Ó Sé’s pre-match speeches were ‘like white heat’

From a distance of 20 years, Marooned feels like a chronicle of a sport that doesn’t exist with the same richness. It was a time when the impossible still felt possible in the Leinster championship and the GAA. Where has the wildness gone?

Marooned is the documentary on the 2004 Leinster success, directed by filmmaker Pat Collins, Cork. When it was broadcast in September 2004, two months after Westmeath's greatest day, 340,000 people watched it.

The film is best known for the ‘Grain of Rice’ speech which Páidí narrates on the Tuesday between the drawn Leinster final and the replay. It is not an overstatement to say it is one of the greatest moments of Irish oratory of the last 100 years. Most GAA fans can recite most or all of Páidí’s words to the Westmeath squad.

Collins says getting ‘the speech’ from Páídí was one of the great challenges of making the film.

“The frustrating thing is that you were listening to them, but you weren't allowed to film them.

"I had sat through maybe like eight or nine speeches where I thought ‘God, this would be great if we could film this.’

“I think I had to say to him, ‘Páidí, we absolutely need a speech. The documentary won't work without a speech.’

“So it was kind of basically, like ‘ok next Tuesday night, I’ll give them a speech.’

That speech was the 'Grain of Rice' speech.

Collins says there were moments that summer when Ó Sé's pregame speeches crossed from the plane of language into the realm of pure passion.

“I left the dressing room sometimes maybe three minutes before they were going to go out on the field. And you know, we’d hear a speech through the door and I actually couldn't even distinguish words that were being said. It was like white heat.

“And in a way, you couldn’t have filmed it. If you tried, you couldn’t have shown it. Because it couldn't have been contained within the frame, you know?

“But he had an amazing relationship with players. He was inspiring to be around. He was so charismatic.

“When he was talking to you, he had that dangerous charisma of where you feel special because he's talking to you and he's paying you attention and he's asking your opinion."

Of course, Páidi is only one part of the story of Marooned. The film also about the beautiful footballing soul of Westmeath people. It opens amidst the bedlam after the Leinster final replay: a maroon pitch invasion on Croker's turf.

Collins describes it as one of the most emotional experiences of his working life.

“It was a very emotional experience to win the Leinster, and that outpouring of relief and joy. I am not sure that I'll ever come across it in my professional life.

“In the very unlikely event that I'd ever win an Oscar or anything like that, I can't imagine being more excited about that.

I doubt very much actually if I'd be more excited about that than the Leinster final for Westmeath. It was just such an amazing experience, 20 years ago.

“The beauty of the thing is that you couldn't control it all. What happened on the pitch could have gone in all kinds of different directions and the fact that this really unprecedented event takes place and you're there to capture it. That's just the beautiful part of it.

“By five or six weeks in, by the time they're playing Dublin, you feel like you're actually almost from Westmeath. You’re that invested in it already and you know so many of the personalities already and you know how much it means to them.

That Dublin match in particular was just a real turning point.

“I was on the line for that match and it was just one of the most exciting sporting events I was ever at. It was nearly impossible to actually even film or direct.

The cameraman was filming it and I was just completely consumed with the game, I should have been going, you know ‘point the camera there.’

After the Leinster win, Collins was such a fixture within the Westmeath squad that his absence was problematic for the ever-superstitious Ó Sé.

Filming was set to break for Westmeath’s All-Ireland quarterfinal against Derry and then resume if there was an All-Ireland semifinal to contest.

On the eve of that Derry match, Collins received a phone call from Páidí, who was miffed the cameras wouldn’t be present.

"He said, ‘I just found out that you're not filming the Derry game. Could you come up and film us having breakfast in Greville Arms on the Sunday morning and getting on the bus and going to Dublin and all that?’

"And I said, ‘You know, we probably won't feature this in the film.'

"And he said, 'The players will think that you don't have any faith in them if you don't do it. I don't care even if there's no film in the camera. Just as long as you have the camera there.’

"So I said, ‘okay, fair enough’. I got into the car and I drove and I filmed them having the breakfast at Greville Arms the same way as we did every other time.

"But I was only happy to do it. He had a point in a way. He didn’t want anything different.

"When he asked you to do something like that, you couldn't refuse, really. You didn't want to do anything at all that would have a negative impact on the team."

Collins came on board in the spring of 2004, after Westmeath’s challenging league campaign. He spent most of that summer of 2004 encamped in the Greville Arms in Mullingar along with cameraman Enda O’Looney.

Some 80 hours of film were shot in order to create that single hour of television.

Collins's vision for the documentary was a cinema-verite style documentary with no voiceover or narration, but the final product was inevitably shaped by the constraints of television.

Collins had two things in his favour in forging a relationship with Ó Sé. As a west Cork native, he understand where Ó Sé came from. Plus, he knew and loved the game of Gaelic football.

“I said to Páidí that I only played junior football up to about U21 and he said, ‘look, junior football in West Cork in the 1980s was as good as senior in like 26 other counties. You’d believe him and you’d feel great about yourself.”

Across the summer, Collins and his team earned Ó Sé’s trust.

Despite initial caginess, Collins was given access to film in the team dressing room ahead of that Leinster final against Laois.

(From an interview with Pat Collins, Director of Marooned, with Balls.ie on the 10th Anniversary of Páidí Ó Sé's passing)