Owen ‘Mugsy’ Mulligan is always up for a laugh and a joke. And it was no different when photographer Oliver McVeigh entered the Tyrone changing room on one occasion during Mulligan’s playing days.

Speaking on the ‘GAA Social’ podcast, McVeigh recounted how a ‘cheeky’ picture of three-time All-Ireland winning forward came to pass.

“It’s a picture in a changing room,” McVeigh told Thomas Niblock in a special live show of the GAA Social. “ ‘Mugsy’ as we know him. He is a bit of a character to be fair. I says, ‘Jesus, we need a picture.’ So at this stage he must have been in a hurry somewhere.

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“He had stripped off to that, and he turned around, like he is now, with his backside out to me and he said, ‘Here, take that.’

“Which I duly did. You can see the great Stephen O’Neill sitting beside him. He is laughing his head off and that’s Pascal McConnell on the other side of him.

“I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere (with getting a player to do a picture) so I just went on ahead then.

“Well, I had the good sense to phone him today. I’ve mentioned it (the picture) to him before. He said, ‘Oh, go ahead, use it, use it.’ He says, ‘I’m in great shape man,’ he says.

“I phoned today and he was on a crane in Edinburgh. I says, ‘I’m going to embarrass you tonight. I’m going to put that picture up.’

‘Go for it,’ he says. ‘I don’t mind, I don’t mind at all.’

“That’s Owen Mulligan in a word. He’s just a great guy, takes life nice and easy.”

In a poignant moment, Oliver also discusses his brother Columba McVeigh, who is one the ‘the disappeared’ who was killed and secretly buried by the IRA, and the ongoing search to find his remains.

McVeigh also talks about some of his most famous photographs, including one which helped land David Atoub with a 70-week suspension for eye-gouging Ulster’s Stephen Ferris in a Heineken Cup tie in December 2009.

"I was the only photographer who picked it up,” stated McVeigh.

"There was a scuffle, not something you see often in rugby, in fairness and being a GAA man, you just rattle off and see what comes next.

"I've a picture of Ferris getting up and you can clearly see Ferris going 'I've been gouged in the eye, I've been gouged in the eye.' You can tell from the distance.

"David Humphreys was the team manager and asked if he could use it and I said go ahead use it wherever you want."

Atoub later unsuccessfully tried to contest the ban, the second longest in rugby history, with McVeigh asked to prove the authenticity of the image.

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