Waterford Hurling (now incorporating intermediate football) 2013 and subsequent years

[endakenny]

They have a fierce tale to their team.

[peddlerscross]

There has to be a chance the 2 remaining Bennetts could just go on a big one and score 3-14 or something ridiculous between them if the mood takes them.

[endakenny]

Maybe so but I see Roscrea winning by ten plus

[Thornhill]

Did Shane also go? There was talks that both of them were going.

[Thornhill]

Strong indications that Austin won’t be lining out for us next year either.

[FlakeAway]

Who do Roscrea have inter county? I can’t re call any senior player?

[endakenny]

Alan Tynan would be a panel member.

They are solid 1-15, good pace around the Park.

[balbec]

Are there many of that county minor winning side playing?

[endakenny]

A good few of them,
They don’t have any outstanding player but have some very lively forwards. Evan Fitzpatrick is one who Liam Cahill might look at.

Their juniors were strong this year also.

That side of the country is doing well this with Shinrone and Kilruane bordering them.

[Pirlo]

[maurice_brown]

Ffs. That’s sad

[Pirlo]

Disgraceful and sad.

[Raylan]

Martin Óg Morrissey: People seem to think I was something out of the ordinary

Martin Óg Morrissey was a key cog and no-nonsense centre back for Waterford’s last All-Ireland win 63 years ago

Morrissey at home with the sliotar from the 1959 All Ireland hurling final

BRYAN MEADE/TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD

Michael Foley

Sunday November 27 2022, 12.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times

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Martin Óg Morrissey holds two sliotars in his hands, like a pair of distant hurling planets. One is from the 1959 All-Ireland hurling final, the last final Waterford won. The other is from the 2020 All-Ireland final, the last final Waterford lost.

He examines the 2020 ball, bright yellow with scarcely any rim, like a leathery tennis ball. “The only ball I ever saw like that was made in Mount Sion by a Christian Brother,” he says. “He gave it to my second fella. It was like a little rock. If you had it out in the rain, it stayed the way it was.”

The 1959 ball depicts a game from another galaxy. The rims are thick and high, made for ground hurling. Both balls are the same size — the 1959 ball might even be an ounce lighter — but the 1959 ball would soak water like a heavy sponge. Morrissey was centre back for Waterford that day, the ball in his hand when the final whistle blew. As the crowds flooded the field the first person to reach him was his mother. “Put that in your bag,” he said. “Mind it.”

The ball has sat in his home for 63 years, surviving the odd unauthorised puck around and once getting tossed over the house. Morrissey has been offered big money for the ball down the years; no sum could ever match its true value.

Morrissey with the sliotar from the 1959 All Ireland hurling final - Waterford’s last win

BRYAN MEADE/TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD

He is 88 now, born and reared in this web of streets. His wife Brigid lived 200 yards away when they met. They eventually found a plot off Morrison’s Road and built Banna, their home. She sits in the kitchen making tea and pouring biscuits onto a plate, talking warmly of first dates and the old cinemas and streets they shared together. “I love the stones of this place,” she says.

These roads teemed with hurlers. Morrissey played in street leagues for Morrison’s Road with John Barron. Around the corner on Griffiths Place lived Mick Flannelly and Seamus Power. Ard na Greine had Larry Guinan. Frankie Walsh and the Condon brothers lived nearby.

“The panel in ‘59 had ten from the parish of Ballybricken. The hurling was from here up as far as the sportsfield [Walsh Park] and down as far as Ballybricken. That corner, that’s where all the hurlers came from except for one or two. It was amazing.”

A bag of books sits on the floor, his memoir offering a valuable record of a team sometimes lost between the charismatic Cork and Wexford teams of the 1950s and the Wexford and Tipperary teams of the 1960s. Some players carried regrets at not winning more than a single All-Ireland title, but Waterford’s legacy was never about mere accumulation. They were the influencers.

“People I meet seem to think I was something out of the ordinary. The type of hurling we played was the best hurling ever played, so people from other counties tell me. They never saw anything like that before or after our team. We played fast, open hurling. There was no dilly-dallying at all. You let fly and that was it. They say hurling is faster now. I don’t think it is. They have to get the ball in their hand now. That’s a waste of time.”

Morrissey’s own style mixed innate skill and applied learning. His forte was first-time hurling, whipping balls off his toes and sending them 80 yards was his calling card.

“I didn’t have to get the ball in me hand. [When we won] the Harty Cup final in 1953 [with Mount Sion CBS] the score was 3-2 to 1-7. I scored the two points. One was 60 or 70 yards out. A ball came into me and I just let fly, first-time pull. Met it and it went over the bar.”

