John Joe Shanahan - A Tribute

Beautiful piece written by Joe Aherne Jnr about the late, great John Joe Shanahan...


“..The Great John Joe..”


I think ’twas league in ’96, when
I saw him first between the sticks,
I was small and he was broad,
As I stood behind the goals in awe.
A penalty for the them, he stayed calm,
As he spat, as always on each palm,
The ball was lifted and struck with pace,
Like a meteorite from outer space,
As ferocious a shot as I’d ever seen,
A goal surely or a ruptured spleen,
A thousand men would have dodged or moved,
But not this keeper, calm and smooth,
Behind me a shout, ‘what a save!’,
When I witnessed first hand, what was ‘brave’,
He’d stuck out his chest, and his kilworth shirt,
and the ball dropped dead, onto the dirt,
He cleared that sliotar to the crowds elation,
And humbly returned to his station,
What I saw that day just by the goals,
The bravest of men and the gentlest of souls,
Always a friend and never the foe,
God gained a keeper in ‘The Great John Joe’


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