Challenge: you need it to keep alive.

We're just over Easter. Good Friday used to be a day of fasting, a day for the curtains being drawn. You would feel guilty if you broke with tradition. I remember the first time I played golf on Good Friday. I felt remorseful and the first shot I took the head flew off the driver and went further than the ball. I said it was certainly an omen from the gods and I actually looked up to the sky to see if the clouds were crashing into each other.

But we kept going. The golf courses of Ireland are full on that day now. People play sport now over the Easter season. It's a hugely busy time for sport. Sport is all the good things in life, it's spiritual as well. Anything that is uplifting and inspiring is the very definition of spirituality.

Sport creates strong beliefs in people. It's meant to be positive, character building. In the old Ireland sport was the main feature of our festivities. When they celebrated Lughnasa or La Bealtaine, sport was linked up. The great hostings at Tara finished up with massive games of hurling.

Going back long enough, the people of the Blasket island played hurling on the beach, the Tra Ban they called it. Everybody, young and old, men and women, took part in it on Feile la Nollaig. Maybe it was part of the psyche that sport went with the celebrations of the times, so it's no harm we have matches.

I grew in the traditional era and I would still hold with it, in my religious sense. Anyone who studies history only needs to look at the times when people needed those of stature to stand up for them, it was always the clergy. For that reason we have a tradition and it should not be forgotten, despite developments. There is no question that everybody would have to abhor failings of recent times. But the main thing now is that we have to learn a lesson from it.

The church at the moment is being judged on those things without being judged in its entirety, on all the good it has done over the years.

I never heard anybody talking against what the Church preached in terms of a way of life.

Lessons can be learned as to the type of church that will suit the Ireland of the future.

Ireland is different with every passing year. It is up to institutions to witness that and adapt to it. Bishop Willie Walsh of Killaloe, a former Clare selector, has a practical outlook on things.

I recall the time when there was trouble with the traveller community there, he allowed them to park on the lawns of the Bishop's residence. It was a short term solution, but it highlighted the problems the travellers have that need addressing. He has a view on what way we should be going and I think the more people that speak out on views like that the quicker we'll get the church that will suit.

The younger generation that's in the country at the moment is a very well educated one.

I think given a chance that they're the best generation that were ever there. There is more confidence in them. If we had more confidence in them, showed leadership in the right way, they would respond.

Previous generations did not have this confidence. It was a stage in the development of our nation. Our standard of education had a lot to do with it. It is normal now for people to advance to third level. One hundred years is not a long time in history. UCD has 20,000 students. It would be hard to visualise that for the 200 attending it a hundred years ago.

I think the problem is the deprived areas of cities have not the same access to education, or support when they do get it. Money well spent would be money given to those in that situation, to educate them to the highest level.

They have a right to it.

I was lucky that in Dingle the tradition of education was a strong one. It still is. The view is that if you stay in Dingle, or travel all over the world, an education is no load to carry. The other side of the coin would be those who have prospered in the new Ireland but suffer behind its electronic gates. There is an Irish saying that we all live in the shadows of each other. The Celtic tiger is a good animal but its independence goes too far, into the realms of isolation.

Anybody's existence is a mere fleeting second. In many cases quickly forgotten because your equal or better is just behind you. It's part of the rural tradition that all people are the same. I'd often impress this upon players, especially one who might be getting too much prominence early on. I remember advice given by a footballer who was at the height of his fame at the time; today is the day for you to prepare for when you walk down the street and nobody will know you.

What keeps the sport going is that others come along. The same as in life. I have coped with competition by doing my best, and being aware of who I am doing it for. In my case it is for the listener. I don't think there is any need for competition. You have to forget your own importance. Not take yourself too seriously.

Let things take their course.

Not worrying would be my main thing. And hot milk. Eight piping hot glasses gets rid of a cold in a day. Lots of people would be buried with their walking sticks in the knowledge that when they die they walk the roads at night. I bought a stick for my father a few years before he died. He said it was a nice stick and he wouldn't use it at all but to put it into the coffin with him. They would be walking around, you wouldn't see them, but you accept that the gone are there. They have a right to be. The spirit that might pass by, that wouldn't see, they won't do you any harm.

In the afterlife the highest level of sport of all time will be seen. The great pool of players is being added to all the time. I'd have a job there I would hope. Le cunamh De.