Cootehall Barracks Radio

The Cootehall Barracks Radio was the village’s only radio and, on match Sundays, the centre of a public gathering inside the barracks. Its broadcasts brought men together around the Cossor set and its owner, Francis (Frank) McGahern; for the narrator, the same matches produced a tense alternation between the pull of the crowd and the wish to get away from it.

Setting and Use

During the family’s first summer in the barracks, the Roscommon team that had won the All-Ireland in 1943 was moving toward a second title. The narrator followed the team avidly, reading about its players and imitating their play in games in Charlie’s field. On Sundays when Roscommon played, men packed into the barracks to listen. The radio was not merely a household appliance: its broadcast made the family home a gathering place for the village.

The Cossor carried the voice of commentator Michael O hEither, whose greeting from Croke Park preceded the match. Cigarette smoke thickened the air as the listeners waited through the broadcast. Quiet was broken by cheers, shouts, groans, clapping, and stamping feet; the set made a distant game present as a shared, bodily event.

Match-Day Ritual

The narrator’s response to the radio’s audience was divided. At half-time, he went down to the river to escape the excitement. When the second half began, he was torn between wanting to know the score and avoiding the match’s painful tension. He first listened outside the window; if Roscommon was winning, he hurried back into the crowded living room, where chairs and benches left little space and men leaned against the walls.

The radio therefore organized a repeated movement between enclosure and withdrawal. The narrator could leave the gathering, but the uncertainty of the game drew him back to listen, and the team’s success made re-entry irresistible. His account preserves both the pleasure of following Roscommon and the strain of being caught up in the crowd’s expectations.

Social and Narrative Significance

Francis (Frank) McGahern enjoyed the excitement, the large audience, and the fact that the gathering revolved around him and his radio. The broadcasts gave him a conspicuous social role: the village assembled in his home, with the Cossor at the centre of its attention. After each match, the men stayed for a long, lively discussion, extending the radio’s communal effect beyond the broadcast itself.

When the men dispersed, the barracks was left with a sudden sense of absence, compared in the narration to public gardens and the seaside after a bank holiday. The radio’s significance lies in this cycle: it created an intense temporary community, then made the quiet after its departure newly perceptible. For the narrator, it also marks an early contrast between collective excitement and the freedom of solitude by the river.