Making the right mistakes

Con Houlihan was not only the greatest sports writer of all time, but his perceptive musings strayed far outside the world of sport. He was unique in a number of ways and definitely changed how many commentators covered sport, and his style has influenced successive writers to this day.

Con’s reports on a nail-biting Munster football final between Cork and his beloved Kerry might begin with the line; ‘there was a woman in Cahersiveen who had two cows…!’ This was the era of great newspaper writers, including Mitchel Cogley and Joe Sherwood. In fairness, we do have outstanding sports writers today, the likes of Eamonn Sweeney who still carries on this proud legacy.

Con Houlihan was a simple and humble man away from his pen – whom I had the great privilege of sitting down with in 2001. Many of his remembered sayings are short lines of simple words. But the more you think of any of his famous epigrams, the more you realise the wisdom of what he had to say. One such sentence which stuck in my head a long time ago, and which I still regularly use is: ‘It is important to make the right mistakes.’

‘It is important to make the right mistakes!’ Think about that one for a moment. I am sure you will agree with me that some great things have happened to all of us in a lifetime that stemmed from an initial mistake.

I knew a lovely couple years ago that if ever a couple were made for each other it was Larry and May. ‘How did you meet?’, we asked them one night. The facts are that Larry, new to Liverpool, made a mistake and got off at the wrong underground station. Confused, he turned around to see whom he might ask for directions.

Everybody was bustling hither and thither and then Larry spotted a girl not appearing to be in such a mad hurry. Turns out she was a young nurse from his home town of Thurles and Larry’s mistake got him a wife and a mother for his three children!

‘You made a mistake in buying that place,’ the bank manager told me when I applied for a loan in 1988. I had come back from Canada, where I had just done a four-month underground mining contract job (for which I was astonishingly well paid).

Putting that grubstake along with the money I received for cows and a milk quota, we bought a small property in the centre of Clonmellon. The plan was to open a Canadian style coffee shop and takeaway. But a woman without chic or child and with nothing better to do objected to the planning and even appealed the decision to An Bord Pleanála when the county council ruled in my favour.

But then Mullingar Squash Centre came on the market and I wanted nothing more than to be able to buy it, so I entered the bank manager’s office, cap in hand.

The bank man’s first words, after I presented my case were: ‘I’m afraid not; you will be overstretched. You made a mistake in buying that place in Clonmellon.’

So I went to a different bank and used different words, telling the bank manager the plans I had for the club, and that I had bought a place to start a restaurant, which I would sell as soon as planning came through.

I got the bridging loan to purchase the centre, on the understanding that a ‘term loan’ would be set in place in three months from then. Planning permission for Clonmellon came through in the meantime and without having put a hammer to the place, I made 30% profit on that ‘mistake’. I made the right mistake that time, and had the objector not made her mistake as well, my money would have been spent on my own mistake.

Someone said that ‘mistakes are proof that you are trying’. We all make mistakes and, really, it is not a mistake if we learn from it. But there is nothing sweeter than ‘making the right mistake’.

Yonks years ago, I was at Galway races with my then boss, Hubie Hardiman, and his father-in-law, ‘Sony’. We got a hot tip on the track and rushed to the tote to get our money on. Hubie, a couple of his pals and me were there with long faces after the ‘unbeatable’ horse came in second last.

‘What are ye on about?’, asked Sony… ‘he won!’ Turns out that Sony, noted for his impaired hearing, backed number 7 instead of number11 and got paid 40/1 on the Tote! Now, that’s what Con would have called ‘making the right mistake!’

You all know about Christopher Columbus and because he was no good at maths he arrived in America on his way to Asia. Alexander Fleming’s mistake turned out well when he discovered Penicillin… and these are only a couple of fascinating ‘right mistakes’.

Don’t Forget

The greatest mistake you can make in this life is to be constantly fearful you will make one.