Community bids farewell to young footballer

Home for his final journey


Willie McHugh

“The roots of my raising run deep
I come back for the strength that I need”
- Merle Haggard

ONCE more fate pointed its fickle hand Kilmaine’s way. More bad news arriving to a parish that’s endured more than its share of late.
To the Cloonamealtouge end of the barony this time. Long before the swish of a Sunday morning curtain call came the awful tidings. A fatal accident in London claiming the life of Padraig O’Dea.
Only a few short weeks before he roamed those very fields for the final time. He’d spent the summer at home helping his dad overcome a minor health scare. Padraig had extended his stay a tad longer in the hope Mayo might make it to an All-Ireland. Ironic it would be Kerry who put paid to that notion.
In exile Padraig played football with Kingdom Kerry Gaels. With them he won a London championship, a League, and Conway Cup medal in 2013. Their manager Noel Dunning took good care of his prized player. Regularly he collected Padraig from a London tube station, taking him to their Finchley training ground and playing pitch.
About a dozen of Padraig’s colleagues and team-mates from Kingdom Kerry Gaels accompanied him to Ireland on his final journey home to Cloonamealtogue. As did his London work-mates and employers who Padraig had left upon the good impression only he could.
Football was what Padraig lived most for. Had been since the first day he kicked it with his brother Gearóid against the gable of their home. For Padraig the bounce of a ball became the backing track to the rhyming of his life.
As well as playing it with pride and passion, he was a keen student of the game and all the happenings around it. He recalled with minute detail the result of every match. “The Jimmy Magee of Kilmaine” his ever increasing circle of friends called him.
When his Kilmaine footballing team-mates heard of his passing they gathered on a Monday night to remember the man they affectionately referred to as ‘Podge’. Not in some hostelry but in the sanctuary of their Kilmaine dressing-room. They sat on the form he shared with them.
It was here they recalled the man who impatiently hopped the ball as he waited to take the field of play. They sentenced lines together, darning them into good tales. They laughed thinking of the umpteen times they heard the groan of an opponent as ‘Podge’ arrived to execute one of his trademark tackles. ‘Podge’ put his body in places where other players wouldn’t put their imagination.
They gathered in that same room last Wednesday night around the flipchart used heretofore to plot match tactics. But this time it was to plan their input into Padraig’s funeral. Nothing was left to chance. This time a demand that every move be orchestrated with military precision.
Padraig O’Dea, who always set high standards, deserved nothing less.
On Thursday evening they assembled on the village edge, attired in their club tops, to meet him on the road home. A few feet from the gate a community gathered as recently as Reek Sunday morning as the remains of SeΡn Biggins, another young Kilmaine man who died suddenly following a short illness, returned from Chicago.
This time it was the turn of Padraig’s clan, his mum Teresa, dad Gerry, brother Gearóid and all his uncles and aunts from the O’Dea, and his mother’s people the Tully’s of East Galway, lineage to begin their journey down the ‘Via Dolorosa’ that too many other Kilmaine families are already walking.
On Friday evening mourners queued for hours on a narrow Cloonamealtogue road marshalled well by volunteers ensuring the village traffic plan flowed smoothly. Among them helpers who’d already experienced and are still coming to terms with similar tragedies within their own family bosom.
In fading light they filed through Padraig’s home, passing tastefully placed photographs and reminders of happier family times. A picture of a young Padraig in the red and white jersey of Ballycushion National School and him proudly accepting a cup on a Cumann na mBunscoil football evening. Another of graduation day in GMIT and the sash of academic achievement draped across his shoulder. Photos too of winning Kilmaine teams that Padraig gave his all too in every grade.

On an autumn Saturday, waxed in the warm sheen of summer, his family accompanied him to Kilmaine for his Requiem Mass. They carried remnants and memorabilia of his living years to the altar. The jerseys he wore with pride and passion and the other little appendages of his life.
Reading matter also, and the autobiographies of other sportsmen. Padraig O’Dea was the consummate reader. Through local papers he kept an ever interested eye on happenings back home. But not the digital or online edition. He favoured the hard copy.
Mum Teresa had to barrel fold a publication and post it to him weekly. But barely had he set his bearings in Harrow than he’d located a newsagent selling papers with the news of Mayo and home.
Neighbours and friends packed the pews of St Patrick’s Church to overflowing and the huge attendance spilling out to the church ground and the road outside. Over lichen and ivy-trained stone walls they leant in dignified silence. Only the echoing of Father John Fallon’s lovely homily and a brother’s heartfelt tribute to the sibling he adored and loved permeating the stillness of the Kilmaine air.
His colleagues from Kilmaine and Kingdom Kerry Gaels afforded him a ceremonial send-off worthy of the man and the memory he bequeathed in his all too short a time.
Dressed in their charcoal matching suits they shouldered him gently through the village thoroughfare to his final resting place in Musicfield.
Teresa’s nursing colleagues from UCHG were along too to lend their support. With them she shared her little stories about Padraig and Gearóid. Not gΡisce yarns, because boasting wouldn’t be Teresa’s or the O’Dea way. It was a mother’s joyful anecdotes about a point scored, an exam passed, or the synopsis telling of their nightly phone calls home.
Padraig O’Dea, son, brother, nephew, loyal friend and footballer is back again at the deepest root of his raising. He came from ‘good stock’ as they say up them parts.
He hopped and soloed his way through the chicane of life. Be it in work or play Padraig O’Dea always gave a match winning performance.
He lived forever young.