A man with many gifts, Monaghan's Nudie Hughes left the world a better place
Declan Bogue
A FEW YEARS back, rightly proud of the work that had gone into producing statues and murals of some of Castleblayney’s most famous sons and daughters, a school group spent an afternoon visiting the sites and being told about the figures.
They had visited the statue of country and western royalty Big Tom and the mural of the jazz afficionado Paddy Cole, before they went to York Street to see a beautiful and poignant mural of Eugene ‘Nudie’ Hughes, the most famous of all the Monaghan footballers.
Hughes himself ambled onto the scene and the teacher immediately brought him over to the children, telling them, ‘Would you look at who it is. Who do you think this is, kids?’ while nodding discreetly to Hughes’ mural.
‘Is he Big Tom?’ one of the children asked in their innocence.
Nobody laughed harder than Nudie at that.
Nobody laughed harder than Nudie at everything; about football, about work, the absurdities of life, about his, ahem, ‘generous’ golf handicap when he would pick up numerous titles, about the minor strokes he could get away with at the pool table.
At his own illness, when he was told he had cancer in 2018. He absorbed the hit. Explored the possibilities, and said he would tackle it like everything else in his world.
The laugh has gone. Eugene ‘Nudie’ (every Eugene in ‘Blayney got the name ‘Nudie’, but at the same time, there’s only one Nudie) Hughes will be buried in the town on Thursday, after finally succumbing to the cancer that he fought so bravely against for years and years.
Those left behind include his widow Teresa along with sons Ciaran and Conor, and stepson Óisín.
He leaves a trail of anecdotes and yarns and an example of how to face a terrible demise with humour and dignity.
He belonged to the select band of Irish people that are recognisable by their name alone. He also was aware of how he could leverage it. When the snooker player Stephen Hendry once staged the ‘Stephen Hendry Golf Classic’ at the Concra Wood club just outside ‘Blayney, Nudie asked why he wouldn’t do the same?
The ’Nudie Hughes Golf Classic’ was soon born, a vehicle for him to raise money for two bodies – Castleblayney Faughs GAA club, and the Castleblayney Cancer Society.
He was doing it for years long before he had cancer himself.
His name meant nothing without the skills he possessed. From a family of 14 growing up on York Street just off Main Street, there was no option but to be outside playing on ‘The Commons’ – the cinder pitch that is now a car park.
A youth spent at hard graft gifted him the almost cartoonish Mighty Mouse barrel-chested build, which married with the skills, endlessly practised in a pair of plastic plimsoles.
He, along with Eamonn McEneaney and Declan Loughman, came along at a time when Scotstown provided formidable opposition to Castleblayney, but on a wider scale also benefitted from Sean McCague taking over as Monaghan manager and establishing them as contenders again.
His time as a footballer (he was also a hurler of immense skill) is hampered by the lack of footage available.
But during the 2020 lockdown, the former Monaghan midfielder Dick Clerkin made use of his free time by making a few compilations of old Monaghan football clips from a time when his father Hugo used to play alongside Hughes.
Dick Clerkin / YouTube
In ‘The Best of Eugene Nudie Hughes’, the clips begin with Kerry’s Pat Spillane being pick-pocketed by Hughes, reading the play and alert to intercept a pass. He took a hop, a solo, skipped inside Ger Power’s challenge and shot a point into the Hill 16 end of Croke Park.
As he skipped away light-footed, we see that he was wearing number 2 on his back. He won an All-Star at corner-back, before winning two at corner forward.
In the second clip, now in his attacking role against Derry in the mid-80s, he takes a pass from Declan Flanagan and holds onto the ball despite serious pressure from no less than Tony Scullion, before steadying himself to shoot a point into the Canal End.
My first memory of watching football in Clones came with the 1988 Ulster final when Monaghan beat Tyrone. I was on the O’Duffy Terrace and recall McEneaney putting in a high and hopeful ball towards the Tyrone goal.
Their goalkeeper Aidan Skelton had a look of a Bruce Grobbelaar about him and shared certain characteristics in coming off his line. He did so to gather McEneaney’s punt, the ball hopped off his chest and Hughes had followed in, gathered the loose ball, avoided two attempts to trip him and fired to the net.
My father used to teach alongside the Tyrone defender Sean Donnelly. In the staff room, the name of Nudie Hughes was used to tease Donnelly when the need arose. And it did.
His talents brought out his cheerfulness and confidence. Virtually nobody could get one over him in a dressing room and he soon moved into sales. The cheery head of Nudie Hughes coming into pubs and hotels as a sales rep was gold dust.
At one point, he was selling for Tennent’s Lager; not a popular drink in GAA country. But after some persistence, their taps were soon a fixture in Monaghan pubs. Nobody called it Tennent’s though; they would ask instead for, ‘a pint of Nudie.’
As the illness gripped him and his body started to betray himself, he kept the sunny side out. His relationship with Teresa, a high-ranking figure in Croke Park, meant he was a regular and welcome guest at many functions of all stripes.
He could be out on the dancefloor with Lory Meagher hurlers, or challenging All-Star footballers to press-up competitions. All agreed he was a gas man.
We met him – for the last time – walking out of Croke Park on 29 June this year after Kerry had ransacked Armagh in the All-Ireland quarter-final. Naturally, he was holding court with a crowd around him, but never left anyone on the fringes of a conversation, always making the introductions.
Fresh-faced, ebullient and wise-cracking, there were promises to meet up for a coffee some time soon. Such was his demeanour, you felt that day would come. No bother to him.
It didn’t. But I’ll be glad that’s my last memory of him.
In one of the clips that Clerkin put up, Hughes steps inside his Tyrone marker on the right wing, steadies himself before kicking over with the outside of his right boot.
“He’s enjoying himself out there,” exclaimed the commentator on the footage.
He enjoyed himself everywhere.
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