Premature 'retirement' was the break Cork's Denis Coughlan needed

Nowadays, GAA players’ autobiographies are plentiful – a cynical person might say that some are not all that essential.

Someone with four hurling All-Irelands and one in football, who captained his county in both codes, would be fighting the publishers off well before retirement but it says much about the modesty of Denis Coughlan, who died last week, that it took until 2020 for him to be persuaded to pen his life story.

His book, entitled Everything, co-written with the great Tadhg Coakley, is a marvellous tome and carries many stories that illustrate the difference between then and now, not least in the fact that Coughlan was retired due to a misinterpretation by Michael Ellard of The Cork Examiner and Evening Echo.

The pair had been friends since their days in North Monastery together and sat together on the flight to London ahead of Cork’s game against Galway in the Wembley Tournament in 1974.

“So, we were chatting away on the plane (a Cambrian Airways flight – remember them?) and Michael said something like, ‘Tough couple of weeks, Denis?’ (Cork hurlers and St Nick’s had both lost the previous fortnight).

“And I said something like, ‘It was, Michael. You know…I’m thinking of taking a bit of a rest from it.’

“And we were just chatting like that and whatever I said or whatever way Michael took it up, the whole thing just snowballed from there. I thought no more about it and I enjoyed the experience of playing in Wembley – how many people get to do that? I was captain of Cork, too, the same day.

“Margaret picked me up from Cork Airport on the Monday night and on the way down into the city, she said, ‘You never told me you were retiring’.

“I was shocked. ‘Why do you say that?’ I asked. ‘It’s on the back of the Echo tonight, with your picture…that you’re retiring from playing hurling and football for Cork.’

“And that’s how I learned that I was retiring for Cork in May, 1974, at the age of 28. I genuinely had no intention of retiring and I certainly had no idea that Michael had taken it up that way. But now, I had a real dilemma: what was I going to do? And when Billy George, the sports editor of the Examiner, rang me a couple of days later, I had a big decision to make and I had to make it very quickly.

“‘Denis,’ Billy asked me, coming straight out with it. ‘Are you retiring?’

“And I told him what happened, how Michael had taken me up mistakenly. ‘We’ll retract it,’ Billy said. ‘Before it grows any more legs…we’ll shut it down, it’s no problem.’

“But I said no. I didn’t want to do that to Michael for starters. And the second thing was this: I was just a couple of weeks shy of my 29th birthday. I had been playing senior football for Cork for 11 years and senior hurling for Cork for ten years – when you combine those, that’s like 21 years of service.”

Cork had been knocked out of the Munster hurling championship by Waterford and Coughlan helped them to win the Munster SFC but their All-Ireland defence fell against Dublin in the semi-final.

The 1975 season was spent solely in the colours of Glen Rovers and St Nick’s, putting in storming performances as the Glen reached the county final. They lost there to Blackrock but Coughlan was again excellent, despite breaking two hurleys.

Then, just as the media had retired him, it played a part in his return. A week and a half later, he took a phone call from Mick Dunne of The Irish Press, who informed him that he had been picked to play for Cork against Tipperary in the national league.

Coughlan quickly called to Christy Ring’s house to check the situation but clarity was in short supply.

As the book recounts: “‘I dunno, boy,’ he said.

“‘But you’re a selector,’ I said. He shrugged. I played my trump card. ‘I’ve no hurleys, anyway,’ I said, lamely.

He looked at me and said nothing.

“‘What am I going to do?’ I said. ‘Mick Dunne is after ringing me to tell me I’m on the team. If it’s on the paper in the morning it will look terrible if I come out and say I won’t play. I can’t do that.’

“‘That’s up to yourself,’ Christy said.

“Now, I knew Christy well enough to know what was going on, and what he was telling me, without really telling me. It was something he often did.”

Coughlan’s returned coincided with the 1976-78 three in a row, with All-Stars in each of those years and the Texaco Hurler of The Year Award in 1977. The break certainly did him good.