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Irish Independent
13-07-2025
- Politics
- Irish Independent
Obituary: Mickey MacConnell, journalist, singer and songwriter who scored an cult online hit with The Ballad of Lidl & Aldi
MacConnell was the youngest of the five children of Sandy MacConnell, a shopkeeper in Bellanaleck, and Mary, a teacher in the local primary school. He later attended secondary school at St Michael's College in Enniskillen and a classmate recalls that 'even then he was a brilliant wordsmith and musician'. His talent is reflected in the fact that, at the early age of 17, he wrote the popular ballad Only Our Rivers Run Free, about the prospects for a free and united Ireland. He said it was inspired by the fear in his father's eyes after an early civil rights protest was disrupted by police in Enniskillen. He also recalled that as a fledgling reporter he was covering a council meeting for the Fermanagh Herald where he witnessed the frustration of Catholic families over the allocation of houses to single Protestants. 'It was never a republican song per se, but a song about the love of one's country,' he said. The ballad became a folk classic and recordings were made by the Wolfe Tones, Christy Moore, Mary Black, the Irish Tenors and others, including MacConnell himself, who in due course became known as 'The Bard of Bellanaleck'. MacConnelll started his career in journalism as a reporter with the Enniskillen-based Fermanagh Herald, later moving to Dublin where he worked with the Irish Press Group. He later moved to The Irish Times, where his duties included covering the Seanad. When Lord Mountbatten was blown up and killed with other passengers on a boat off the Sligo coast in August 1979, Andrew Hamilton, another respected journalist who came from a Northern unionist background, put a message on the noticeboard inviting newsroom colleagues to stand for a minute's silence in memory of the close relative of the British royal family. MacConnell put up his own message which read: 'Let me tell you Andy, when we come to work on Monday, I'll stand for Lord Mountbatten if you stand for Bloody Sunday.' MacConnell met his future wife, schoolteacher Maura at a Fleadh Cheoil in 1972. He later left The Irish Times and moved to Listowel, Co Kerry, where he wrote a weekly column for The Kerryman and became a regular musical performer in the late playwright John B Keane's pub, now run by the writer's son, Billy. Another song MacConnell wrote, The Ballad of Lidl & Aldi, has more than 1.3 million views on YouTube. It tells the story of a man whose wife has a health issue and he ends up doing the weekly shopping. The husband is dreading the prospect until he discovers that the titular supermarkets are selling hardware in addition to traditional groceries. The song declares that he can buy angle grinders as well as black puddings, streaky rashers and a wetsuit from Japan, a pair of climber's boots and heads of cabbage, an inflatable rubber dinghy and bags of spuds. A video online shows him performing the ballad in John B Keane's pub. One night, Billy Keane and some of the regulars brought in all the items mentioned in the lyrics. Regular customers were greatly amused, as was MacConnell, who struggled to keep a straight face while singing. MacConnell was also the resident musician at McMunn's bar and restaurant in Ballybunion at weekends. ADVERTISEMENT Another well-known song he wrote, Supermarket Wine, describes travelling in a faulty car with his girlfriend to the Galway races, where the couple rely on a man to place a bet for them and the ballad declares that 'the horse he put our money on, I'd swear it's running still'. MacConnell's first album was Peter Pan and Me (1992) and songs from it were later recorded by other leading artists. In 2016, he received the prestigious Creative Arts Award at the Fiddlers' Green Folk Festival in Rostrevor, Co Down. The first such award was presented in 2000 to Seamus Heaney. Mickey's sister Maura died in 2007 and his brother Seán, another great wit who served as Agriculture Correspondent of The Irish Times for many years, died in 2013. Mickey MacConnell is survived by his brothers, Cormac and Cathal. A traditional flute-player and singer, Cathal is a founder-member of Scottish-Irish Celtic music band The Boys of the Lough. Cormac is also acclaimed for the songs he has written, including Christmas in the Trenches 1914, which is included on his father's album, Joined Up Writing. Michael (Mickey) MacConnell is survived by his wife Maura, daughters Kerry and Claire , brothers Cathal and Cormac and other relatives and friends.
