My father reckoned I was a home-bird and that teaching might suit me. I was interested and secretly admired his prognosis of my situation, but the honour in Irish I saw as a problem! He looked at me in a way that suggested that such an excuse wouldn’t wash. He suggested I go and get my teaching qualification and work away for a few years to learn the trade.  ‘Then’, he said, ‘maybe a principal’s job might come up somewhere like Killeigh, a few miles from home-wouldn’t that suit you!’ That conversation with my father happened in early 1984 and lasted no more than a minute, probably brought to an end by the arrival of a plate of grub!

Ten years later, my mother called my rented house in Dublin after Ireland had qualified for the second round of the World Cup with a dreary, drab nil-all draw. ‘ Phone the Parish Priest of Killeigh’, she gasped, struggling to contain the excitement. The call confirmed that I was to be the new principal of the local school. That was almost a quarter of a century ago.  Marguerite and I got married that August, Offaly won an incredible All Ireland in September and in between, I fulfilled my father’s prophetic words of guidance!