SPORTING PASSIONS:Paul McGinley on his Gaelic football career and his support for Dublin and West Ham United. Mark Roddenreports.

MY DAD used to play Gaelic football for Donegal and I went to St Mary's Boy's school in Rathfarnham. Fintan Walsh and Pat Corbett were the teachers that looked after the Gaelic and hurling and it was very much part of our curriculum growing up. I went on to play with Ballyboden St Enda's and my secondary school was Coláiste Éanna, which had a big GAA tradition as well.

Golf was very much a third or fourth-rate sport behind Gaelic, hurling and soccer. It was something I did for two months every year when we had school holidays and I went up to Donegal.

But once September came I was back training and that would be the end of the golf until the following July.

Playing for Dublin was a big dream of mine. I did play some underage and I was part of a very good Ballyboden under-21 team. Jim Stynes was on our team and went on to play Australian Rules. We had a strong team and were winning all around us so the next level up from that would have been for some of those players to go on to play senior.

But it didn't really work out that way. I got injured and that's when I started to play golf 12 months of the year as opposed to just two. That was 1987 and I was 19. It was a broken kneecap - a shattered patella and torn cartilage. So that was the end of my football and hurling career.

I've still got a huge interest in it. I follow the Dubs and Donegal and I keep an eye on the hurling too. One of the first things I did when I moved to England was to get satellite so I could get The Sunday Game piped in.

I have a DVD of the great Dublin team of the 70s on my laptop so I watch that regularly. There was something special about the 70s and 80s and the Dublin-Kerry years. That was my strongest memory as a kid, that I happened to be around at the right age when that was in full flow.

Our next-door neighbour used to take me to all the Dublin matches down the country. I've so many memories. Not just the big ones that everybody remembers but going to places like Carlow and Tullamore, just the way the Dubs would roll in - the players, the fans - and take over the town. It was the special atmosphere of a Championship Sunday.

Professional golf being such an individual game, I really miss the camaraderie and I envy the Dublin lads when I see them training and I see the atmosphere around the team environment. People often ask me why my record is good in the Ryder Cup and I bring everything back to GAA. Team sport was implanted into my genes from a very young age.

As for soccer, the first game I remember watching was West Ham-Fulham in the 1975 FA Cup final. I took a shine to West Ham probably because we'd just got a colour TV and they had nice coloured shirts. Ever since then I've always been a big West Ham fan.

Trevor Brooking was the main player through my years as a teenager. I've got to know Trevor quite well since I've come here. I've played a few pro-ams with him and he's become a good family friend. My favourite golfer has always been Tom Watson and I think Trevor stands for the same values in soccer that Tom Watson does in golf. That honesty, the hard endeavour - all the good traits that you want to see in a footballer, I think Trevor has them.

You don't become a West Ham fan for the glory. I was at the FA Cup final two years ago and I was broken-hearted when Steven Gerrard scored that goal in the 91st minute to tie it. You wait so long for one piece of silverware and then it's snatched away from you in the last minute.

The ethos of the club is what's attracted me more than anything. You go to the games and watch the young lads coming through. West Ham call themselves the Academy of Football and everybody knows the great players that have come through the ranks throughout the years.

I think the club has changed a little bit in the last few years and I don't think it's changed for the better. It's a little bit sad to see that the younger players aren't coming through as frequently as they have done in the last 10 years.

That's what I enjoy seeing happen more than any kind of success that West Ham may or may not have. I enjoy the fact that it's a London club, it's full of East End boys, that's their passion and that's their life.