EVERYTHING ABOUT HIM, was right there in the moments when Michael Darragh Macauley took the microphone after his Ballyboden had beaten Castleknock in the Dublin championship.
RTÉ were broadcasting and anchor Damian Lawlor teed-up an opening question. Macauley was already away in his own thoughts, looking the analysts Jonny Cooper and Diarmuid Connolly up and down and already grinning.
“I can’t take these lads seriously, look at them! They think they’re pundits or something. Yous must be stuck. Yous must be stuck. What was the question?”
"I'm about 407. I'm playing with all my grandchildren out there." Michael Darragh Macauley was in fine form after Ballyboden St Enda's Dublin SFC win over Castleknock #GAA pic.twitter.com/vaxr0WU1O0
— RTÉ GAA (@RTEgaa) September 24, 2023
He followed that up with some observations of the game. Some players couch their words and ration them out. Macauley rattles his out at a million miles an hour and garnishes it with, “I’m just happy I’m in one piece, still a functioning human being… I’m about 407, I’m playing with all my grandchildren out there…”
When asked about the focus with this Ballyboden team, he came right out with it; “The focus is we want to win the All-Ireland,” before warning that they have gone out at semi-final stage to the tune of a few double-digit losses, promising that will ensure they, “Don’t have our heads up our arses. Are you allowed to say arses?”
And you can only stop yourself from getting annoyed, that it has become so unusual to see someone enjoying themselves, after playing a game that they have been at since childhood. How the ‘tortured genius’ nonsense that taken hold and been encouraged so much.
Yet, with Macauley, it comes as a slight surprise that here he is, still doing his thing, giving his heart, body and soul to Ballyboden St Enda’s as they hungrily eye up the 10 kilometres that separate themselves and Kilmacud Crokes, and their Dublin, Leinster and All-Ireland titles when they face off in Parnell Park on Sunday for the county final.
And here he is, still crashing around, launching himself at the ball with no respect for the laws of gravity of the impact of the ground on body.
On Wednesday during the week, Andy McEntee ventured into Dublin to meet Macauley. He keeps regular contact with a number of the Ballyboden players he managed to the All-Ireland club title in 2016. He was fully expecting Macauley to arrive by skateboard.
By now, you might have thought Macauley would have been involved in some other activity, more exotic than Gaelic football.
McEntee – knowing him better – doesn’t share the same surprise.
“He invests a huge amount of time into his own personal condition and fitness, between Yoga, basketball and Gaelic football. He takes his own physical condition very seriously,” he says.
“And he is very close to those boys out in Ballyboden and they have huge respect for him.”
Despite winning Footballer Of The Year, some have always held a question mark over that because he, well, being kind here, wasn’t as fluid as others to have been given the same honour.
It was said once that Macauley’s ball-carrying style was hindered by him fighting imaginary opponents as he went, fists, elbows, boots all flying as he made his way towards the opposition goals.
For example, the player that won it before Macauley, was Karl Lacey in 2012 and James O’Donoghue in 2014.
The decisive play in the 2013 All Ireland final started with a Stephen Cluxton kickout. Dublin and Kerry were on a knife-edge.
The ball broke in among some big bodies in the middle. Kerry’s Fionn Fitzgerald looked set to scoop it up before Macauley launched a full-length dive to flick it into the direction of Kevin McManamon. A few seconds later, the ball is resting in the net.
At this point however, it does no harm to be reminded that the intercounty playing population makes the choice of Footballer Of The Year. Anyone who plays the game, would have loved to have a team mate like Macauley. Because of moments like that.
“He mightn’t look like the silkiest. Like a Fenton or someone like that. But apart from 2013, Dublin wouldn’t have won a lot of All-Irelands without him,” McEntee insists.
“It takes all sorts and you have the graceful skills of some players. But unless you have the hard work and the honesty and the grunt work done by someone like Macauley, they wouldn’t have won the All-Irelands that they did.
“And at the same time, I think a lot of people underestimate his footballing intelligence.
“He has a really good eye for a pass. Be it a foot pass or a handpass. The amount of times he makes that drive, he draws two or three people in and then uses his quick hands that he has developed from basketball over the years, to set somebody through for a score… He has a far sharper football brain than people give him credit for.”
His independence draws people in. A whole host of his former Dublin team mates retired from football, suited up and have made a killing in the financial fields. Armed with their profile and a smart haircut, doors were flung open so hard they took the hinges off.
Not Macauley, who continues to work with the disadvantaged and disenfranchised people of north inner-city Dublin. He does something that feeds his soul, not his bank balance.
Again, no surprise to McEntee.
“He is unusual. He is not your typical corporate animal. At the same time, he is hugely presentable,” he explains.
“But the work that he is doing in the inner-city doesn’t surprise me at all.
“Even if you go out to Ballyboden this weekend, he is like the pied piper. You will see him surrounded by kids. When we won the All-Ireland club, everywhere he went, he was surrounded by kids because he has a great affinity with young people. And in a lot of ways, he is a big kid himself!”
A big kid, with a serious approach to winning. He’ll ruffle a few Kilmacud feathers on Sunday.