I went to the local Christian Brothers primary school in my home town of Cahirciveen, Co Kerry. It would have been the late 1970s when I started there and I have very fond memories of it.

At the time I was there it was a school of about 100 boys and though I can't remember too well the specifics of what went on in primary school, I remember well the teachers I had for all my different classes.

It was a great start and I'm glad to have very warm memories of the Christian Brothers. There was always one or two Brothers at the school and the rest were lay teachers. They certainly gave us a good strong introduction to the education system.

It was a very wide base of learning. Our education concentrated not just on the books side of things - there were quite a lot of other activities during those times. We had plays, concerts and all sorts of events and, needless to say, football played a big role in it as well.

Football would have been introduced at a very early stage in the school, I suppose I would have been as young as seven or eight when I started to play. It was the most prominent sport and we had competitions organised in the school. One of the teachers who was very much involved, even though he was teaching in the convent school at the time, was a man called Junior Murphy.

He ran a kind of a school league for the Christian Brothers primary schools. It was played with great passion and great excitement and it was a real honour to be picked and be playing for those teams at about 10 or 11 years of age.

That love of the game continued with us to the Christian Brothers secondary school, which was also in the town. We had a number of Brothers at the time who had a great interest in the Gaelic games, but there were many of the lay teachers as well who played a big role - great men who, sadly, have passed away since, like Donie Riney, Joe Mahony and John Costello. They would have a had a big influence both on my general education and the football.

There was a teacher called Joe O'Connell from Dingle, who was really also a big influence. He saw Gaelic games very much as part of our general education really and academics and sport seemed to go part and parcel with him naturally.

There were a number of different coveted cups, like the Russell Cup and the Dunloe Cup. Those competitions were played with great passion among all the Christian Brothers schools in Kerry. There was great pride in playing for the local school and in the winning of competitions. Coming home with the cup was a big occasion, if, of course, you were successful in the competition.

Sport went hand in hand with the education and all the lay teachers mentioned, and the Christian Brothers, attached great importance to the Gaelic games. But they were also experts in their own academic fields and they passed their interest on to us with a great passion.

The academic side of school was something that was looked after very well, of course, and the football and different types of sport were more or less to introduce a healthy balance into people's lives.

Academic-wise, I felt that we got a very good base in all aspects of education and all aspects of life.

My teachers gave me a great interest in geography and history and I was a primary teacher for a number of years myself. I think now there's a lot more on offer for kids in the line of technology and facilities. There are better opportunities for school trips and more funding available.

There's some fantastic things happening for young people that we wouldn't have had. But I really did enjoy my schooling and Gaelic games played a very important part in giving me a grounding and a balance that I believe will stay with me for life.

In conversation with Olivia Kelly