THE JERSEY COMES out and their eyes light up.
The red hits them.
Stephen McGuinness takes it first and lays it out flat on the couch.
Colin Hawkins runs his hand over the creases. “That’s better,” he says.
The white collar and red trim. “The fucking long sleeves too,” McGuinness beams.
The white Autoglass sponsor across the front with yellow and red logo above.
“I love the crest,” Hawkins adds. “Superstars and Super Saints,” he laughs.
“That’s the first thing that comes to mind too: Superstars and Super Saints,” McGuinness smiles.
And they were.
St Patrick’s Athletic were champions of Ireland in 1997/98 and 98/99.
For that latter season, in particular, Hawkins and McGuinness were two-thirds of what was the first established back three in the League of Ireland.
Packie Lynch was in between.
They never won the FAI Cup together but they conquered Ireland instead. Hawkins was even a key part of his friend’s wedding in July 2003 — by which time the groom was at Shamrock Rovers and the groomsman at Bohemians.
Not even the presence of a team of League of Ireland referees in the Canary Islands, doing fitness training in the same resort they stayed in on the stag, could dampen spirits.
“They challenged us to a race on the beach,” McGuinness remembers.
“All the fellas we’d been arguing with all season,” Hawkins jokes.
On Sunday, the pair will both be in Aviva Stadium to watch – and support – the St Pat’s class of 2023 against Bohs.
“Out of nowhere the other day my eldest [daughter] asked me for the navy Pat’s jersey,” Hawkins says, proudly.
But now, with this jersey in their hands, they are transported back a quarter of a century.
“I still have this shirt at home,” McGuinness says. “Have you, Hawks?”
“I have the one in the frame when Pat [Dolan] presented it to me and retired the number [26],” Hawkins says.
McGuinness laughs at the memory of their old manager – who signed both within 24 hours of each other, but didn’t tell them about each other – finding out Hawkins was leaving for Doncaster Rovers.
“Dolan was in tears,” he says.
“Sure I know, he talked to me once in about 20 years because of it,” Hawkins laughs.
“You were his, and our, Franco Baresi. AC Milan retired his number, wasn’t it?” McGuinness wonders.
Hawkins left in 2000 with two league winners’ medals in his pocket and a club car in the drive of the house in Lucan that he shared with goalkeeper Trevor Wood and striker Ian Gilzean.
“A Nissan Almera that turned into a Micra and came three years into a three-year contract!” he recalls.
“But you were the only one of us that got one,” McGuinness interjects. “You were loved, and in my opinion, the best defender in our league never to get a senior cap.”
Hawkins was one of Brian Kerr’s Malaysian Marvels, capturing the country’s imagination – and U20 World Cup trophy – in 1997 following his release by Blackburn Rovers.
Dolan headed to Asia to keep an eye on striker Trevor Molloy, and returned determined to sign the centre back and midfielder Thomas Morgan.
It was the start of a love affair that, as so often is the case in football, ended sourly — even more so when he returned to Ireland and signed for Bohs after an unhappy year in England.
“And the first game was against Pats,” Hawkins laughs.
“I’m doing my warm up and Pat is in the centre circle, arms folded, just staring at me, following me everywhere I move. He was in my head. I’m thinking, ‘This fella is a psycho, I just want to play a game of ball, like’.”
Even now, Hawkins and McGuinness remain imposing figures. In their prime, they were towers of strength, courage and determination, yet both had differing methods.
“I used to scrape my studs on the concrete in the dressing room to sharpen them up,” McGuinness recalls. “I bought those big rugby studs once too.”
“How psychotic is that? Sure I wore mouldies,” Hawkins laughs.
More memories come flooding back, of training on the old patch behind the Shed End at Richmond Park where apartments now tower over a shed that has since been removed.
“Me and Martin Russell in the mornings going through it searching for needles on the ground and picking up syringes before we could start,” Hawkins remembers.
The squad assembled by Dolan was eclectic in every sense, with 10 of the squad full-time, training every morning before doing sessions with the remainder of their teammates in the evening three times a week.
“The saying was you were either full time or all of the time,” McGuinnness says.
“We were full-time on part-time wages,” Hawkins adds.
“Well there’s another one on the wages,” McGuinness continues.
“Ah, ye can’t mention that,” his worried friend replies.
“I am. Fuck it,” McGuinness says. “On a Tuesday we’d get paid cash in envelopes. The way we’d identify Hawks’ wage is that it was the only one with pound coins in it. The only one. We didn’t have to look at the name, just lift it and shake it to hear coins clashing. The best defender in the league. We were in stitches over it.
