"Terrible amount of gloom about the place, Noel," sighed Nancy, legs protruding out from under the front of the Sunny, as she changed the oil and checked plugs and points Thursday morning, a lazy breeze scything its way down off the hill, "there’ll be no-one at all at league matches bar families, marginal county councillors, and diehards like the pair of us."

As I stood there, a studious, pensive look on my face while gazing into the mid-distance, silence punctuated only by the occasional muffled screech from Nancy as some sprocket or other snapped hard on her sinewy, weather-beaten Camogie woman’s hands, an idea began to form that I modestly relay to you here today: if I {Noel} don’t do something to rally the ordinary man and woman of this country, who will?

"No-one," replied Nancy to my unspoken contemplations. She has an uncanny knack of reading my mind.

I have rendered many services to the GAA over the years, without expectation of reward or even a word of gratitude. I make light of the honours bestowed upon me – Club Person of the Year eleven times, and inducted into Ballybore Hall of Fame on four occasions.

"Versatility," I often say to Nancy at night, "responsiveness, solutions not problems, plug the hole before the roof leaks, read the way the play is going – these are the hallmarks of a great GAA man."

And so, today, I devote my humble few words to a rallying-cry to follow your team in this league, of all leagues. Oh, easy it is in these recessionary times to wait home and watch television – yet another re-run of the Laochra Gael documentary on my good self – but it is at times like this, when the weather is savage and the pounds, shillings and pence are thin on the ground: it’s at times like that the likes of me, you, Nancy, and all other Fior Gaels prove our credentials as GAA men don chead scoth.

I have a special fondness for the league. "Noel, is it yourself what’s in it," they say to me on gates all over Ireland, "you’re a great man for the league. You must have 200,000* miles up on that Sunny now," before adding, jocosely, "and Nancy is motoring well for you too after all these years, too, she owes you nothing either."

From Newcastlewest to Ballinascreen, Charlestown to Aughrim, Ruislip all the way over to that fine Prunty pitch in Miltown-Malbay – often on the same weekend. Since my worsening limp forced my retirement from the inter-county game – though I did play on for six more years with the club – I have derived great satisfaction from league matches. There were years when Nancy and I made a conscious decision to attend ONLY league matches, and stayed at home for the championship to train under-age teams in the club.

There’s a terrible flurry of activity from early Saturday morning, as Nancy makes up the two loaves of sandwiches, and a dozen or two of my grandchildren climb all over me in bids to be among the Nine Chosen Ones selected for the impending journey.

The league is where you see them first. A callow young lad, milk-white thighs on him and a debilitating stammer out of pure nervousness, his dreams wrapped up in one gloriously dull, frost-bitten, rain-sodden hour.

He might not get one touch of the ball, perhaps not even intrude on the periphery of the play, but, still, a trained eye like mine will spot something. It could be his gait, or the keen way he never takes his eye off the ball, or his refusal to engage his marker in small talk. One little spark – and Nancy and I will speak of nothing else the whole way home.

It might be the way he dutifully looks to the sideline every time a sub. warms up. That’s a sign of modesty and appreciation in a young fellow. You can mould him.

That’s what keeps me and Nancy going. Not for us the star minor who thinks he is the future already made real.

He will be burned out by the time he’s 20. No, give me an apologetic, fearful-looking, half-starved young fellow from a tiny, woebegone club out on the remote end of a far-flung peninsula, and his family profusely thanking the manager, and the entire executive of the county board, for giving him the chance.

You can work with a lad like that. He won’t come looking for you to say ‘well done, you played a blinder’ when you take him off after him stinking out a championship encounter. He’ll be thankful if you know what end of the county he’s from, let alone his club, or, God forbid, his name.

He won’t expect flowers and a cuddle in hospital, either: in fact, a wiry fellow like that would be embarrassed to tell you he ever saw the inside of a hospital since the day he was born, and probably not even then either.

So, it’s off we go again this weekend. I was watching Charlie Bird looking all square in the Arctic Circle during the week. The polar bear stretched and yawned when he first saw Charlie across the ice. Seemed to me like the polar bear – and Charlie, too – needs to get out more to a few league matches.

* 243,682, Nancy tells me.

Noel bends his back and wins his free. Every time. Email him at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ; visit www.knowledgeablenoel.com; or shadow him on Facebook (Knowledgeable Noel.)

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