GOING DOOR-TO-DOOR Talking politics at the kitchen table with Martina and Emily Griffin. Pics: Michael Donnelly
Going at full tilt On the canvass
Liam Horan liamhoran@mayonews.ie
WHEN, on John O’Mahony’s Friday afternoon canvass of Claremorris town, a Seventh Son (Michael O’Connor from Ballinrobe) bumps into another Seventh Son (Paddy Henry from Sligo), the football man bidding to become a crossover hit doesn’t ask to be healed.
“Just kill the Government,” O’Mahony puts it to the pair with powers, glint in his eye, and adds “the omens must be good now, we’ll clutch onto any straw.”
The opinion polls haven’t given O’Mahony a shout to date. He needs a goal or two badly but he’s against the breeze and the referee isn’t giving him a break. He’s squeezing the life out of his stopwatch, as always, but he can’t reach back into the dug-out and bring on an Anthony Finnerty.
He’s out there now, all alone in the fullness of the national glare.
The famed winner could face a heavy defeat and – even if a rising tide lifts Fine Gael boats all over the country – a poor show by the celebrity candidate would leave egg on the face of party leader Enda Kenny in his own backyard.
But he’s a fighter, and the fighter is fighting. A retired schoolteacher, he has been canvassing relentlessly for the last few months. His mood has not darkened – in fact, the hustings bring out the more playful, lighter sides of his character that often remain obscured from view in his Gaelic football bailiwick.
He has clearly not given up the ghost and is energised and animated throughout the afternoon.
Former St Nathy’s College schoolmate Henry has spent a few days on the trail with him and concludes “I don’t know how he does it. The phones are going all the time. He’s dealing with a political query one minute, a football one the next minute, and then he’s retuning calls to people who have left messages. And there’s no sign of stress at all.”
And so he strides it out on Claremorris’ Dalton Street, assisted by his second daughter army officer Nieve, guided by local Fine Gael councillor Tom Connolly, introducing himself thus: “John O’Mahony’s the name…”, though few don’t recognise him first off anyway.
He tells voters it’s his first time in the race and he’d appreciate ‘anything you can do for me’, and, when one voter implies her allegiances lie elsewhere, he answers ‘whatever you do, I will respect it’.
An old age pensioner stands at her door and wonders “why should I vote for any of ye? Why is there no bus service to Castlebar? I have to pay €50 for a taxi to go to Castlebar. It is absolutely disgraceful. What are you going to do about it?”
He listens and replies: “I haven’t been elected before. It’s my first time in the race. If I get in, I might be able to do something about it. I totally agree with you, it’s ridiculous.”
In England, football celebrities are whisked around in cars with darkened windows, and the Toms and Nieves in their entourage are there to keep people at bay. In Ireland, the football celebrity comes to your door to shake your hand and talk to you, and if you’re not there he will autograph his publicity literature and slip it through your door.
And if there’s anything he can do for you, just call into his office down the street any time.
Pretty soon, you can expect a ‘Celebrity Stalks Fan’ exposé in a tabloid newspaper.
O’Mahony says that the campaign trail has made him hungry to get stuck into issues like the environment, health, agriculture and education. “You read about these issues, but actually meeting people on the doors who are having difficulties, who have spent time on trolleys in hospitals, I would love to have a go at sorting some of these things out,” he says.
“For example, I had often heard about the sewerage system in Kiltimagh being in a bad way, but until you actually go there in your wellingtons, and see it for yourself, you don’t realise how bad it is.”
Face recognition? On a scale from one to Pope Benedict, he’s at about Bertie Ahern – in other words, off the page for a newcomer. Even the disaffected have a word of encouragement for him. “I never vote,” says one man, as he walks by, not even pausing to shake a hand. But he stops 30 yards down the street, and turns around to add, “but he’s a hell of a great coach.”
Another tells her sister, waiting to catch a bus, to ‘come here and meet our great football manager John O’Mahony’, while family ties break down a barrier too as a woman tells him ‘I knew Father Dan [John’s brother] well and you’re very like him’.
Football follows him everywhere. “I’m on a mission,” he tells one worker in a local business. “Whatever about that one,” is the reply, “I know your mission on May 20 [Mayo v Galway].”
Behind a glass frame in the local library hangs the very ball that was used in the 1936 All-Ireland football final, which Mayo won, and which featured Enda Kenny’s father Henry at midfield. “Is there room for another one?” he asks, rhetorically.
And, in many ways, that’s the question he’s asking on May 24 too.