“I was on £150 a week at Home Farm and left for £125 at Pats cause Pat was selling the dream. I was on £125 a week when we won the league, with a bonus of £30 per match that we won, so long as we were in the top two.”
The 1997/98 season was one in which Hawkins was a cornerstone and McGuinness a bit-part. The following pre-season he was desperate to force his way in. There was a trip to University of Limerick for a camp and on the drive down, Hawkins, along with others, stopped for refreshments to get a blowout before kicking the boot camp off the following morning.
“Only we arrived at 10pm and Dolan tells us it’s straight to a hall for a bleep test,” McGuinness laughs.
“And a river run at 7am the next morning,” Hawkins adds.
“I won the fucking bleep test, though,” McGuinness maintains.
The Dubliner was on the brink of leaving the club before the start of the 98/99 season that would end up providing such cherished memories, not least scoring the crucial goal away to title rivals Cork City for a 2-1 win that gave them the edge.
But after the first game of the campaign, one McGuinness actually started against Derry City, Dolan decided to move into a director of football role with Liam Buckley coming in as his replacement.
“I had busted my bollox to get in and then Bucko walks in,” McGuinness says. “I booted him around in training, I remember tackling him in the corner one day so he would know what I was about. He was on crutches the next day. He pulled me and asked if everything was okay between me and him. I said yeah, I just didn’t give a fuck, I’d do anything to stay in the team and be part of it.
“You relax when you get older I suppose. And I definitely think differently about life now,” McGuinness continues. “Definitely after I got sick I did. Was it the same for you when you got sick, Hawks?”
“Yeah,” he replies.
*****
Stephen McGuinness celebrated his 50th birthday during the summer.
It came a little over two years after he was diagnosed with intestinal cancer in February 2021.
The man who has led the Professional Footballers’ Association of Ireland as general secretary since 2009 has had his large intestine and three-quarters of his stomach removed.
Forty four staples were required from just below his neck following surgery. Symptoms that started with feeling fatigue walking up the stairs eventually led to passing blood.
The added threat of Covid-19 during his recovery increased the possibility of infection, and death.
But on 5 August, he was able to celebrate.
Colin Hawkins could not attend.
He had just finished one month of stem cell therapy – a harvest of blood followed by a transplant – in his native Galway.
His cancer, myeloma, is in the blood and bone marrow, and usually found in people over 70.
Hawkins — a father of three children aged 14, 13 and 10 — is 46.
He knows that if it wasn’t caught by the time it was — the date was Friday, 13 January — then things could have been much worse.
“You Google it and it tells you it’s terminal. There’s no cure. Good luck. You could be dead in three years,” he states.
Even with everything they’ve shared; the stories, the glory, the weddings, this is a battle that has strengthened their bond by taking them both to a place of weakness they never imagined possible.
The jersey is folded away and they begin to chat with each other.
Stephen: The most difficult thing when you get diagnosed is not knowing what is going to happen. It was for me anyway. It was during Covid so I couldn’t have anyone in with me. I went for tests, got wheeled back to the room, the guy walks in, shakes my hand and says, ‘Sorry, it’s cancer, there will be a guy coming in tomorrow to talk about what to do next’. You’re left in the room on your own then.
Colin: It’s funny, I had the exact same situation but it wasn’t because of Covid. It just happened that I went to Galway, I had kept pushing for these tests and I went and pushed for it on a Friday, 13 January. It was that morning and my wife was up here [at home in Kilbride, Meath]. They came in, ‘Really sorry, can’t believe what we’re after finding in the scans’. They told me ‘cancer’, asked me if I wanted some time alone. I had exact same experience. Alone, really.
My big thing was how will I ring Elaine [his wife]? I know she’s a worrier. My two sisters were nearby so rang them to be collected. Panic stations. I went for every scan under the sun that evening to see where the cancer was, how far it had spread, was it everywhere.
David: Was it sore ribs that made you get checked?
Colin: Yeah, so going back to football, I broke four of my ribs playing and had all the pain there. Anywhere I had a previous fracture or sporting injury, that’s where it was showing up. I needed surgery on my neck because I had a fracture I didn’t even know about. I had a problem in my lower back too.
This had been going on for a couple of months. See, I didn’t have a GP at home. My own fault. In England, at the clubs I was at here, I never needed one. The club doctor would sort it. I tried to get on a list locally in Dublin but couldn’t, there was a shortage. They wouldn’t even take my details but it got to a stage where I was in too much pain, and luckily a friend of mine from home in Galway was able to help.
