Never doubt that they are watching…

I always feel a bit strange for a day or two after the men’s All Ireland SFC Final. Another chapter of the sporting year done. Summer gone before the farmers have even begun cutting winter wheat.

“The hay is saved and Cork are bet the crowd do wildly roar”. Or at least that’s the way it was in these parts. With the last of our hay baled up the morning before Pat Ryan’s Rebels suffered the biggest implosion seen on the big field since our footballers voided their insides against Galway in 2001.

Then, a week later, what many of us considered to be inevitable but nobody wanted to admit transpired. Paudie and David Clifford between them dismantled whatever All Ireland ambitions Donegal may have harboured.

You can be sure that The Kingdom had their schemers afar doing their thing. Like Micko, and The Horse Kennelly and John Egan and Mrs Ellen Clifford. Just as Dillon Quirke was, doubtless, hurling every ball with Liam Cahill’s Tipp lads the previous week.

And the departed beloved bequeathed a poignant emotional veil to the opening evening of the 2025 Galway Races following the passing of one of Ireland’s most decorated handlers of a racehorse, Eddie O’Grady.

Now, I could or would never claim to have a pile of knowledge on the great Thurles native’s achievements, but, extensive learnings about Golden Cygnet informed as to the significance of that steed’s brilliance.

Not only for someone who was then a young trainer finding his feet in sphere having taken over from his late father Willie because, up to that point, the common practice was for the top equine talent here to get the boat across the water and allow practitioners there reap the rewards of the exemplary Irish breeding operations.

Notwithstanding the long heralded and – until the current era – unparalleled excellence of Vincent O’Brien and Tom Dreaper, Edward O’Grady was one of the first and most successful exponents of Irish owners and trainers to begin taking on the ‘home’ team at things like the Cheltenham Festival and Aintree and Epsom and Royal Ascot.

For O’Grady, it wasn’t all down to Golden Cygnet of course. From my own time being properly attuned to goings on in affairs of the turf, the mind is drawn to horses like Back In Front and Time For A Run and Sound Man and Sky’s The Limit. Then, of course, there was the fact that a big percentage of the success the Tipperary man enjoyed in his five decade long career in training were in conjunction with JP McManus.

So it was probably inevitable and was absolutely poignantly fitting that, as a sombre cloud enveloped Ballybritt with news of Mr O’Grady’s passing spreading, the great man from South Liberties would see his unmistakable green and gold hooped silks come up the famed hill in front twice.

Firstly adorned by their usual bearer Mark Walsh aboard the exciting Davy Crockett from the Willie Mullins yard. That one had won a Bumper in the familiar navy jacket of John Magnier before – as is so often the case with National Hunt coming out of Coolmoore – switching to the green, gold hoops and white cap (first colours) for its hurdling bow.

Also on the first night of the seven day equine Olympics rolled into the west, though, there was an occurrence of such poignance that the actual horserace which brought it about became something of an afterthought. You see, sometimes there are happenings – good or bad – which not only transcends whatever sport it may have taken place in, but impacts on society beyond sport altogether.

All of the above were absolutely applicable to the tragic death of young jockey Michael O’Sullivan in the aftermath of a horrendous fall in Thurles earlier in the year. And so many occurrences in the sport in the months which have followed have been touched by the legacy and memory of the 24-year-old Glantane jockey and farmer.

Obviously and clearly surpassing all else being the victory of Marine Nationale at the Cheltenham Festival under Sean Flanagan. But in truth Barry Connell’s stable star had his deceased former rider with a grip of the reins, and his grieving partner Charlotte Giles and the hopes and will of a nation.

However, the opening night of the Galway Festival was, if you ask me, laced with even more raw emotion in the air as Mikey’s brother Alan took the latest step in his own burgeoning career when guiding the Emmet Mullins-trained Filey Bay to win the Connacht Hotel Qualified Riders (QR) Handicap in the green and gold hoops which need no introduction.

As if that wasn’t bound to draw an emotive enough outpouring in the wake of the death of Edward O’Grady, when Alan revealed post-race that he had just ridden the biggest winner of his fledgling career in his late brother’s saddle aboard which Mikey had partnered Marine Nationale and Jazzy Mattie to victory at the Cheltenham Festival in March of 2023.

So, if you have a sporting occasion afoot that is tinged with sadness at the loss of someone dear, never doubt that they are watching. The evidence is all around you.