Frank Greally’s startling exposition of the secret self

Con Houlihan always said we all have three dimensions – the public self, the private self and the secret self. After watching Black Mass, the new biopic of South Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, it would be hard to imagine a more startling exposition of all three. Although only in the secret self is the film worthy of attention.

How on earth did Bulger get away with what he did for as long as he did? It’s one thing to have a sort of unified omertà that was part of the public and private morality in that slice of 1970s Irish-American community. It’s only when violent murders become so perfectly gratuitous, carried out with such sangfroid, such callous immunity from prosecution, that the film’s power begins to floor you.

It’s helped by Johnny Depp playing the Bulger role with as much method and madness as he brought to Hunter S Thompson, back in 1998. The scene where he scares the life out of one of his new FBI snoops for disclosing a secret family recipe may actually mock this dimension of the Bulger character, but it’s a neat little reminder that we can’t always be certain of what self is actually on show.

Black Mass is also a reminder that no biopic is complete without all three dimensions – whether in film or in print. It's also why it was no surprise to anyone who has read Until Victory Always that it won the Bord Gáis Energy Sports Book of the Year this week.

What Jim McGuinness revealed in his autobiography was perfectly three dimensional: the public self that came with being the Donegal football manager; the private self that allowed him to carry it out in the way that he did; and the secret self, which made it such compelling reading.

Winning season

The All-Ireland winning season of 2012 may be the beginning and end point of the story, yet nothing features as prominently as the separate deaths of his two older brothers, both of which McGuinness himself witnessed. His great power in the telling of it – which he described as “part therapy and part torture” – is ultimately what set it apart from the other sports books of the year.

Not that the other contenders were without merit. Tomás Ó Sé lets us in on a few secrets in The White Heat, as does Henry Shefflin in his powerfully written autobiography. The story of AP McCoy – now released in both film and print – is winning praise not for the public or private self he reveals but again for the secret self, that obsessive jockey which McCoy now likens to a heroin addict.

Still nothing prepared me for the startling exposition of Running Full Circle, the entirely self-penned autobiography just published by Frank Greally, which made for strangely coincidental reading in the aftermath of Black Mass. This is a story which begins and may easily have ended in another slice of 1970s Irish-American community, when Greally joined that still great tradition of scholarship athletes, leaving his home in Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo, to begin a new life at East Tennessee University.

Because as long as I've known Greally (which is most of my life) he's been the cheerful face of Irish Runner magazine, which after 35 years he still prints and edits, against some might say miraculous odds. Greally, who gave me my start in this business, still boasts a natural connection with distance runners at least partly explained by the fact he still holds the Irish junior record for 10,000m, set back in 1970.

Chronic leg injury

Despite recognising the public and even private self of Running Full Circle, it's in Greally's secret self that the book finds its power. It's been a well kept secret, for example, that he didn't actually finish his scholarship at East Tennessee. Desperate to keep up with 1972 Olympians Neil Cusack and Eddie Leddy, he soon ran himself into the ground, not helped by a chronic leg injury. By the end of year three he was cut, told "good luck", and left to his own devices.

Greally didn’t have the heart to tell his parents back in Mayo, so stuck it out in Tennessee nonetheless, discovering a talent for creative writing which helped earn him his degree.

It the meantime he was also discovering American country music, reading Thomas Wolfe, hanging out with the likes of James Dickey, the man who wrote Deliverance, and falling for some of the boozing and womanising that was so characteristic of the American South. He was shot at by a hillbilly, beaten up by a redneck, slept rough, bummed lifts on the highways, almost drowned with two women in Boone Lake, near the border with Kentucky.

Greally’s collegiate running also led him into drugs, not EPO, but LSD, after a college mate spiked his beer with a little acid for a laugh. They got some laugh alright when he showed up two days later, covered in cement dust, believing he was Ronnie Delany.

These aren't some made-up yarns to help sell the book: perhaps like McGuinness, this is part therapy and part torture. Indeed Greally's secret self continued for years after returning to Ireland, through his faltering marriage, after five children, while somehow keeping Irish Runner magazine on the go. His fondness for booze turned increasingly destructive, then depressive, and eventually took him into a slow successful recovery at St Patrick's.

Without the miraculous intervention of his friend Ray McManus he might never have got that far. In the end the power of Running Full Circle is not just in the courageous telling of it, but the realisation that it also speaks for many more Irish athletes who, like Greally, "fell through the cracks" in America, only were never heard of again.