Stephen: From the minute I was told I just thought, ‘This isn’t going to beat me’. The surgeon told me that it was Stage 3, meaning the cancer spread from the large intestine to my stomach. Dying didn’t cross my mind at that point. It was the mental health stuff I was dealing with after. Anxiety I had never dealt with before.
The surgery was nine hours, they had to cut it out of me. I went down to 11 stone, lost about 50 pounds and was like a skeleton. I am still on anti-depressants now and I am in fear of coming off them to be honest. My family life was destroyed after it. My wife at the time, my kids [he has two grown-up sons and a daughter], it broke down. Everything.
David: Your marriage broke down?
Stephen: Yeah.
David: How does that happen?
Stephen: I think you look at life slightly differently. You look at things that in the past would go over your head. You reach conclusions in life. When I started to heal and got better, I looked at my life and how my family life was. My life day-to-day. I felt I needed to make changes. Cancer is different for everyone. My mam has got cancer now. My mam had a third of her lung removed.
She’s had chemo. She has more to come. She asks me what it’s going to be like? But it is all different. After chemo, I was flat as a pancake. I was okay the next day but couldn’t touch anything wet. I had blisters in my mouth if water wasn’t room temperature. To this day, I have pins and needles in my hands constantly. As we speak now, it doesn’t go away. My thighs are numb, my feet are numb with pins and needles in the toes.
Colin: I had a stem cell transplant in July. The science behind it is unbelievable. I was in isolation for a month. Eight weeks before the transplant, I went down for a week. That was for a stem cell harvest. I was given a load of drugs and basically took my own blood out. Six hours hooked up to machines that spin your blood. The stem cells are in bags. They’re frozen for two months. Then I had really strong chemo and the idea is that chemo kills everything in body.
The stem cells that are frozen, they defrost them in front of you in this big hot bath. They put them in a drip, then you get your own blood back after chemo has killed all the cancer. Now I’m waiting for how all that has knitted together. I had a bone marrow biopsy and that will say if it’s worked and if I’m cancer-free. I will get results next week. I’m hoping to hear it’s in remission and told I can go on a cancer maintenance drug, then I hope it stays away then. That’s where I am.
Stephen: When I got sick, I decided to tell nobody.
Colin: I didn’t know. I didn’t know for a long time until I started to hear rumours. I contacted Ollie [Cahill, PFAI colleague at the time]. You went into private zone, whereas with me, it really helped me to get it out there quickly. I started hearing back from people with myeloma, getting messages from people who had it for years, and I really fed off that positivity.
Stephen: I didn’t tell the kids. I didn’t want anyone to know because in my head, I’m thinking I will be OK. My job is to worry about 300 professional footballers and I don’t need anyone to look after me.
Colin: That’s bravado. Do you regret that now? Thinking you had to be too strong?
Stephen: I couldn’t talk about it. I was bolloxed. The phone would ring and I never answered. I didn’t want people to see me. I had this persona maybe. Hard, tough, whatever. But I was weak, feeble and vulnerable. Two mates, Dave Kennedy and Alan Moore, banged on my door at the house and refused to leave the garden.
I went out for 30 minutes to talk and felt a bit better. The nurses that would have to come every day to treat the scar said to me, ‘Time is the healer, you will get better but you have to believe you will’. Until that point, I didn’t feel like it was. For six months, I was in the abyss, I didn’t want sunlight, and only wanted to be in the dark.
David: What about the kids at this point?
Stephen: I never had the conversation with them about what it was. I regret it now looking back. The relationship changed. With my eldest son, I was harder on him. I regret that. He will be there on Sunday supporting Bohs. I’ll bring the youngest lad, he just finished his Leaving Cert last year. The ARC cancer counselling at the Mater has been very helpful. That really helped.
Colin: The same with Cancer Care West. They gave me great support. The most worrying time for me was the month I had to be away from home, Elaine and the kids. Saying goodbye was tough but I knew I had to get through that month and I would be back to them. And now we’ve had to deal with more. A month ago, Elaine was diagnosed with breast cancer. Out of nowhere. We needed to deal with that straight away and tell the kids.
They were asking questions about their mam and if she would have to go away like I did. She just found a lump and got it tested. There was no screening. It comes back to awareness. It’s Stage One. She starts chemo and will be going through an awful lot of tough stuff that I would have been through as well. So we’re helping each other with that. But again, it’s highlighting that we need to get checked.
Stephen: 100%.
Colin: And don’t put off reaching out to get support. Take the support and help of people.
