By Cian Murphy

They say you can tell a lot about a man by the company he keeps. Well, there’s a scene in the upcoming TG4 documentary on Anton O’Toole that captures this perfectly and sums up the effect that the dearly departed Dublin hero had on those closest to him.

It’s a hospital waiting room in Beaumont and Anton is getting the results of a scan. The chances are the results will not be good. There for moral support sitting either side of him are half a dozen of the greatest footballers ever to grace Croke Park – team mates from the iconic Dublin side of the 70s there with him as they were on the field of play – all for one and one for all.

Over the next hour you get to see what it is that made that group tick and it was less to do with football and everything to do with their commitment to each other.

It’s important at this point to make a disclosure and indeed an admission of a conflict of interest.

This writer features in the doc. Mercifully it is brief as in, blink and you’d miss it, and so not a reason to shy away from what has been a beautifully stitched together piece by Bankos Tales Productions.

It was a pleasure and a privilege to sit in the same dressing room and be coached by Anton O’Toole, someone who has had a seismic impact on my life on and off the field.

The arrival of Gaelic games in my consciousness coincided with the Sam Maguire success of 1983 and my introduction was seeing Anton bring the shining cannister into the school yard into a mobbed Synge Street CBS a few weeks later. In those days Synger was a school for 1,500 boys and to have one of ours in Anton not just play for Dublin but win four All-Irelands in a rock and roll era made it as big as it could get.

Not long after I encountered Anton again, in typical fashion slipping into Dolphin Park unnoticed and away from any fuss or fanfare. We were Under 10s taking penos and spotted him and asked him to take part. It being my turn to stand in goal I stopped his side footed kick – knowing now in my own winter plumage that it was a purposely feeble effort that any adult would make. But I went home and told my parents I had stopped an Anton O’Toole penalty and that was it, for the next 30 years I tried to replicate that act and collected muck from just about every one of the 90 or so club goalmouths around the capital.

Anton would give me and a handful of my friends our chance to play senior at 18 and nearly 20 years later I got to repay the favour and play a very small part in Templeogue Synge Street winning an intermediate championship when he was also in charge.

Not long after he gave me my senior football debut, I got the sort of break that journalism students write letters to Santa for. Journalism is bizarre in the sense that most of those involved will tell you that in truth, they needed more luck than talent to make their way.

My break came when the Evening Press needed some Dublin GAA copy in the run up to the Dublin v Down 1994 All-Ireland final. I rang Anton to see if he could give me a dig out. ‘Any time, no problem, just don’t ever do any of those where are they now pieces – I hate them.’ The Press ran the piece, I had a foot in the door and I was on my way.

Anton altered my path on and off the field. But that’s not what was important. Any time and every time you met him, Anton just made you glad you were alive.

It’s hard to put a finger on what it was exactly. He was shy and would run a million miles away from smoke blowing and back slapping. Yet at the same time, he was magnetic in that people were drawn to him, the easy smile and the good humour, self-deprecating and honest. Anton would put you in good form, for no other reason than you bumped into him.

Whatever it was exactly – it is here in this documentary. It is in the tears that roll softly down the cheeks of the great David Hickey; a man who is clearly waging and raging his own battle against the dying of the light and is adamant that Anton be remembered as one of the greats. Alan Larkin, Paddy Cullen, Fran Ryder, Bobby Doyle, Stephen Rooney and teammates gathered for a clifftop picnic to remember not just a teammate but a friend.

There are also considered but heartfelt and genuine contributions from Tony Hanahoe and Brian Mullins, himself now also sadly residing up on the Hill 16 in the sky next to Kevin Heffernan, Anton and Mick Holden.

As a contribution to history this documentary is invaluable because there are rare glimpses into the mindset of the team that rescued the GAA in Dublin almost 50 years ago. Though many have tried, the Dubs of that era repeatedly refused to do books and neither fear nor favour wooed them. The closest thing to the book of revelations is the superb David Walsh magazine article in Magill of 40 years ago but even that too, is now hard to come by.

But against the backdrop of celebrating Anton O’Toole the chinks in that old armour are there. The hurt that still crackles in them over their 1975 All-Ireland final loss to Kerry and the regret over team selection and in having trained for 10 days straight before the game is clearly evident and insightful.

And there is a delightful debate on the prospect of what would happen if the Dubs of the 70s met the six a row winning Dubs of today. They leave the last word on it to Anton, but I won’t spoil it for you.

In recent weeks John Bridges of Synge Street, the club teammate and friend who christened him ‘The Blue Panther’ has also passed on. Tooler wasn’t really into the nickname, not because it was a nickname but because it was fuss and he was always about actions speaking louder than words.

Whatever it was about Anton it’s there in the faces of his friends and clubmates Mary Black, and Roy Curtis and in the conviction that Eoghan O’Gara said gripped him to make sure he got in to see him and say thank you before he slipped away, and it’s there in the teary-eyed Glenn Hansard in the clip that went viral of Anton being serenaded by buskers as he wandered up Grafton Street during his last Christmas in 2018.

Like O’Gara, a lot of Anton’s important work in sky blue was in making space and creating opportunities for others to profit. But there’s no shortage of footage both old and new which leaves you in no doubt but that the Blue Panther and those famous rugby boots were capable of sublime scores in their own right – and it says something that Kerry legend Ger Power made it his business to travel up from Tralee to fondly pay his tribute to his former adversary.

Ultimately this is an hour well spent not really about sport. It is about love, the love of a great but more importantly one of God’s good ones. A gentleman and a gentle man.

We are blue, we are white, we are Synger dynamite.

Sínge abú, Anton abú

Le grá i gcónaí

Anton O'Toole - Finscéal de Shaol GAA, will be broadcast by TG4 on Thursday, December 29th at 9.20pm.