With the 'Charlie' mini-series underway, we went looking for Haughey's sporting pedigree. And it's not bad either.
If a protester threw a bag of flour from the viewing gallery of the Leinster House chamber onto the seated ranks of TDs below, the chances of at least one former GAA player getting their suit destroyed would be very high indeed.
And it turns out that Charlie, despite the air of otherworldly sophistication he liked to exude (chiefly to intimidate the country bumpkin TDs who voted for him), was no different in this respect.
Brought up in Donnycarney and schooled in Fairview, Haughey was a Parnells' man (they had a few Dubs in the team back then) and won a county title with them in 1945 - the same year he burned the Union Jack outside Trinity College (in fairness to Haughey, he was retaliating to a bunch of hooray henry's in Trinners burning the Irish flag on VE Day).
However, he was a fiery sort on the pitch too. The Royal Irish Academy and the Fingal Independent both recall how he was suspended from playing for an entire year - for whacking a linesman.
In the Royal Irish Academy biography of Haughey, Patrick Magee writes;
Haughey played Gaelic football for Parnell's GAA club, winning a county championship medal. His notorious temper made an early appearance when he was suspended for a year after striking a linesman.
In the earlier Haughey documentary series, his schoolmates remember him being a serious brawler on the pitch. His younger brother Jock went on to play for the Dubs in the '50s.
