Dublin never beat Kerry.

In my young days in Blanchardstown there lived a tramp we called Hairy,on account of his unkempt beard and head of long shaggy hair.He was a hippy before they arrived on the scene and a Dubliner before the group formed.He lived ,as I understood it in a caravan or shed in Ballycoolin and rumour had it that he was a former schoolteacher from either Kerry or Monaghan who took to his bicycle and kept pedalling until he reached Blanchardstown,where ho found the solace he sought.He never left.
He was a regular figure around the village for several decades.I never heard of him harming anyone nor of anyone harming him.Undoubtedly young boys,to show their bravado ,called him "Hairy"and ran like the clappers when he gave chase.
I know that for a period Jem and Lilly Byrne of the old cottages in Corduff fed him his dinner for many years.Their son Jim is my age and we were classmates in Blanchardstown Primary school.He was a good hurler and the late Paddy Murray reckoned that our class had the best hurling team never to win a Cumann Na Bunscoil championship because Jim suffered a broken leg before the final.
Anyhow Hairy made a living collecting glass  bottles and jars from the Municipal Dump in Dunsink.
You would meet him at all hours riding or pushing his bike through the village with two jute bags of bottles hanging from the handlebars.Even if you didn't see him you would hear him coming from the jingling of the bottles as they clinked off each other.
We knew him better than most as my father was an electrician and Hairy used retrieve all sort of elec tricial contraptions from the dump and bring them to my father to repair them.Some were repairable and Hairy would turn a few bob on them.
In the early 1970's I was a Junior X in the civil service.It was a good job.I was walking through the village the week before the first Dublin /Kerry final of that decade  in the best  of form when I heard the clanking of Hairy's bottles catch up with me on the footpath.
"How are you ,young Stephens"said he.
"Grand"said I."And who do think will win the game on Sunday"
"Kerry "said he."I think Dublin and I bet you a fiver that Dublin win."
"Do you not know that Dublin never beat Kerry and anyhow where would the likes of you get a fiver "said he.
That was me in me box.
Years later he graduated from the push bike to a Honda fifty.
He kept at the bottles and continued to hang the jute bags full from the handlebars as he went a long.On occasions  he used weave thus burdened between the white lines at the centre of the road,not a practice high on the RSA safety routine.
One day he crashed and broke a considerable number of bones.He ended up in Blanch .Hospital ,where he was shorn  and tidied  up for the first time in decades.I was told that he was like a trapped animal in hospital,he hated it that much.I was also told that he refused to eat his meals indoors and that they used to bring him and his meals to the woods to get him to eat them.IF this is true I applaud the hospital staff for their kindness.
He died a number of years afterwards.I was left Blanch.at the time and missed the funeral.But someone told me that members of his family."the most respectable people you could meet",turned up for he funeral.
I would love to know more about this man.