In 1978 Roscommon’s under 21 footballers won an All Ireland semi final by a single point. Gerry Emmett scored it. The keeper came out, Gerry went in, the two of them reached the ball together, and it spun over the bar. Somewhere in the scramble Gerry lost his football boot and never found it again. That mattered more than you’d think, because in those days you bought your own boots.

Roscommon went on to beat Kerry in the final. Nobody had given them a chance.

Over more than an hour with Carlo, Gerry talks about football, his father’s businesses, the pub he and Phil ran for decades, his family, and a town he never meant to move to. He also says exactly what he thinks.

Everybody kicking a ball

Gerry grew up in Ballyfarnon with six brothers. Big families were normal then. After school every day the street turned into a pitch, with every child in the place chasing one ball.

From 1970 to 1975 he boarded at Summerhill College in Sligo. He had no interest in coming first in class. Sligo was a soccer town, and he played that and Gaelic, knowing all along he would end up working for his father.

Summerhill won a county title in Gaelic and reached an All Ireland colleges soccer final, lost on a penalty Gerry still disputes. A priest there, Father Harn, and his assistant Tommy Gorman organised trips, including one to Glasgow to represent Ireland, where Sligo man Sean Fallon, then an assistant manager in Glasgow, looked after them. The loss that still stings is the Gaelic All Ireland semi final against a Northern team. He thinks they were far better, and they didn’t do it on the day.

He couldn’t stay steady

His father was a main dealer for Morris Oxfords and Morris Minors in Ballyfarnon, and one year won an award for selling more cars than anyone in the country. Then he started remoulding tyres just up the road. A bald tyre was shaved down, coated in solution, and put into a hot press where new rubber from Wales was moulded on. It was cheaper than a new tyre. Gerry worked the process himself, and doesn’t know of anyone else in Ireland doing it then.

His father never sat still for long. Money, Gerry says, burned a hole in his pocket, which soon became Gerry’s pocket too. Ballyfarnon couldn’t get the BBC, so his father set about bouncing a signal off the mountain. It worked. Everyone told him he was mighty, Gerry says, and the family paid for it.

When Gerry was about 19, his father came home and said he’d bought a shop in Boyle and they were moving. That same year Gerry married Phil, who was 18. In his own words, she “put on weight suddenly, and we decided we better get married in those times.” He calls it the best thing that ever happened to him. Phil, he says, was the one who took control of him.

“Moving to Boyle was not my idea at the time, but I grew to love Boyle.”

Into every house in Boyle

The Emmetts went into business with Tom Murray, who had a shop in Boyle, and eventually bought him out. The family were on the Crescent for up to 30 years, he thinks. Boyle sat in a valley and couldn’t get a television signal, so the shop ran cable into every house in the town until satellite changed everything. That meant Gerry got to know everybody.

“Some of the finest people in Ireland.”

He says he loved their wit and their honesty.

Nobody walked out robbed

Terry McGahn saw potential in Gerry, mostly his sporting connections, and suggested they buy a pub together. Over the years Gerry and Phil bought him out. They were behind the bar for Italia 90. GAA players would kick lumps out of each other on the pitch, then drink together after.

Food came in by accident. Mary Patty made pies, and the late nights needed feeding. Bit by bit it became a restaurant, and the rule was the same from the start. Cook fresh, do your best, and don’t rob people. If someone wants a bit extra, give it to them.

“An old lady can feel free to come into our place on her own.”

He is proud of that. A bachelor farmer or an older woman on her own will be fed well and treated right. He thinks a lot of restaurants now put money first.

Nobody gave us any chance

The 1978 under 21 campaign is the high point of his football life. The year before, they had lost a Connacht final, and since then they had lost good players. Kerry were expected to beat them easily. The manager, Tom Heenan, changed that. He had them training nearly full time for a few weeks, morning and afternoon in Roscommon, which was unheard of then, and he made them believe.

Carlo, reading from the record, credits Gerry with man of the match and four points from centre forward in the final, played in Roscommon. Croke Park didn’t host under 21 finals then, Gerry explains, and a Boyle man, Mio O’Callaghan, was chairman of the county board.

On the homecoming tour the next evening, a crowd waited for Gerry in Ballyfarnon. He got caught in Strokestown and never made it, which he has always regretted. Every time he goes to Strokestown since, he says, he has trouble getting out.

If some guy is close

Gerry went onto the senior panel full of confidence and was a sub in the 1980 All Ireland final. Then the games dried up and nobody ever told him why. Over time he says he gave in and stayed along for the ride.

“If some guy is close, he needs to know.”

