We haven't heard much from former Galway footballer Fiachra Breathneach this decade. Breathnach was a squad member for the Galway footballers during the Sammon years and his greatest claim to fame may be scoring a goal in the 2008 Connacht final, aka the last Connacht final the Galway footballers won. Google tells us that Breathneach is now earning a living as a legal eagle.
Breathnach probably presumed that the days of his name appearing in newspaper ink were long gone - but lo and behold, Ireland's foremost gossip columnist and sports administrator documentarymaker Barry Egan had young Breathnach in his gossipy crosshairs this weekend.
You see, Breathnach is engaged to marry barrister Alannah McGurk, the daughter of media personalities Miriam O'Callaghan and Tom McGurk. Egan could not let last Sunday's column pass without dispensing this vital news to his loyal readers. This being Barry Egan though, the news is treated a celeb story, not a sporting one. However Egan did manage to deliver one singular line of sublime poetry about Breathnach, a line so beautiful we wish he'd take up sportswriting on a full-time basis.
Someone who knows Fiachra well described him thus: "He's a very nice guy. Played football for Galway."
I might go further and describe him and his fiancée as Love's Young Dream incarnate.
Alannah McGurk is not the only daughter of Miriam to be romantically linked with an Irish sporting personality. The showbiz papers were gaga at reports that Georgia McGurk was doing a line with Carlow's Sean O'Brien.
