Chris O’Dowd is talking Roscommon football. Bridesmaids of the Connacht championship? Okay, not an entirely fair casting. The plucky underdog primed to tear up the script in Mayo on Sunday? Perhaps. Lights, camera, throw the ball in.
O’Dowd has skin in the game ahead of this weekend’s senior provincial semi-final between the counties. He was the Roscommon goalkeeper in the 1997 Connacht minor final when Mayo edged a 0-13 to 0-9 result.
“We were gutted,” he recalls. “I thought we were stronger than them and I was feeling invincible. I remember just thinking, ‘they’re not going to score a goal, so we’re going to win’. But I was wrong. They did not score a goal, but we did not win.”
He was listed in the match programme for that minor decider as Christopher O’Dowd. But growing up in Boyle, they called him Chrissie. These days he’s better known far beyond the parish as Chris O’Dowd – actor and comedian.
Chris O’Dowd was the Roscommon goalkeeper in the 1997 Connacht minor final against Mayo.
The IT Crowd’s Roy Trenneman, the narrator of Puffin Rock, General Edward Edwardian in Gulliver’s Travels, Kwan the Macaque in My Father’s Dragon. That guy. Thespian.
He’s not quite sure when Christopher became Chris, nonetheless in football terms his teammates used to call him Pelican. O’Dowd likes to believe it was an acknowledgment of his agility in the air, but his former comrades insist it was because he had long legs and a big mouth.
O’Dowd played under-14, under-16 and minor for Roscommon. His dad helped design elements of the old Roscommon GAA crest. He’s Roscommon to the core. Don’t believe it, cut him open and find out – because if a boy from Boyle can pass for a Wisconsin state patrol officer on the big screen, he can sure as hell bleed primrose and blue for a size five.
Ahead of Sunday’s senior contest between Roscommon and Mayo at MacHale Park, O’Dowd visited a training session of his county’s under-20 footballers as they prepared for their Dalata Connacht semi-final against Galway.
He hasn’t attended as many Roscommon games in recent years as he would have liked, but his hankering for the familiar remains.
“It’s lovely to be at a game in the Hyde, standing in the graveyard end and watching the new lads,” he says with a smile.
His Roscommon career effectively ended after that Connacht minor final defeat 29 years ago. Within weeks, he was studying in UCD, developed a grá for drama and his life went in a different direction.
Still, getting asked to play county was a thrill.
“It’s like Judi Dench says about acting work – the best part of any job is the offer, it’s all downhill from there.”
His minor boss was Kevin McStay, who has since managed both the Roscommon and Mayo senior teams.
“I love Kevin. He was a military man, so you wouldn’t necessarily say we would have been kindred spirits, but we really enjoyed each other.
“I had my appendix out a couple of weeks before the Connacht final and so he would have had to deal with my parents a lot at that time and they always were fond of him. A really good guy.”
McStay once recalled a story about his speech for that minor final. After delivering a passionate, take-the-door-off-its-hinges rallying call, the manager watched the Roscommon players burst out of the dressingroom until the team’s goalkeeper calmly approached, rested his hand on the manager’s shoulder and told him he really ought to calm down.
Kevin McStay was manager of the Roscommon minor footballers in 1997, a team that included Chris O’Dowd in goal. Photograph: James Crombie/Inpho
“I’d forgotten about that until he brought it up, but it would have been very much in my character at that time to be that type of person,” smiles O’Dowd.
Whether it’s a Roscommon thing or a goalkeeping thing, the position has attracted its share of colourful players over the years. When O’Dowd was the county’s minor ‘keeper, Shane ‘Cake’ Curran was the senior custodian.
O’Dowd says: “Shane was a lovely goalkeeper and because he was a bit mad in the head, it’s maybe overlooked how good he was. He was the kind of Bruce Grobbelaar of the GAA at the time.
“He’d be quite technically profound, one of those guys that plays mad but is actually really good at his craft.”
At under-16 level, O’Dowd had actually played in the middle of the field – a tall, rangy player. He was team captain as well. By minor, he was between the sticks.
“Around that time, I think I found girls and drink. Then I started the Leaving Cert, so I suppose things had to take their place.
“I’d slowly moved back towards the goal. My gait was getting longer, but my lungs were not increasing.”
Still, he would have fancied himself as a roaming goalkeeper and has watched with interest at the evolution of the position.
Chris O’Dowd believes former Roscommon goalkeeper Shane Curran didn’t quite get the credit he deserved. Photograph: Andrew Paton/Inpho
“I never felt like we were allowed to go wandering,” he recalls. “I would have been delighted to take the odd free, push out the field. But I reckon if I started to stray, I would have had Kevin McStay himself tackling me.
“But the one thing I really would have loved is the f***ing cone that a goalkeeper can use to tee up the ball now. We weren’t allowed to have that s**t. I would have never scuffed anything.”
One of Roscommon’s key players in recent years has been Boyle’s Enda Smith. In the most Irish way imaginable, O’Dowd knows his people and the stock from which he comes.
“I played with Enda’s dad briefly. I would have been just about to break into the Boyle team and he probably would have been coming near finishing up. Yeah, I’d know Enda’s dad quite well, an estate agent in town, lovely man.”
Based in London now – and with two young boys – O’Dowd plans to bring them along to the local GAA club, St Brendan’s, soon.
And when he can’t get to watch Roscommon in person, the digital age of the wireless comes in handy – namely Shannonside FM.
“Willie Hegarty must be my favourite commentator in the world. God, he brings those Roscommon games to life,” smiles O’Dowd.
“I heard him once giving out about a corner back. Willie was going, ‘it’s like he’s gone off for a holiday and left the back window open so somebody could come in and rob half the place’. Brilliant.”
O’Dowd recently found his old Roscommon gear bag in the family home. The colours have faded somewhat, there are a few loose fibres and a small tear but the bag possesses magical movie-like powers capable of transporting him back to 1997.
“It was such a transitionary time in your life,” he says. “You are training and playing with lads from other parts of Roscommon who you don’t know day-to-day, but you all come together for this one cause for a momentous few months. Then you might never see some of them again, but you have created memories that last the rest of your life.”
Chris O’Dowd loves his county. To the Moone, Boy.
Dalata sponsors the GAA’s Under-20 Football Championship.