This year marks the 140th anniversary of the founding of the GAA.
To mark the occasion John Scally’s new book Extraordinary GAA People celebrates exceptional GAA people.
A case in point is Brian Cody. Scally writes:
I thought for a fuller picture of Brian Cody I needed a perspective from an adversary, Anthony Daly, on an evening when sweet scents rose from the flowers in the heavy humid air:
‘My first real memory of the inter-county game from the late 1970s was when Clare won two league titles in succession and I have a slight memory of the 1978 All-Ireland final when Cork beat Kilkenny to win the three-in-a-row.
‘That was my first time seeing Brian Cody who played full-forward that afternoon.
I have a clearer memory of him from the early 1980s when Kilkenny won successive All-Irelands with Cody captaining the 1982 team.
You nearly always remember the captain. And then, the next time I really saw or heard about Cody was when he took over Kilkenny at the end of 1998.
‘A year later, I spoke to him properly for the first time during the All-Stars trip to Boston in October 1999. We spent a long part of that evening after the match chatting in Kitty O’Shea’s Bar when most of the questions were coming from Brian.
Cody was dying to know what kind of stunts Loughnane was up to. Were the stories true? Were our training matches as intense as he had heard? Did Loughnane ever blow for frees?
‘When we played Kilkenny in a challenge game in Kilkenny the following May, I witnessed the real Cody for the first time. Kilkenny absolutely hammered us.
Clare had a name as the big aggressors in hurling at that time but Kilkenny bullied us off the field. The whole tone was set by Cody. All you could hear all evening was his big voice. It was like watching, and
listening, to another version of Loughnane.
‘I remember going home in the car with Seánie McMahon and Jamesie O’Connor afterwards and we were all taken aback by Kilkenny and Cody. The work-rate of their forwards was savage.
All over the pitch, they hit anything that moved. We had seen shades of that stuff in the 1999 All-Ireland semi-final but this was a whole new level again. And this was just a challenge match!
‘I saw myself first-hand how powerful Cody could be in a dressing-room after Dublin beat Kilkenny in 2013. The Dubs were gone crazy after finally beating Kilkenny.
I said to Richie Stakelum that that we were in danger of losing the run of ourselves with Galway coming down the tracks in eight days-time.
Then Cody walked in the door and effectively gave our pre-match speech before the Leinster final. It was full of respect and sincerity, but the beauty was its simplicity.
‘I had plenty of run-ins with the great man over the years. I hit him a dunt in the chest during the 2004 drawn All-Ireland quarter-final, when I told Cody he may have bullied Galway in their previous game but that he wasn’t going to bully Clare and me.
‘Cody was probably taken aback by my cheek that day but when we had another set-to during a league game in Croke Park in 2011, he didn’t take it lying down.
Yet we were laughing about it afterwards. Anything that happened on the line stayed there.
‘I always had incredible respect for the man. I’ve often had great craic with Cody too over the years. We had a couple of great nights together at the All-Stars, when a few glasses of wine loosened Cody’s tongue, and he spun some great yarns.
‘I felt there was a good empathy between us. We were at a PR event in Dublin one day when we spoke about some personal stuff. Brian’s brother had died young with a heart attack. I lost my father and my
brother to the same disease. We chatted about having check-ups, and the importance of looking after ourselves. It showed another side to Cody that nobody ever sees.
‘There have been some great managers but there will only ever be one Cody.’
Excerpt from John Scally’s new book Extraordinary GAA People which is available in all good bookshops.
