Where are the clare men on TFK

Sport
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A middlin minor B team form a hurling county would bate them a score a man. After a feed of porter night before and their only county man suspended. Leitrim, the name a jaysus.

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Well we’re a football county

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“Tell you what, tell me about the time you played, involved, subbed, waterboy, fluffer for your county and we’ll see how ye got on.”

Š @theLockes

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I have great respect for a footballing county keeping hurling alive, Nevermind these snobby cunts.

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They are a football county?

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Gotta love a tap in.

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I think we have one.

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[SIZE=6]Surreal tale of the time Leitrim hurlers were kings of Connacht[/SIZE]
[SIZE=5]Dermot Crowe revisits the 1960s and a match that was as forgettable as it was memorable[/SIZE]
[SIZE=4]Dermot Crowe[/SIZE]
http://cdn2.independent.ie/incoming/article30915807.ece/2a461/ALTERNATES/h342/grimes.jpg
Eamonn Grimes raised it at a funeral attended by players of that era last week. ‘Not one person in the queue could tell me who we played in the ’65 semi-final.’

This story is 50 years old but the inequality at its heart is perpetual. In 1965 a match took place between two teams reared on opposite sides of the track. An egregiously ill-equipped Leitrim needed a miracle of Biblical proportions when pitted against Limerick in the All-Ireland minor semi-final at Birr. It was a small miracle they were there in the first place. Galway’s temporary rehousing in Munster made the mismatch possible.

Even then there was something novel and startling about Leitrim’s appearance. High-ranking efforts were underway to broaden hurling’s influence in parts of the country where it steadfastly remained an alien game. Leitrim had impeccable credentials as a hurling backwater. A modest clink of glasses greeted the news that they would be entering a minor team in the Connacht championship for the first time.

Hurling was striving to reform and be more embracing. Leitrim had no local minor hurling championship yet they won the Connacht title in spite of the handicap. GAA president Alf Murray came from Armagh and football was his game, but he dreamt of bringing hurling to the masses. His hope that every county would be playing in the minor hurling championship by 1969 proved too ambitious. Even at the elite end, Tipperary’s dominance was creating concern that they were leaving the rest behind.

It was during this time of hurling navel-gazing that, in August 1965, Leitrim sent a minor team to face Limerick in an All-Ireland semi-final. They went in their innocence like lambs to the slaughter. Limerick shot the lights out with 15-13 and if Leitrim’s 6-3 looks respectable there was necessary compliance on the part of a sympathetic Limerick full-back. Some of the Leitrim players were overage but who in their right mind could complain? Two years earlier, Roscommon minors had asked at half-time if they could borrow a few of the Limerick players for the second half of that year’s All-Ireland semi-final. Limerick, already out of sight on the scoreboard, obliged.

Limerick defeated Tipperary in the 1965 Munster minor final, with four of their five goals from Seán Burke. They took players from a string of successful teams in Limerick CBS, who won three All-Irelands in four years. Leitrim were from another universe. Some of their players had never hurled. The team was cobbled together. They hadn’t trained. Essentially they put out the football team and a few outsiders working in the county at the time. Tommy O’Riordan, a native of Kilmallock, was Leitrim secretary from 1953 to 1970 and largely responsible for making it happen.

After Leitrim lost to Roscommon in the minor football championship in Carrick-on-Shannon, O’Riordan entered the dressing-room. “He came in and said, ‘have any of you fellas played hurling?’” recalls Frank Brennan, who played for the Leitrim minors against Limerick. “He said they were playing Roscommon in hurling the following week.”

Brennan had moved and settled in Ballinamore but was Cavan-born and spent his early schooldays in St Pat’s, where football was the main religion. But in boarding school in Ballinafad in Mayo the high percentage of Munster students explained why hurling had equal prominence. He was exposed to the game for the first time. O’Riordan managed to assemble a team to play Roscommon and they won to qualify for the final.

They were a motley crew, Brennan acknowledges. "Mike Keane, who worked in the post office in Carrick, had played for Galway minors the previous year and was still eligible. He was in a totally different league to the rest of us. There was about half a dozen of us who had gone to various secondary schools who had played hurling. Christy Kelly had gone to Westland Row in Dublin and they were playing in the Leinster A against St Kieran’s of Kilkenny and there was a fella called (Brendan) Moran in midfield - he had been in Gormanston. In those boarding schools with fellas from all over the country, you had football one evening and hurling the next.

“We played the first game against Roscommon and beat them by a point, kinda surprised ourselves, and then Mayo in the final. We bet them 8-5 to 0-0. Five goals from Brendan Canning. He was strong but he’d be the first to say he wasn’t a great hurler. I was in the same full-forward line.”

