The summer of the tug-of-war team

My mind wanders back over the years to Ireland in the late 1980s and the Summer of 1987 to be exact. That year I was 19 years old and had just sat my Leaving Cert and was awaiting the results with some degree of trepidation. Not even all the work on my uncle’s farm could allay my fears. 

Then Paddy Conlon of nearby Ellaghmore came up with the panacea to my ills - he founded a tug-of-war team and we soon knuckled down to the twice-weekly training for the various contests that he planned to enter us in. Paddy was a young man then, no more than 50 years old, with a very strong, powerfully built frame. He had experience of tug-of-war competitions when he worked in Leeds during his youth and wanted to develop the sport in his native Bonniconlon.

He put us through our paces twice or three times a week in the community field beside Lough Brohly in Graffy. There was a good turnout each evening such was the interest in the sport and the prospect of travelling to the various competitions. We ran, pulled on the rope and did press ups and leg lifts in order to get fit and strengthen ourselves for the pulling of the rope on the actual day of the test when we would substitute the barrel for the might of the opposing team. This meant that after a day in the bog or in the hay field we had no problem sleeping that night. 

We assembled each evening in the community field and we whiled away the evening until it was dusk and then headed for home to listen to the pirate station Midwest Radio and eat tea and toast before heading for bed. Between sessions, we would look forward to the next one and wonder when Paddy would announce that we were going to a competition. Soon that day would come and it did.

One evening, Paddy told us that we were going to a contest in Delvin, Co. Westmeath, near Mullingar, and that he had booked us into the tournament. We were to travel by mini-bus from Bofield Community Centre early on the morning of the Sunday in mid-August. Galway footballers were playing Cork in the All-Ireland semi-final that same day and we kept in touch with the match all day in between pulls until the final moment when a long-range free over the bar by Larry Tompkins ended all hope of a final place for the Tribesmen.

Our hopes ended that day, too. We pulled well but not well enough and we were defeated in the end.

"Never mind," said Paddy, "It was taking part and doing our best that mattered."

We togged in and boarded the bus for Bofield with the happiest of memories from our long–awaited day out in Westmeath. We thought it was great to have travelled so far and thoroughly enjoyed the journey there and back and had a sing-song on the bus on the way home. Indeed, Bofield and Bonniconlon were often the departure points for excursions to places of interest and football matches to see Mayo and go to Leisureland in Salthill on school tours.

We never really regrouped after Delvin. The month was almost over and we were focusing our minds on other things - in my case, the Leaving Cert. I realised that there were weightier matters to attend to and the following Wednesday I received my results. I had done reasonably well and there were decisions about my future to be made. I opted for teacher training in St Patrick’s College in Drumcondra and there was a good deal of preparation for this. The time for fun was over and the work on the farm completed.

Time passed and I obtained my degree in 1990. It was then I received the news that Paddy Conlon, our mentor from the tug-of-war summer, was seriously ill and there was little hope for him. This filled me with sadness since he was such a kind man and had invested so much time in us over the summer of 1987 and given us so much joy. 

Paddy finally succumbed to his illness and died on June 17, 1991, aged just 54 years. It was a sombre occasion at his corpse house and burial. May his gentle soul rest in peace and I thank him for the happiness he brought us in the summer of 1987.