SPORTING PASSIONS/PAT JENNINGS ON GAELIC FOOTBALL:The former Tottenham and Arsenal goalkeeper tells Mark Rodden how high fielding at Gaelic prepared him for professional soccer

I USED to play soccer away from school because in my day you used to get banned for playing it. The only thing I enjoyed at school was the sports, which in Catholic schools and Christian Brothers schools in those days in Newry was Gaelic football and a little bit of hurling.

If the brothers came from a hurling county they might have introduced hurling but it was mostly Gaelic. I played midfield and, though I didn't realise it until a long way down the line, it was probably the best training I could have done for goalkeeping.

Whenever it came to fielding crosses, you can imagine psychologically how much easier it was for me when I was jumping against people that were trying to get their head on a ball and I was four foot above them with my hands. So for me crosses were 10 a penny really.

When I was catching the ball with one hand, I thought if I could just get the tops of my fingers to the ball, I could pull it down even if I mishandled it. I could still get onto it using my hands before people could get a head or a foot to it. That came from Gaelic football as well.

If you could use both feet in Gaelic it was brilliant. I would have taken all the 50-yard frees and midfield was a key position where you were transferring the ball from backs to forwards.

In those days I never dreamt about professional football or thought that it would be available to me so I just played it for the love of the game. It's only later on in life that you realise how beneficial it was to me in soccer.

Away from school I played soccer in an under-19 league in Newry when I was 11. It was a street league where different areas of the town adopted the name of a famous club - we were Shamrock Rovers, and then you had Arsenal, Spurs or whatever.

You got banned just for playing soccer in those days and if I had got banned from playing Gaelic it would have been a disaster for me going to school.

You can imagine going into school in the morning having played in this street league in the evening and it would have been nothing unusual for us to have maybe 1,600 or 1,700 people watching these matches. Then the brothers met my mates in the morning going into school asking "what's the buzz about?" and it was because I'd played the night before and had probably done quite well for an 11-year-old at under-19s. So you can imagine me trying to keep it quiet.

I played Gaelic with Newry Shamrocks but that was only up to about 15, when I left school and went to work. After I left the Christian Brothers school and went to St Joseph's in Newry I played for a Down schools selection as well.

Then I played for Newry United, where we won the Irish Junior Cup, and I went into the Newry Town team the next year.

One of the people looking after Newry Shamrocks came to the house one night to say "What's he doing playing soccer? He'd be on the Down minor team next year."

I was only ever going to do one thing though and that was play soccer. But I still admired the way that Gaelic was played.

I went to all the Down minor games and when Down won the All-Irelands. Like everybody else I would have followed Down but my grandfather actually played for Armagh. Everybody went to see the team and followed them all over, the same as they do now. I went to all the games because somehow my dad got tickets.

We went all over - from Casement Park in Belfast to Clones to the All-Irelands.

The Down team at that time were brilliant. I would have known all of the team, local lads like Tony Hadden, and then there was Joe Lennon and the McCartans. There was a fella called Eamon McKay who played in goal, Pat Rice, and Paddy Doherty was in the forwards.

Then there were the O'Neills, Seán and Kevin - you could go more or less through the whole team. Leo Murphy was another who was brilliant at full back.

The last All-Ireland final I got to was Armagh-Tyrone in 2003, when unfortunately Armagh got beaten.

I still admire the way the game is played and the fact that these lads put so much into it and don't get paid for it. I have nothing but admiration for them and even more so I suppose the lads who play hurling, given the knocks that they get. I still love to watch it and it's a brilliant game.