RTÉ News
21-05-2025
- Sport
- RTÉ News
Pride and frustration for Joe Baldwin after nurturing Fermanagh hurling's green shoots
The end, as so often in sport, did not come the way Joe Baldwin had wanted. After six highly successful seasons in charge of the Fermanagh hurlers - they won three trophies and two promotions - the man from Kilkeel, County Down spent the last two matches of their Nicky Rackard Cup campaign watching from a distance, before confirming his departure as manager yesterday. Baldwin maintains leaving had always been the plan - "Six years is a long time" - but that was hastened because he had upset some of the panel by calling out players missing training ahead of a 7-20 to 2-18 home loss to Sligo on 26 April. "We have boys that only completed one pitch session this week," he told the Fermanagh Herald after that stinging defeat. "It's really impossible for us to manage and coach boys if they're not going to put the complete shoulder to the wheel all the time. "Inter-county hurling takes full commitment and we didn't have that today." A breach of the apparent unwritten rule that Gaelic managers should keep criticism of individuals in-house? Almost a month on, Baldwin tells RTÉ Sport that it was an attempt to motivate gone awry, but that he also "hadn't said anything that I didn't say privately a hundred times in the changing rooms. "Just because you're small… there are certain standards need to be adhered to. This is the point that I was trying to get across. "We had players that week who didn't complete one pitch session in the middle of championship. That would be totally unheard of. "I don't want to be seen to be criticising the players, because a lot of the players have given me so much over the last six years... [for example] John Duffy and Caolan Duffy were traveling back from England. "This year, for some reason, maybe circumstances, I think we found out just how small we are. There were boys working away, boys travelling. We picked up a few injuries. "You've only got two [adult] clubs and it is very small. But at this time of year, you need everybody to put their shoulder to the wheel. We just weren't getting that and it was deeply frustrating. "We tried to create as professional a set up as we possibly could, but every single night that I'm driving down the road, my phone pings five or six times with excuses. "It was one of those things that I said in the spur of the moment. It's said now, I can't unsay it. "But one pitch session a week and no strength and conditioning is not going to win you a match at all, at any level. Even at club level. "If I was a player, and I was listening to what I had said, even though you knew it was true, you still would have been pretty annoyed at me" "Maybe it was wrong [to say it], but it was said. If I was a player, and I was listening to what I had said, even though you knew it was true, you still would have been pretty annoyed at me. "I understand their frustrations. I was trying to say it from a player's point of view, it just didn't work out the way that I thought it was going to work out." Baldwin says he knew he had "lost the changing room" after that but didn't want a dramatic departure to overshadow the last two games of the Nicky Rackard campaign, which selectors Conor Tinnelly and Seamus Breslin agreed to stay on and oversee, so stated that he had temporarily stepped aside instead. "The players had to come first because they still had a chance. The week of the Roscommon game, all the info that I would've had on Roscommon, I would've still been liaising with Seamus and Conor. "Because at the end of the day, of course, I still wanted the team to win and wanted the boys to qualify. "This is the frustrating thing about it. If they had put their shoulder to the wheel, they could have been sitting in a Nicky Rackard final. I honestly believe that. They played five Nicky Rackard games, 10 halves of hurling, and they were leading in five of the halves. "I felt, for the good of Fermanagh hurling, the best thing for me to do was just to step aside quietly, let the year pan out, and then I was finishing up anyway. "This was year six, so it was always going to be my last year. Obviously, what happened with my health last year and where I live [Coleraine] and the toll that it takes, I decided that this was it." It's hard to question Baldwin's commitment to the Ernesiders cause. He was making a nearly five-hour round trip to each session from his home in Derry, something that must have made players missing training harder to stomach. What happened with his health last year was a stroke, in January, which he, incredibly, took only three weeks away to recover from, returning to lead the county to his second and their third Lory Meagher Cup with victory over Longford at Croke Park last June. "I've recovered maybe 90%, but it was a full on-stroke," he says. "I probably should have took more time away, but I love the game and I felt the best place was to go back on to the hurling field. "My partner Frances is a nurse and she was there all along. She would sort of guide you on what to do and what not to do. And I'm a lot better placed than I was when it happened. "I'm gonna take a wee bit of time off now. I'm still doing quite a bit of club coaching up here in Derry [with Liskea camogie] but I certainly would have ambitions to get back into the game again. "You can say it's all about playing, but for me nothing beats winning." Fermanagh lost to Roscommon and drew with Mayo to finish bottom of the fourth-tier Nicky Rackard group. They will contend for the Lory Meagher Cup again next season. However, they will also compete in Division 3 of the Allianz Hurling League, having finished runners-up to Louth in the reorganised fourth tier this spring. "For the amount of work that me and my management team put into it over the last six years, to be judged on the last three weeks, it's not very nice," reflects Baldwin. "We've been in six finals. We won two Lory Meaghers, we won a National League [3B in 2022], we gained promotion this year. I don't think it's a bad record, you know? "This year, I felt we probably could get promotion, which we did, and then things really unravelled really in the championship." Despite the manner of his departure though, Baldwin still sees a bright future for hurling in the county, which is growing again after almost a decade of only having one adult men's team. "When I first started, I was dealing with just Lisbellaw. Now you've got four guys from Erne Gaels who started in that [county] team, which is brilliant. "Fermanagh now have six, eight juvenile clubs sustainable at Under-16 level. They've just got a couple of Ulster College titles there this year. "I have no doubt that [new head of hurling] William Maher will do a marvellous job. I know there was a road show up here last weekend that was very well attended. The more you can play hurling and the more that you can expose hurling to children, if you can see it, you can inspire to be it. "It's not easy. It takes a lot of work but Fermanagh can certainly continue to grow. I wish them all the best and all the players all the best. "Hurling is a gift from the gods given to the Irish people and it's something that you've just got to continue to do as often as you possibly can." Watch a hurling championship double-header, Dublin v Galway (2pm) and Cork v Waterford (4pm), on Sunday from 1.30pm on RTÉ2 and RTÉ Player.