At 5’8” weighing barely 12 stones, playing centre back in an era of hurling BFGs, Morrissey also needed survival methods. Instead of entering combat under every dropping ball he tapped balls to the side for his team- mates or into space for himself. When they hurled as children Mick Flannelly’s father showed them how to hit their opponent, waiting till all their target’s weight was on the leg furthest from the ball — their off leg.

Morrissey in the pomp of his playing days for Waterford and Mount Sion

Morrissey also had a bulletproof confidence that carried him through any turbulence. He remembers playing one day when Stephen Greene, an old timer with Mount Sion, stopped Morrissey’s father on the road. “Stephen said to him, ‘your young fella there, you’ll be watching him in Croke Park’. I was only eight at the time.”

Like Waterford in every age, winning anything obliged them to lose a lot. In the 1957 All-Ireland final, the day the actor John Grigson tagged on to the back of the Kilkenny team during the parade for the film Rooney, Waterford were caught at the line. Both teams returned to Croke Park a fortnight later to shoot more scenes, getting more than 60 pounds a day when Morrissey was earning eight pounds a week in a meat factory. “[Grigson] scored a goal,” says Morrissey. “It took him three-quarters-of-an-hour.”

The following year, before Tipperary clobbered them in the Munster championship, a friend of Morrissey’s mentioned someone with pills to pep up their step. Fourteen of the team chanced them before the match. “The fella that didn’t take the tablet would have been vying for man of the match, Mick Lacey. The fella that gave my friend the tablets was a Tipperary man. We reckoned it was downers we got instead of uppers.”

In the 1963 final Waterford scored six goals against Kilkenny that day but lost by five points. That was the worst. “I met Johnny McGovern [Kilkenny] at a funeral a couple of years ago and he maintained where I was putting the ball was where we were winning. He reckoned we’d have got two more goals if I had hit in two more balls. They scored 11 points from frees [Waterford scored one]. There’s no way a team doesn’t commit frees. Let’s be quite fair about it, the three fellas Kilkenny had in the full back at that time were no angels.”

He laughs. This was Morrissey at his peak. The previous year he carried Waterford to an Oireachtas title against Tipperary, destroying Mackey McKenna. Before they met again in the league final he took a call at the meat factory from a newspaper man.

How did he think the match would go? Three point win for Waterford, he reckoned. And what about McKenna?

The 1953 Mount Sion Dr Harty Cup winning team

“Something hit me. I said he’s a lovely fella. ‘Well Mackey said you gave him a toasting in the Oireachtas final and he’s going to give you a roasting next Sunday’. I said he’s entitled to his opinion but I still think we’ll win it.”

Waterford won and Morrissey repeated the dose. A few years back he was chatting with McKenna. “See that fella there?” McKenna said. “That was the best centre-half-back I ever played on.”

“It was truth,” says Morrissey, breaking into laughter again. Those were the tributes that meant the most. For years the Waterford crew often wondered about Morrissey’s special relationship with Christy Ring. One day Philly Grimes asked him why Ring was always drawn to him, no one else. “I said he knew the boss. I remember playing on him in the Mardyke [with Mount Sion against Glen Rovers].We went for a ball. He thought I didn’t see him coming. I stuck him in the ground and walked out over him.”

Another day with Waterford Morrissey went to gather a ball with Ring closing in. As Ring prepared to swipe the ball before Morrissey caught it, Morrissey simply let fly and drove it downfield. “He walked over to me and said ‘you caught me that time.’

“The second half he got a ball. I stood and made a go and he went to tip the ball over my head. I just leaned backwards, caught the ball and lobbed it down the field. He caught me by the hand and said ‘there’s not many defenders catch me twice in the one day’. I’d say he probably admired the way I played hurling. I don’t know. I’d say that was probably it.”

Ring was also among those nudging Waterford towards the All-Ireland in 1959 too. “It was the likes of him saying we’ll win the All-Ireland. It was a big boost to us.”

The Tuesday before Waterford won Brigid was in hospital giving birth to their first child, Eamon. When he came home with the cup, Morrissey’s mother warned him of his new responsibilities beyond celebrating an All-Ireland. He managed. “We plastered the town,” he says. “We plastered the county.”

Family and hurling always entwined, through his cycles to New Ross with his father and brother for matches and holidays in Ballyhale, and the decades with Brigid with hurling as the constant backdrop. His sisters followed him through the years, Bridie is 92 and still travels to Waterford games. He remembers his father back then and lifts his hand above his head. “He’d be walking that height if I played well.”

Walking on air in his memory. Same as them all.

