and held out his hand to greet her on the assumption that she was going to enquire about his injury. Instead, she reached up and spat in his face.” I can see those scenes in mind’s eye, the folded strangeness in every life, the frayed hems of every parade. Tarkovsky would have filmed them perfectly as a rebuke to pride.
If there is a central thread to John Keane’s life, it is that he gave dignity to everything in which he was involved. He was one of those men who inspire confidence by demeanour; affection, by inviolable modesty. Never stinted for natural advantage – blond, handsome, six foot tall when this height was like 6’ 3” today – I think he embodied, for Irish people, the prospect of a better life.

John Keane was born into a background best termed ‘upper working class’, second youngest in a family of nine. The milieu in Barrack Street was intensely nationalistic. His eldest brother, Thomas, took the anti-Treaty position in the 1920s. Their father was a horse groom, one who later worked for Waterford Corporation until he was 78 because there was no pension. This section of society remains little researched and historians working on 20th century Ireland will find plenty of interest in this publication.

John was very much a Christian Brothers product. He revered the men who had taught him, their contribution to the foundation of the Mount Sion club via the Éire Óg Minor sides of the early 1930s. This attachment was never clearer than when he was approached to play for Cork in 1942. As Smith skilfully details, there had been internal trouble in Mount Sion due to a drinking culture among its younger members. Keane found it difficult to negotiate a path between personal friendship and principle. He amazed everyone in late 1941 by announcing his retirement. Some Cork businessmen visited, scenting an opportunity. There would be a good job for him if he moved. His mother summed up the dilemma: “John, would you do that to the Brothers?” He quickly agreed. The rift was repaired. He became teetotal in 1943 after meeting his future wife and married in 1945. The bump, whatever its nature, had been surmounted.

Keane had started as a Minor wing-back at 13. Playing Munster Colleges led to a friendship with Jack Lynch, an exact contemporary. Brilliant performance followed brilliant performance. He captained Munster to the Railway Cup in 1939, leavening the disappointment of losing to Dublin in the 1938 All-Ireland Final. A string of frustrating defeats dissolved in the solvent of 1948’s success. Many anecdotes attest to boundless charisma, to how John Keane had a feeling for the underdog and a word for everyone. A man named Tommy Kelly was a ticket checker on the Dublin-Waterford line. Ill in 1975, John Keane lay abed in the Mater Hospital. Kelly, between trains, would visit. Jack Lynch, leader of the opposition, arrived on one occasion amid a flurry of female excitement. Tommy Kelly, embarrassed by his uniform, rose. The patient demurred, pressing Kelly back down: “Stay where you are Tommy. Jack is here, not as the former Taoiseach or leader of Fianna Fáil, but as a friend – just as you are.” That David Smith saw fit to record this exchange suggests there is a genetic basis to decency. He has done not only GAA history but wider Irish social history a tremendous service.

The sole query might concern the book’s two parts. The first one deals with the man’s intercounty career; the second, with his Mount Sion days and life after 1951. This bifurcated approach did lead to some repetition. Only a quibble. The Unconquerable Keane takes its place alongside Tom Williams’ Cuchulainn’s Son: The Story of Nickey Rackard (2006) as the finest GAA biography yet produced.

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Kevin Brennan, the author of Gurriers will be appearing on The Evening Show on City Channel Dublin on Wednesday 14^th June at 19.05.

The Evening Show is City Channel’s new early evening entertainment show, hosted by David Harvey,Rachel Wyse and Olive Geoghegan. The programme presents a mixed content of movies, local politics, sport, financial tips, nutritional guides, wine tasting, make up tips, and City’s local entertainment guide.

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