As a manager, he always told a player when a selection was tight. He also went to America for 19 days with Roscommon in 1982, for hard games against Armagh and late phone calls home to Phil. The best player he played with was Tony McManus, he says, and he names Mike Sheehy among the best he faced, with Harry Keegan of Castlerea a big, strong and very clean cornerback.

His regrets are almost all about football. He thinks he underachieved and he takes the blame for most of it. He finished at 43 with a replacement knee, a plate in his head, a nose broken three times, and a right foot he could no longer kick with.

The importance of the jersey

At St Ronan’s, the young lads would stand behind the goal while the senior team trained, ten of them fighting for one ball. Father Lavan, a priest who also taught Irish at Summerhill and later, Gerry thinks, became principal in Boyle, ran the club.

“He always instilled in us the importance of the jersey.”

He reminded them that someone else would wear that jersey after them. Father Lavan went on to baptise and confirm Gerry’s children, and married Gerry and Phil.

St Ronan’s won a junior championship and, Gerry thinks, three intermediates, with lads driving from Dublin to make up the numbers. In 1983 Boyle beat them in a final, with Gerry’s next door neighbour, the Kid O’Connor, marking him. Sean Daly, since passed, kicked three points that day. Later Gerry switched sides and won with Boyle against St Ronan’s in 1986, and again in 1996, when he was a sub at 40. He gave up the GAA after a close friend from his Summerhill days togged out for a team that was short of players and, in Gerry’s words, “dropped out in the football field”. He threw in his boots that day.

He also remembers Vincent McDonough, who owned Boyle Motor Works and chaired the club, loading a team of under 16s into the remould van to get to matches.

Hard to manage in those days

Gerry joined Boyle Celtic just after 1980, after playing soccer in Ballyfarnon under schoolteacher Paddy Kelly. He started at central midfield and kept moving back as he got older, until he was nearly on the goal line. Pitches were mucky, sliding tackles were frequent, and in some places you togged out beside a tree.

One day on a mountainside pitch with no dressing rooms, the referee sent off a teammate. A few players took off their jerseys in protest. Gerry dropped his togs as well and got banned, he thinks, for four or five games.

He later managed the club for two years and won the 2014 Super League, only the second in its history, winning 21 of 22 games. Sandra McCrann, since passed, did the food at matches, and Gerry jokes that the crowds came for her soup. She also did huge work on the club’s photo archive.

He never missed a fleadh

Gerry calls it a musical family. His older brother Brendan is a fine guitarist and mandolin player, and Paul plays lead guitar in a wedding band. Kieran, 11 months younger than Gerry, never missed a fleadh. Once he was sent to deliver tyres and bring back money the business badly needed. Nobody could find him until the family saw the remould van on the six o’clock news, behind the reporter at the fleadh.

Kieran had a short life, Gerry says, but he lived it fully. He remembers Kieran coming home late, his mother giving out, and Kieran waltzing her round the kitchen until all was forgiven. Gerry has also lost another brother and both parents.

Totally over regulated

Gerry remembers Boyle with the Royal Hotel and its factories. Now there is no hotel at all. He lived through the recession with cheques due and no money, and later had the same bank ring with investment advice.

He believes Ireland is badly over regulated, with inspectors looking for faults rather than helping, and empty houses in small towns during a housing crisis. On Ukraine, he says everyone coming into the country should be vetted and should be willing to work, and that he has no problem with anyone’s nationality, mentioning two Syrian chefs he praises. He is sharply critical of hotels that closed to house Ukrainians and of price gouging.

He criticises a civil service where he says nobody gets sacked, and worries that young people working from home won’t learn or mix. On COVID, he says people were frightened into their houses, older customers stopped coming in, and people in nursing homes died without family beside them.

She could have run the place on her own

Gerry says they never really fell out with staff. He remembers hiring a young girl, Noel McKenna’s daughter, who told him she wasn’t afraid of hard work. She turned out to be artistic and so capable she could have run the place herself. She was later killed in a car crash, which he calls very sad.

He also credits Michelle in the kitchen and Mary McDermott, there for 16 years.

Every day is a learning day

Their son now runs the business. Gerry still walks in and watches the plates coming back. People come in expecting to see the owner, he says, so you should be there.

He wants Boyle to have a hotel and asks people to think twice before they object. He loves the new pitch at Boyle Celtic, despite being against it at first. He tells tourists heading for Kerry to try Keadue, Arigna, the distillery in Drumshanbo and Kilronan Castle instead.

He worries about young people, about drugs, and about the old habit of saying hello to everybody.

“In our time, everybody spoke to everybody.”

He and Phil play golf in Spain, and Phil still skis. She was always more intelligent than him, he says, and now it’s payback time. He is happy at home.