Kings for One Day: Martin Óg Morrissey An Autobiography, Martin Óg Morrissey with Dermot Keyes, Hero Books, €20

[Fagan_ODowd]

@Raylan

Martin Óg Morrissey: People seem to think I was something out of the ordinary

Martin Óg Morrissey was a key cog and no-nonsense centre back for Waterford’s last All-Ireland win 63 years ago

Morrissey at home with the sliotar from the 1959 All Ireland hurling final

BRYAN MEADE/TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD

Michael Foley

Sunday November 27 2022, 12.00pm GMT, The Sunday Times

Share

Save

Martin Óg Morrissey holds two sliotars in his hands, like a pair of distant hurling planets. One is from the 1959 All-Ireland hurling final, the last final Waterford won. The other is from the 2020 All-Ireland final, the last final Waterford lost.

He examines the 2020 ball, bright yellow with scarcely any rim, like a leathery tennis ball. “The only ball I ever saw like that was made in Mount Sion by a Christian Brother,” he says. “He gave it to my second fella. It was like a little rock. If you had it out in the rain, it stayed the way it was.”

The 1959 ball depicts a game from another galaxy. The rims are thick and high, made for ground hurling. Both balls are the same size — the 1959 ball might even be an ounce lighter — but the 1959 ball would soak water like a heavy sponge. Morrissey was centre back for Waterford that day, the ball in his hand when the final whistle blew. As the crowds flooded the field the first person to reach him was his mother. “Put that in your bag,” he said. “Mind it.”

The ball has sat in his home for 63 years, surviving the odd unauthorised puck around and once getting tossed over the house. Morrissey has been offered big money for the ball down the years; no sum could ever match its true value.

Morrissey with the sliotar from the 1959 All Ireland hurling final - Waterford’s last win

BRYAN MEADE/TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD

He is 88 now, born and reared in this web of streets. His wife Brigid lived 200 yards away when they met. They eventually found a plot off Morrison’s Road and built Banna, their home. She sits in the kitchen making tea and pouring biscuits onto a plate, talking warmly of first dates and the old cinemas and streets they shared together. “I love the stones of this place,” she says.

These roads teemed with hurlers. Morrissey played in street leagues for Morrison’s Road with John Barron. Around the corner on Griffiths Place lived Mick Flannelly and Seamus Power. Ard na Greine had Larry Guinan. Frankie Walsh and the Condon brothers lived nearby.

“The panel in ‘59 had ten from the parish of Ballybricken. The hurling was from here up as far as the sportsfield [Walsh Park] and down as far as Ballybricken. That corner, that’s where all the hurlers came from except for one or two. It was amazing.”

A bag of books sits on the floor, his memoir offering a valuable record of a team sometimes lost between the charismatic Cork and Wexford teams of the 1950s and the Wexford and Tipperary teams of the 1960s. Some players carried regrets at not winning more than a single All-Ireland title, but Waterford’s legacy was never about mere accumulation. They were the influencers.

“People I meet seem to think I was something out of the ordinary. The type of hurling we played was the best hurling ever played, so people from other counties tell me. They never saw anything like that before or after our team. We played fast, open hurling. There was no dilly-dallying at all. You let fly and that was it. They say hurling is faster now. I don’t think it is. They have to get the ball in their hand now. That’s a waste of time.”

Morrissey’s own style mixed innate skill and applied learning. His forte was first-time hurling, whipping balls off his toes and sending them 80 yards was his calling card.

“I didn’t have to get the ball in me hand. [When we won] the Harty Cup final in 1953 [with Mount Sion CBS] the score was 3-2 to 1-7. I scored the two points. One was 60 or 70 yards out. A ball came into me and I just let fly, first-time pull. Met it and it went over the bar.”

At 5’8” weighing barely 12 stones, playing centre back in an era of hurling BFGs, Morrissey also needed survival methods. Instead of entering combat under every dropping ball he tapped balls to the side for his team- mates or into space for himself. When they hurled as children Mick Flannelly’s father showed them how to hit their opponent, waiting till all their target’s weight was on the leg furthest from the ball — their off leg.

Morrissey in the pomp of his playing days for Waterford and Mount Sion

Morrissey also had a bulletproof confidence that carried him through any turbulence. He remembers playing one day when Stephen Greene, an old timer with Mount Sion, stopped Morrissey’s father on the road. “Stephen said to him, ‘your young fella there, you’ll be watching him in Croke Park’. I was only eight at the time.”

Like Waterford in every age, winning anything obliged them to lose a lot. In the 1957 All-Ireland final, the day the actor John Grigson tagged on to the back of the Kilkenny team during the parade for the film Rooney, Waterford were caught at the line. Both teams returned to Croke Park a fortnight later to shoot more scenes, getting more than 60 pounds a day when Morrissey was earning eight pounds a week in a meat factory. “[Grigson] scored a goal,” says Morrissey. “It took him three-quarters-of-an-hour.”

