The Three Amigos
By Hayden Moore
THREE men, who are in their 70s and 80s, have formed an unlikely friendship through their participation in an exercise programme and they have been nicknamed the Three Amigos because of the bond they formed.
Paddy Downey (85) was admitted to hospital with pneumonia two-years-ago and he thought that he would never be the same again.
Paddy Flannery, Paddy Downey and Justin Dawson
A Palmerstown resident, Paddy won the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship with Dublin in 1958 and 1963 and has always had a strong relationship with exercise.
“I did a bit of boxing, not very good at that. I was always a keen fly-fisher man and my other hobbies would be really gardening,” he says while speaking on The Echo’s Local Voices podcast.
“From an exercise point of view, I tended to train on my own way, way back for football, GAA.”
After finishing playing football with Dublin, and his club’s St Brigid’s and St Patrick’s Palmerstown, Paddy kept fit by running with his dogs.
“I had a pacemaker in 2012, I was having trouble with the ol’ heart but I got pneumonia in 2018, didn’t know I had it for quite a while.
“By the time I ended up in Tallaght, A and E in the hospital in March [2018] I was in a bad condition.
“Couldn’t breathe, low oxygen and I was seriously ill. I spent 12 days there under the control of Prof. Ronan Collins and his team.
“After the 12-days I was cured of the pneumonia but I was weak as a kitten and I left the hospital at the age of 83, with a Zimmer frame.”
After being released from hospital, Paddy had to learn how to walk again and did so over a 12-week period but could not regain the condition he was in before coming down with pneumonia.
“As hard as I tried, I just couldn’t improve my situation and I was inclined to put it down to ‘your 83, heading for 84 and that’s the end of it’.
“I felt it was the end of it as far as I was concerned, from an active point of view.”
Then, Paddy was referred to the ExWell programme by Prof Collins and began attending the structured exercise classes, that were medically supervised, in Tallaght Leisure Centre.
ExWell Medical is the brainchild of former Dublin footballer Dr Noel McCaffrey and it takes an active approach to recovery from, and helping ease, chronic diseases and conditions through exercise.
While the physical benefits are noticeable and expected, it is the social and emotional aspect of the ExWell programme that attendees take great esteem from.
There are currently over 1,000 active members of the ExWell programme in Tallaght and the surrounding areas.
“The exercising end of it is one part of ExWell but probably every bit as important is the people I met there and continue to meet there, and continue to have contact with,” Paddy Downey says.
“I’m talking about the social aspect of it here, I happened to meet two great mates and somebody had the cheek to call us the Three Amigos.”
Those two friends that Paddy is talking about are Kilnamanagh native Paddy Flannery and Raheen resident Justin Dawson, who are both in their early-70s.
Before Covid-19, the Three Amigos would attend ExWell twice a week and stick around at the coffee bar in Tallaght Leisure Centre for hours enjoying some friendly banter.
The Three Amigos met up for the first time in weeks in Corkagh Park to record the Local Voices podcast, sitting around a bench socially distanced, the men recall when they first met.
“The first day I went in I met Justin. Justin was sitting down, I went over and sat beside them and start talking to him because he was the handsomest of the lot of them,” Paddy Flannery recounts.
Laughing, Justin tells him that he “should have gone to Specsavers”.
“I found out I was wrong… and then I met Paddy, the three of us clicked and then we exercised together,” Paddy continued.
The three men “just clicked”, with Paddy Downey saying: “We were total strangers when we met, we’d never met before and I wouldn’t say it was exactly like falling in love, it’s too far back for me to remember that…”
“Well when would you ever see two Dublin men talking to a Mayo man,” interjects Paddy Flannery, looking at the Mayo native, Justin.
Later in the podcast, Justin says: “I remember my dad used to say to me ‘you’re very lucky if you go through life with one friend’.
“One friend that is someone you can confide in, you can tell them something and you know you’re not going to hear it back through another course.
“I remember him saying if you have one good friend through life that’s all you need, so I must be blessed I have two.”
On Episode 28 of Local Voices, titled The Three Amigos, the lads talk about their fitness journeys, how they ended up on the ExWell Programme, loss, anger, and friendship.
Visit Echo.ie/podcasts or search Local Voices on any streaming platform to listen to the full podcast.
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