Canning’s experience of playing for Leitrim minors illustrates where they were coming from. He was a star footballer who in 1965 played county football at minor, junior, under 21 and senior grades. His first hurling match was the Connacht minor final. “I had never played hurling, not really. I played as an under 12, there was a sergeant in town who organised a sort of street league in hurling, but that was it. Nothing after that. Ned McGowan was a taxi man at that time for the minor hurlers and I happened to be on the street here in Drumshanbo one evening, I remember it well, and the Connacht final was on in Carrick. A few of our lads were playing on the team. Ned pulled up and said, ‘will you come to Carrick? There is a hurling match on’. I sat on the bus while the others were going in to get togged and next thing Ned came back out and said, ‘we’re short’. Now this was a Connacht final. I said I had no hurl or gear but he said they needed to fill a gap. I went in and played full-forward. To make a long story short, I scored five goals. And I kicked every one of them.”

Canning’s approach was to borrow as much from football as he could and improvise. "I did not know how to play hurling. That is how silly the whole thing was. Paddy Powell came here to work from Cork. Now Paddy was a mature minor. There was an ESB station here at the time and he worked there. He was a good hurler. Paddy would be 22 or 23 at the time. You can see this was a bit of a farce.

“Any ball that came in I just dropped the hurley, because the hurley was alien to me. I caught the ball into my chest, turned round and kicked it from maybe five or six yards out.”

The Limerick game is sketchy. “We went down to Birr with a few good players, like Michael Keane, but after that we’d call most of the rest good Leitrim hurlers, which would have been poor enough. Sure we hadn’t a clue what we were facing. I remember Paddy Powell met a Christian Brother on the way in who knew him and asked ‘where do you think you are going?’ So Paddy pretended to ignore him. The Christian Brother made enquiries and sure found out straight away Paddy was overage. But he was told not to pass any remarks. We went out on the field and they just brushed us aside. I think it was 6-8 to no score at half-time and they were cruising.”

Canning confirms the story that his marker took some pity after the interval. “He did say ‘look, if you can get the ball I will let you score’. I did the usual: dropped the hurley and he never touched me. I think I scored two or three goals. Whatever we ended up with, they let us score them. We weren’t a bit disappointed. We knew we didn’t know how to play hurling. Going down to Birr that day we probably thought we could win it, and that we could be in Croke Park after this. That is as little as we knew what was going on. It was fairytale stuff.”

A dispute between the Leitrim Observer and the GAA led to a media blackout at the time. “I remember being so disappointed especially after the Mayo game, after scoring all these goals, and not a word of it anywhere on the paper.”

Canning’s marker, Donie Manning, can’t remember striking a deal with his opponent but can’t deny that it took place. “My mind is blank, I can’t even remember playing Leitrim. It’s possible that happened; I could have gone handy on him. Just to give a fella a bit of encouragement you would have done it.”

Those on the Limerick team who knew Manning say it is like something he would do. “If you knew Donie Manning,” says Eamonn Grimes, who played that day, “that is exactly what he would do. He was devil-may-care. He was the greatest caffler you ever met.”

Grimes had been on the Limerick minor team that lost the 1963 All-Ireland final to Wexford. He would suffer the same disappointment when Dublin defeated them in the final two years later. Those memories are easily recalled. But playing Leitrim? It doesn’t register. He raised it at a funeral attended by players of that era last week. “Not one person in the (funeral) queue could tell me who we played in the '65 semi-final.”

Grimes made his senior bow the following year, on the eve of his Leaving Cert, in a win over favourites Tipperary. He has no trouble recalling that day either. “I was marking Len Gaynor, Lord save us, the hardest man I ever marked in my whole life. He was only skin and bone. There was never anyone in the 16 years I played hurling like him - the toughest by a mile.”

Which was not the case, surely, when he faced Leitrim. Frank Brennan says Grimes went into low gear after the match was decided in the early stages. “They replaced a number of the team and I remember Eamonn Grimes gave us no bother at all after their big start. These fellas (subs) that came on, mother-a-Jesus, were doing us no favours. I can’t remember a whole lot of the game. Myself and Brendan Canning tended to score the goals, we were in around the edge of the square.”

Goalscoring was Sean Burke’s strength and his four against Tipperary was the talk of the Munster minor final. He was only 16 and played county minor for three years. In 1970 he won a Fitzgibbon Cup medal with Michael Keane, who played against him in the 1965 minor semi-final in Birr. Burke’s recollections of playing Leitrim are little more than their “unusual” strip. That much is true: Leitrim lined out in white shirts with green cuffs and collars.

