Today we know Joe Brolly as the intelligent but irritating curmudgeon who likes to have his say even when we may not want to hear it. But that's not the way he always was. His former Derry teammate Anthony Tohill has been speaking to gaa.ie and revealed an interesting side to Brolly.
Speaking about their early stages in the Derry setup, Tohill paints a rather amusing picture of a player not exactly willing to do everything needed.
Ach, he was hard work. There were times when Joe didn't necessarily do the team thing, when he didn't necessarily want to put in the effort that we all demanded of each other.
He didn't necessarily like towing the line. So if you were asked to go to the cone, Joe might have stopped short of it. If you were asked to go around it, Joe might have cut the corner.
Despite that, Tohill did go on to say that Brolly became a very important member of the panel, particularly in his guise as an entertainer. However, he wasn't always like that.
He has become maybe a bigger ego than he was in those days.
Joe had a very sheltered existence when he was down in Trinity! When he came up to Belfast, he had his eyes opened to student life. We educated Joe Brolly when he travelled in a car with three or four of us, or of the older fellas, to training from Belfast.
So there you go, you have those experienced Derry players to blame when the next time you don't agree with Brolly's forthright views.
