A CHOKER, THEN ON TO CROKER

An inauspicious start to Sunday as John O’Rourke, a long-standing friend, and I crash out in the first round of the Woodbrook golf club foursomes — largely due to my Sergio Garcia-like putting. So much for our cherished image as “old swingers”. But we're still friends.

Things take an upward turn at Croke Park in the afternoon. Our Olympic boxing medal winners salute the All-Ireland football final crowd resplendent in their Goal Jersey Day T-shirts.

That evening my wife Judy and I introduce our 18-month-old granddaughter Rebecca to the thrill of paddling at Seapoint. She was oblivious to the absence of a blue flag — her blue toes from the cold were of far more interest.

Monday morning and panic grips me. Micheal O Muircheartaigh won’t be able to commentate at the Goal challenge game in Omagh on Wednesday evening. Can the event go ahead without the voice of the GAA, I wonder?

Later I meet a group of Goalies who have recently returned from Ethiopia. The situation is dire, people are starving, and the government there is not giving NGOs the access they need. I meet another Goalie on the way out to Sierra Leone. Suffering never sleeps, and their commitment is humbling.

We hold a management meeting to consider starting operations in Haiti, recently bombarded by Hurricane Ike. The Irish recession is also showing up on our radar, and how it may affect our ability to react to such tragedies.

My prescribed reading — field reports — is punctuated on Monday evening by Sky One’s report from Ross Kemp on gangs in Kenya. He gives an inkling of the squalor and misery endured by more than 1m people in Nairobi.

Wrapping up operations in post-tsunami Sri Lanka occupied Tuesday morning. With enormous pride we can look back on an operation in which Goal engineers built 63 schools, allowing 40,000 children to resume their studies.

Later I receive confirmation that Sean Kavanagh, widely acknowledged “man of the match” in Sunday’s All-Ireland final, has joined our list of international patrons.

MURRAY’S AN ACE

Wednesday began with a glut of paperwork, followed by a hugely interesting chat with an elderly lady who informs me that she has been a Goal supporter since the late 1970s. A confidence boost is never out of place.

My daughter Karen and I receive a heart-warming welcome at Omagh that night. The event was a resounding success. I renew acquaintances with a Goalie doctor I had not seen since 1987.

It’s still dark when I get on the road on Thursday morning for home and the funeral of an old friend, the economics expert Paul Tansey. They call economics the dismal science but Paul brightened up its landscape considerably.

Good news in the afternoon when Andy Murray, the British tennis star and Goal patron, agrees to meet me in London next week. As a tennis fanatic from the time I could toddle, I’m beside myself with excitement. Later I make plans to sell a farm in South Kerry that has been bequeathed to Goal and to a missionary order. This is the kind of generosity that enables us to stay in the field.

Thoughts of fields brought me back to Croker, and what might have been for Kerry. Was it their generosity that allowed the lads to lend Sam Maguire to Tyrone for the year? Calls that evening to several country directors reveal security concerns in Darfur; work commencing on the Pat Cash centre for slum dwellers in Nairobi, and the completion of our 500th house for orphans in Uganda.

NO SAFE HAVEN

On Friday, those concerns about Darfur come home to roost. A group of Goalies were held up and an armed bid made to steal their cash. No-one was hurt but it was a chilling reminder of the perils in which our team work.

Planning trips to Niger and my spiritual home of Calcutta. I also make arrangements to go to Washington to present a project proposal for our ongoing work in southern Sudan, where we have been since 1986.

Johnny, our youngest son, returns from a holiday in Cuba. I listen enthralled to his adventures.

A leisurely Saturday was spent at a wedding of the daughter of a close friend. I promised Judy that discussion of the third world would be off the agenda. Unless, of course, a wealthy guest wanted to discuss writing a cheque.

John O’Shea is the founder of Goal

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