Paddy Buggy  

The Man Who Did It All

 

By Enda McEvoy

 

THE (1957) All-Ireland final was against neighbours Waterford and it produced entertainment that one dreams about but seldom sees.  Some of the hurling was out of the top drawer.  The rest was fast and fearless.  It was a famous match by any standards ... Mickey Kelly, who captained Kilkenny, got the winning point three minutes from the end.  Waterford had a chance to equalise but Phil Grimes's free was short and Ollie Walsh saved.  Walsh was the hero for Kilkenny.  He made point-blank saves during the hour.  John Maher, Paddy Buggy, and Johnny McGovern were best in defence.' (Tom Ryan Kilkenny - the GAA Sto 1884-1984).

A simple question.  What is the greatest honour a GAA Club can achieve?  Inevitably, answers will vary.  Some people will opt for All-Ireland club glory, or perhaps the continued success at local level, decade after decade, that derives from solid structures and an enterprising under-age system.  But many clubs have dominated their county hurling and football scenes and gone on to taste All Ireland glory on St. Patrick's Day.  Other folk may say that it's when the club produces an All Ireland senior medallist.  That too is certainly a red-letter event, but plenty of clubs bring forth men who win medals at Croke Park in September.  It happens year in year out.  No. The greatest, most exclusive moment a club can experience is surely when one of its members becomes president of the GAA.  There have been 33 presidents in the history of the Association, from Maurice Davin back in the 1880's to the current incumbent Sean McCague.  The man who was at the helm from 1982 to 1984 was Slieverue's Paddy Puggy.  Looking back at his stint nearly two decades later, 'honour' is the word Paddy Buggy chooses to employ.  Being elected president of the GAA was an honour for himself, an honour for the county, an honour for south Kilkenny, but i-nost of all an honour for his native parish.  The parish and the club, the place where the Association begins and ends.  'The GAA and the games, they controlled my life.  They were a second religion', particularly hurling.'

In reviewing the life and times of Paddy Buggy, the obvious temptation Is to give prominence to this presidency, its adventures, its ups and downs.  That, though, drags with it the risk of overlooking the man himself, who he was and where he came from.  And that would be a grave mistake.  Because even had he never become president, Paddy's CV as a hurler and administrator would have been sufficient to mark him out as a significant GAA figure in his own right.  He played his first match - illegally! - with Ferrybank in 1946 (he had to be reinstated to play with Slieverue) and his last with Kilkenny in New Ross in 1963.  On the pen-and-paper front, his career began with his tenure as secretary of the Slieverue Club, where he was also treasurer for a period, continued with his chairmanship of the Leinster Council and, following his presidency of the GAA, ended with his 12 months as Kilkenny County Board Chairman.

He learned the administrative ropes at an early age because he had to.  'Young people ran their own GAA affairs in Slieverue at the time.  Michael Rockett was chairman and I was secretary with the minors, which involved organising the training sessions and the team.  So straightaway we were into administration.' The next steps up the ladder were with the Southern Board where Paddy 'learned a lot' from Seamus McKenna and Tom Mullins of Thomastown ('two very able administrators'), and with the Kilkenny County Board - Johnny Hokey, the Slieverue representative, needed somebody to travel with him to County Board meetings in Kilkenny, a 50-mile round trip cycle.

Assuming the presidencey of the Association was not the consummation of any deeplaid masterplan on his part.  In retrospect it seems to have been a natural progression for Paddy, but in reality the first time he thought about making a bid was during his time as chairi-nan of the Leinster Council.  A number of counties 'were at me to stand'.  Jimmy Roche from Wexford, his predecessor as chairman and a good friend, encouraged him too.  Paddy's misgivings were legion: family, normal life, 'you'd never get time to yourself.  When the Ulster counties promised him support, he reviewed the situation again, eventually concluding that if they were prepared to honour him in that way, he should be prepared to accept the honour and run.  But gaining the presidencey, he emphasises, was ultimately an honour for his club, not for himself.  'Slieverue is a very small place, a very small club.  Up to my time as a player, anyone who was anyone there went and played for Carrickshock.  That's why I felt it was an even bigger honour for Slieverue to have a GAA president.'

At the helm for a three-year spell that culminated in the Association's centenary year in 1984, Paddy was a more than usually visible president with a more than usually crowded itinerary.  There was a trip to Australia to investigate the possibility of a link-up between Gaelic football and its Aussie Rules counterpart.  Liam Mulvihill and he travelled across the country from Perth to Sydney, met the then prime minister Bob Hawke and were honoured in the Australian Parliament as 'two sporting ambassadors'.  There was the visit to the House of Commons, arranged by Labour MPs Kevin McNamara and Clare Short, and a sight of Margaret Thatcher in full spate during prime minister's question time.  And then there was the visits to clubs and schools.  Lots of clubs, lots of schools.  Paddy doesn't know how many miles he clocked up in centenary year, but he does know that it was thousands upon thousands.  It remains a source of pride that during his term of office he visited more national and secondary schools than any president in the history of the Association.  It remains another source of pride that in 1984 the National University of Ireland conferred an honourary law degree on him in recognition of the GAA's contribution to Irish life.

Address him as Dr. Paddy next time you see him..!

Few individuals could possibly have remained unaffected by such a gruelling schedule - remember, Paddy had to carry out his duties with Kilkenny County Council while all this was going on - and just how hard he was driving himself hit with a wallop one Saturday evening in Dublin.  Following a protracted series of meetings on Friday night and all day Saturday, he set to leave for Feile na ngael in Enniscorthy.  To Stephen's Green to his car.  No sign of the car.  He walked around the Green a couple of times.  Still no sign of the car.  Concluding it must have been stolen, he enlisted the help of a couple of gardai, who promptly found the vehicle.  Paddy had been staring at it the whole time without recognising it.  'Pure and utter mental exhaustion, nothing else.'

On the face of it a GAA official of the traditional school, Paddy was not one of those old fogeys whose reflex instinct at the sight of the dreaded P-word -progress- was to jam his head in the sand.  That was evident at the Kilkenny GAA convention when he announced to a shocked gathering his intention of stepping down as county chairman after only a year in the position.  In addition to outlining the reason why (burnout) and revealing that his 'lieart's desire' had been to be chairman when Kilkenny brought home the McCarthy Cup again, the father of four and grandfather of five also made a significant contribution on the big debate of the afternoon - sponsorship.  A fact of GAA life now, it was a revolutionary proposal ten years ago, and far from denouncing it, the man from Slieverue was adamant that the sponsorship of the Kilkenny team and the county championships would be a positive move.  Within months, St. Canice's Credit Union and Vale Oil had become associated with the county senior and intermediate championships respectively and the name of Mahon and McPhillips was adorning the black and amber jerseys.  Paddy was right.  Sponsorship has been of enormous benefit to the GAA in Kilkenny.

Paddy Buggy, a legacy wherever you look.

Enda McEvoy is hurling correspondent of the Sunday Tribune.

Honours and achievements

Paddy Buggy won...·     an All-Ireland senior hurling medal in 1957;·     five Leinster senior medals and one Leinster junior medal;·     a Kilkenny county junior hurling medal with Slieverue in 1950;    a Kilkenny county senior hurling medal with Slieverue in 1954;·     two Oireachtas medals;    one Railway Cup medal; and0  two interprovincial colleges'titles with Munster

He also...·  refereed an Offaly county final, along with countless championship games in Kilkenny;

·     was a selector when Kilkenny won the All Ireland in 1967 and again in 1972; and·  coached Leinster to five Railway Cup triumphs in succession (1971-75), a record that will surely never be eq ualled by thep rovince