“I looked up some scrapbooks and I have entries from the local papers in relation to the Munster final and the All-Ireland final but nothing in relation to the semi-final. There is a brief reference I came across in the account of the Munster final, that we would be going on to play Leitrim or Mayo in the semi-final fixed for August 8.”

Michael Keane is now a retired professor of economics, living in Moycullen. Of the time he moved from Portumna to work in Leitrim and switch county allegiance he has spoken little. “Maybe we all should get compensation for this and they should set up a Tribunal for abuse,” he jokes. “Leitrim minors seek redress!”

Keane came to work in the post office in Carrick-on-Shannon in the winter of 1964 after completing his Leaving Cert and sitting “some sort of Civil Service exam”.

“I met the famous Tommy O’Riordan and sure Tom thought this was a wonderful event the day I arrived - we were out on the field pucking a ball before long. We played Mayo in the Connacht final and I remember, and I am not being facetious, being out in the middle of the field sending in deliveries and thinking, if they hold it till I get in there I might be able to do something.”

The game in Birr has gone from his memory except for one detail before the game began. “We went to go on the pitch in no real order and O’Riordan got cross as hell. ‘Look it,’ he said, ‘this is important - when does a Leitrim team ever get to an All-Ireland hurling semi-final? We have to go on to this pitch with ceremony!’”

Keane insists he was not among the overage who togged for Leitrim that year. He went to work in Boyle after that and then left for England and later spent eight years in Canada. Of the day in Birr he says: “My impression was that we were not completely overrun but obviously the scoreline doesn’t say that.” Aside from the Fitzgibbon Cup win in 1970 he had little involvement in hurling afterwards.

Brendan Canning, who first played senior football for Leitrim at 16 in a game against Cavan in 1964, didn’t see his hurling career take off either. Did he ever hurl again? “I hurled in 1977. It was the senior football team here, we decided to enter the senior hurling championship. There were four teams in it. I played corner-forward, and we won the championship.” They went to Markievicz Park to play the Sligo champions in the Connacht championship and got trounced. “The goals rolled in and flew in and sure we were not at the races at all. We fulfilled the fixture and that was it.”

His forward colleague Frank Brennan recalls going for a puck around before the Limerick game and having to move from Ballinamore because there was an official present, Gerry Mahon, who might see how bad they were. “Myself and Mick McCarthy were going for a bit of hurling practice so we got on our bikes and cycled four miles to Aughawillan to play there, because we were afraid of our shite if he saw us we were not going to be let play in the semi-final. We might be on the bench.”

His relationship with hurling was short-lived. Brennan worked for a while after finishing secondary school and went to the US where he played some hurling and football in New York. He made it to Woodstock. “I think there were only two Irish fellas there. Henry McCullough, who played with Joe Cocker, and myself.”

He returned to Ireland, took a degree course at UCD and eventually set up a tax consultancy business. In 1973, not long home from the US, he went to Croke Park in the rain to see Eamonn Grimes walk up the steps and collect the MacCarthy Cup.

For the Leitrim minors of 50 years ago their summer was as fleeting as it was surreal. After they won the Connacht final Brennan was part of a gang that went to a dance to celebrate in Carrigallen. “I remember Tommy O’Riordan or someone saying to Christy Kelly, who had a nick over the eye, that it would enhance his appearance and make him more macho looking.”

As a chat-up line it might have worked in Limerick. In Leitrim it was anyone’s guess how a girl might react.

Sunday Indo Sport

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I have no interest in debating S&C with Kev and I’d doubt @theLockes does either

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Well Leitrim has one all star in football and limerick has none

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Good point Clement

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And a provincial title in living memory

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Upleitrim has the Limerick boys in his sights :clap:

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Limerick is a hurling county.

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I thought it was rugby country

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You thought.

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That’s not my problem. Sure you probably think the world is flat as well.

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Correct me if i’m wrong, mate. But are Limerick not reigning club and minor Munster Hurling champions ? Have our seniors not cemented their position as a top 4 side with 2 semi-final appearances in the senior championship in 2 years? Our camogie gals are even AI champions too… When was the last time a Limerick team won the AIL thing? Himself above, @Fran[/USER] and [USER=1537]@Horsebox are hardly pointing to the fact Munster play their games in Limerick as an indication this is a rugby country? Most of that crowd are made up of Tipp/Kerry roasters and a load of middle class Cork cunts. How many Limerick lads play for them, 2/3?

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Well played @upleitrim . You have Choco at stage 4.

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Are you new around here??? I’m a constant stage 4 you fucktard.