The following year, before Tipperary clobbered them in the Munster championship, a friend of Morrissey’s mentioned someone with pills to pep up their step. Fourteen of the team chanced them before the match. “The fella that didn’t take the tablet would have been vying for man of the match, Mick Lacey. The fella that gave my friend the tablets was a Tipperary man. We reckoned it was downers we got instead of uppers.”

In the 1963 final Waterford scored six goals against Kilkenny that day but lost by five points. That was the worst. “I met Johnny McGovern [Kilkenny] at a funeral a couple of years ago and he maintained where I was putting the ball was where we were winning. He reckoned we’d have got two more goals if I had hit in two more balls. They scored 11 points from frees [Waterford scored one]. There’s no way a team doesn’t commit frees. Let’s be quite fair about it, the three fellas Kilkenny had in the full back at that time were no angels.”

He laughs. This was Morrissey at his peak. The previous year he carried Waterford to an Oireachtas title against Tipperary, destroying Mackey McKenna. Before they met again in the league final he took a call at the meat factory from a newspaper man.

How did he think the match would go? Three point win for Waterford, he reckoned. And what about McKenna?

The 1953 Mount Sion Dr Harty Cup winning team

“Something hit me. I said he’s a lovely fella. ‘Well Mackey said you gave him a toasting in the Oireachtas final and he’s going to give you a roasting next Sunday’. I said he’s entitled to his opinion but I still think we’ll win it.”

Waterford won and Morrissey repeated the dose. A few years back he was chatting with McKenna. “See that fella there?” McKenna said. “That was the best centre-half-back I ever played on.”

“It was truth,” says Morrissey, breaking into laughter again. Those were the tributes that meant the most. For years the Waterford crew often wondered about Morrissey’s special relationship with Christy Ring. One day Philly Grimes asked him why Ring was always drawn to him, no one else. “I said he knew the boss. I remember playing on him in the Mardyke [with Mount Sion against Glen Rovers].We went for a ball. He thought I didn’t see him coming. I stuck him in the ground and walked out over him.”

Another day with Waterford Morrissey went to gather a ball with Ring closing in. As Ring prepared to swipe the ball before Morrissey caught it, Morrissey simply let fly and drove it downfield. “He walked over to me and said ‘you caught me that time.’

“The second half he got a ball. I stood and made a go and he went to tip the ball over my head. I just leaned backwards, caught the ball and lobbed it down the field. He caught me by the hand and said ‘there’s not many defenders catch me twice in the one day’. I’d say he probably admired the way I played hurling. I don’t know. I’d say that was probably it.”

Ring was also among those nudging Waterford towards the All-Ireland in 1959 too. “It was the likes of him saying we’ll win the All-Ireland. It was a big boost to us.”

The Tuesday before Waterford won Brigid was in hospital giving birth to their first child, Eamon. When he came home with the cup, Morrissey’s mother warned him of his new responsibilities beyond celebrating an All-Ireland. He managed. “We plastered the town,” he says. “We plastered the county.”

Family and hurling always entwined, through his cycles to New Ross with his father and brother for matches and holidays in Ballyhale, and the decades with Brigid with hurling as the constant backdrop. His sisters followed him through the years, Bridie is 92 and still travels to Waterford games. He remembers his father back then and lifts his hand above his head. “He’d be walking that height if I played well.”

Walking on air in his memory. Same as them all.

Kings for One Day: Martin Óg Morrissey An Autobiography, Martin Óg Morrissey with Dermot Keyes, Hero Books, €20

Thanks for that. That Harty Cup photo was on the wall of the canteen in the school for many years after. On its own reminding students of later years of their own uselessness.

I don’t think Mount Sion was Ogs first club. From memory he played with a short lived junior outfit called Geal Óg.

I had the pleasure of seeing Óg play in the 1975 county final when he came on as a portly gentleman to rescue a lost cause against Portlaw. He stood in full forward and ball after ball was lumped down on him and he caused havoc with his famous wrists. We won.

[Gavrilo-Princip]

Surmising from that interview, would it be fair to say he’s not a man to hide his light under a bushel?

[balbec]

Not too many left to contradict him!

[Fagan_ODowd]

@Gavrilo-Princip

Surmising from that interview, would it be fair to say he’s not a man to hide his light under a bushel?

Modesty was never Ogs problem.

[Gavrilo-Princip]

@Gavrilo-Princip

hide his light under a bushel

More power to him, it’s refreshing compared to the “a sure look it, it’s a team game” blandness that’s the norm these days.

[Thornhill]

@Raylan

Morrissey also had a bulletproof confidence that carried him through any turbulence

There you have it.

[Fagan_ODowd]

I think Og played in the 1952 county final for TF Meaghers a divisional junior team.