Stephen: I can’t live my life thinking it’s going to come back. I won’t have a life if I do that. I will listen to my body, I will get my checks, but I have to keep going with my life, with work.
Colin: One of the people said to me, ‘You’re not dying of cancer, you’re learning to live with it’. It’s always going to be there for me. I did a 5k walk the other day and it felt like the Dublin Marathon. I’m looking forward to the Aviva on Sunday and getting on with things. If I get good news next week, that will help me with helping Elaine and the kids and supporting her for her treatment. My body is telling me I’m in a good spot. I’m 46. I’ve had a good life, I hope there is more of it.”
*****
They may not have won the FAI Cup together but there is still a story McGuinness likes to tell about his winners’ medal from 2002, when relegated Dundalk beat Stephen Kenny’s Bohemians.
“Hawks let me go from a corner, I got in front of him, and Gary Haylock scored. They had a brilliant team but took us for granted. A load of them turned up with their hair dyed blonde,” McGuinness says, almost getting annoyed again at the thought of it.
“I was buzzing, hopping when I saw it. As soon as I saw Billy Boy [former Pat's teammate Trevor Molloy] with that blonde hair… He came up, gave me a big hug and a kiss. I got him off me. I told him, ‘Come near me here in the centre and I’ll smash you, stay out wide there and you’re grand’. My God, what a player he was, though.”
Hawkins smiles. “Remember he used to do the rainbow flick over Trevor Wood in training and he’d be trying to kick the ball at him to get him back. Brilliant. There aren’t any like him around anymore.”
McGuinness’s phone rings.
It’s Liam Buckley.
He’s arrived for a pre-arranged meeting as McGuinness continues his work leading PFA Ireland. Hawkins, too, returned to his job a sales manager for CPM Diageo and oversees 35 of the youth teams that are part of St Mochta’s in west Dublin.
When Buckley rambles through, his two knees carrying the burden of a lifetime in the game as a player, manager, and now director of football at Cork City, McGuinness hands him the old jersey from the year he led Pats to the league title.
“Ah, a brilliant team,” Buckley smiles.
“Remember that training session he fucking milled me out of it,” he laughs, pointing at McGuinness.
“I told ye!” McGuiness says.
“My fucking leg,” Buckley recalls. “Aww, Jaysis fucking Christ. At that time I could still join in, do a bit of jogging. Knees are gone now.”
“He could be the best player in training, gliding around,” Hawkins adds, before McGuinness expands on the story.
“Yeah, and two months later. Out the back again behind The Shed, he’s shielding a ball in the corner during a five-a-side. I’ve gone over and ‘bang’, he’s swung back with the elbow and walloped me from behind into the gut. It lifted me off my feet. He’d been waiting. Eddie Gormley runs over laughing, ‘Sure why the fuck do you think he was able to play in Spain and Belgium? He knows how to fucking look after himself.”
Hawkins laughs again. “And this is the gaffer.”
“Ah,” Buckley sighs. “I only did it three or four times in my career.”
With McGuinness on the right, Packie Lynch in the centre, and Hawkins on the left of the three, their jobs were simple.
“There was no complicating it,” McGuinness continues. “There was no guessing about what we had to do on the ball. My three options were out to Trevor Croly on the right, Paul Osam’s feet in the middle, or Billy Boy further up.”
“That’s it. We did lots on the pitch, walking through it all,” Hawkins adds.
“I played 3-5-2 in Belgium and felt we had the players for it to work,” Buckley explains.
“The three lefties in midfield. Martin [Russell] was Martin — couldn’t tackle anything but linked everything. Ozo and his big, long legs.
“He’d come in some mornings limping, ye know. He’d look over at me and just mouth, ‘Bit tight, bit tight’. He’d feel his hamstring or his groin, as if I didn’t know he’d had a few pints.”
And the captain, Gormley.
“Relentless, fucking brilliant. I would say Pats’ best ever player,” McGuinness insists.
“I remember scoring against Sligo. I came forward and hit a shot that bounced down and in off the bar,” Hawkins adds. “An absolute worldie! I’m thinking ‘happy days, that’s goal of the season’. A few minutes later Eddie goes and scored the best goal I’ve ever seen, he took it down on his chest and scored from half way. I always looked for footage of it. Fuck you, Eddie,” he laughs.
Buckley is still holding the jersey in his hands as he looks at Hawkins and McGuinness.
“Both of ye were athletic. Ye weren’t fucking slow. Ye could fucking tackle, pass, and both could head it.
“For fuck sake, ye were great together.”
