Keeper of the flame: Billy Morgan is hard on himself in his autobiography

All his life, it seems, Billy Morgan has been hardest on himself. His famous temper, his willingness to fight the good fight in the name of his club and county for the guts of half a century was never going to make his life a doddle. And, of course, the man's natural instinct to find himself in so many other altercations, unnecessary disputes, and genuine misunderstandings, on and off the field, more or less for this same length of time, completely ruled out any notion of very many periods of thoroughly deserved rest and utter contentment within his extraordinarily successful football career.

Counting down fast enough to his 65th birthday, and deciding, finally, to put his life story into a book form, Billy Morgan would have been excused, by everybody who has ever known him or heard of him, if he chose to go just a little bit easier on himself.

But, that's not how it is in Rebel, Rebel: The Billy Morgan Story, and so, three-quarters way through his autobiography, he personally takes us to the 1994 Munster semi-final – an afternoon when Cork enjoyed an heroic late victory over Kerry, and an evening when Billy admits to clearly having too many drinks for his own good in his own, newly-opened pub.

The victory was indeed quite famous in its own right, with Cork trailing by five points, facing a strong wind, and still managing to turn the game around in the last 15 minutes. But, within the great catalogue of victories and defeats experienced by Billy Morgan – by my count he helped Nemo Rangers and Cork to a grand total of 57 titles as a player and as a coach – the game could have been skipped over or nudged to one side, quite easily, within the retelling of his extraordinary story.

Instead, the game and the drinking which followed the game is revisited because, that same day, Billy Morgan fell out with the best-loved Kerry footballer of my lifetime, Eoin 'Bomber' Liston. Quite how anyone could ever have a row with 'The Bomber' is a mystery to us all. Billy, however, managed to do so.

Billy Morgan not only fell out with Liston for absolutely no reason, but he also ordered him out of his own public house – using not very polite language in doing so! Those of us who had heard that story at the time, probably didn't need to read about it again. And those who never heard the story in the first place, most assuredly don't need to read it in this action-packed, goldmine of an autobiography.

What's clear, however, is that Morgan wanted to have the embarrassing and fairly unforgivable incident written down, fully recorded, and formally concluded with a public apology, even though he had been the gentleman many years ago and had apologised to Liston in person.

'The Bomber', in that regard, can count himself one of the few! Not everyone whom Billy Morgan has gone toe-to-toe with, verbally, or almost physically, is on the receiving end of too much contrition from the man. This is definitely not a book in which 'apologies' are flying around the place!

The Liston incident, however, is a very clear example of Billy Morgan, in the most public manner possible – in his own autobiography – being incredibly hard on himself.

All of us who have come across Morgan in our Gaelic football lives, have learned that he is a passionate and sometimes over-emotional man, with a love of the great game, and a hunger to succeed, which has always been magnificently unrestrained.

He ties, in my mind, with John O'Leary as being the greatest goalkeeper in the history of the game. And, as a coach and manager and philosopher and visionary, from the grassroots to the glory of Croker, he has achieved more than any other individual in Gaelic football or hurling. And that includes Mick O'Dwyer.

In many other ways, far removed from the football field, this book is fascinating and deeply engaging, not least in how honestly, and lovingly, the author opens and closes his life story with the tragic loss of his mother, when he was a small boy, and the traumatic effect of his father's sudden death.

The football games themselves, so many of them, come trundling in the direction of the reader, in a fast and furious manner, and some of them (unfortunately) are gone (and finished with in this book!) before the reader has a chance to really appreciate them to their fullest. That's not a complaint to lay at the feet of Billy Morgan and his co-writer, Billy Keane. It's a fact of Billy Morgan's outrageous and over-flowing life.

Midway through Rebel, Rebel, I was left thinking that Billy Morgan's story has so much in common with the great political tomes, which have been written by nations bigger than ours. Some of the finest politicians the world has known have regularly had to divide their story into two, and sometimes, three books – and, indeed, two books, two halves to the Billy Morgan story, would really have been necessary to do justice to everything the man has touched and engaged himself in during his remarkable football life.

Nobody believes that Billy Morgan is finished yet. Like Micko O'Dwyer, who actually had three tellings at his own story in book form, this may only be the first formal introduction to one of the greatest GAA men this country has ever known.

lhayes@tribune.ie

'Rebel, Rebel: The Billy Morgan Story' is published by Ballpoint Press, €17.99