He knew football, but the men whose names lingered in his memory are gone too now. The St Laurence O'Toole's parish in Seville Place sent out tough teams from three different clubs, none of them better than the O'Toole's sides backboned by various Synotts and McDonnells. They were local heroes. Big men, golden in their prime, quietly confident that they were the best of their generation. That was then.
Sport regenerates itself as relentlessly as a big city.
When we come to the silly business of picking teams of the century nobody was left to speak for Josie Synott and the boys. Even the best of men wither and the toughest of mountains succumb and the greatest of buildings come down. The earliest generations of men and women to excel at organised sport got their last headlines on their tombstones long ago. That was their lot. Mortality is a back-pack full of stones.