PROUD CLUB READY

“FOR me it was great to have a nephew and a grand-nephew, and to have a son and a grandson all playing for Glenealy at the same time.” Sheila Driver.

When you think of Glenealy, you think of hurling. The people themselves may look at it differently but from the outside one is synonymous with the other.

They have broken new ground for Wicklow hurling in reaching a Leinster final this weekend and ahead of that massive game in Nowlan Park it was decided to speak with three members of the club and hear their stories of being involved with Glenealy GAA. Hopefully it will twig a few memories for Glenealy people in the build-up to Saturday’s final and is something they can be proud of.

What was their first memory of Glenealy GAA?

Tommy Glynn is father to Thomas, Mickaella, Enan and Leighton and has a Minor medal and two Senior medals from his days playing for Glenealy. He won the Minor medal 1964 while he won Senior medals in 1975 and 1986. His brother John captained the Senior successes. Off the field of play he has done everything for the club except drive the bus to a match!

“My first memory was the three in a row team of the ‘50s. It was knock out back then in the championship, no back door, but I don’t think they won any other matches in that time bar the championship matches. We would have had a lot of lads in England at the time and they would have come home on Saturday, played the match on Sunday and gone back to London on Sunday night.”

Sheila Driver is mother to seven, six sons and a daughter Valerie, all of whom played for the club and five of her sons played for the county. She only played one game of camogie but it hasn’t stopped her from training most juveniles from the village throughout the years and is the current Juveniles secretary.

“My first memory was the same as Tommy’s, the three-in-a-row team. The first thing that came into my mind was Sean Kennedy, he had a shop in the village. I remember Bob Douglas, PJ Bourke, Malachy Byrne and all of those lads.”

Pat Staunton is Danny’s father, this year’s captain, and grand uncle to Cian Staunton. Injury prevented him on the field but he has served on the club committee in numerous roles and is currently the Chairperson of the Development Committee.

“I was born in Glenealy and raised outside Ballaghaderreen, Roscommon, but my first involvement would have been in in 1978. I was involved with the Minor team that won the championship, Tom Byrne would have been captain. We beat Avoca.

“I was involved with the under-21 team in 1982, I was the manager of that team. The only under-21 the club has won. And then I would have been involved with the Minor team here three years ago. There are a good lot of those lads playing now.

“We beat Bray. We only took one championship off them, they won eight. That broke the cycle of Bray continually winning, we built on that then. We won under-16 two years before. A lot of those lads are the backbone of the team now. ”

Glenealy GAA was founded in 1885 and while they are the second most successful team on the Roll of Honour, 10 of their 15 titles have come in the last 21 years. It was 72 years into their existence, in 1957, when Glenealy first won a county championship. They went on to win the following two years, 1958 and 1959, before enduring another barren spell.

Emigration during the 1960s robbed them of star players, the secretary left 11 players to the train in one year with a fiver each, and for a time Glenealy folded before amalgamating with Barndarrig to field a team. They were back to winning ways in 1975, the first time Arklow Rocks were beaten in a final, and again in 1986. Sheila’s son Joey has a medal from back that year and Pat was Chairman of the club.

Their success 10 years later, in ‘96, introduced a few Glenealy players to a cup they grew to know so well.

In the 2000s the rivalry between Carnew and Glenealy intensified as the teams shared the championship every year between 2002 and 2013, Glenealy winning eight to Carnew’s five. They matched Carnew’s four-in-a-row between 2010 and 2013, only losing by a point to Bray Emmets in 2014 for a famous five-in-a-row.

THE BEGINNING

The first county success came in 1957 with the club almost three quarters of a century in existence, to put it bluntly, what was happening in the club before that?

Tommy: “They never won anything at county level, they would have won things at East District level. We got to some junior East finals, we won a few. Our first county final was in football, we were beaten by a point by Ballinacor in a Junior football final. In 1932 we got to our first hurling final, and again we were beaten by a point by Tomacork, who would have been Carnew.”

Tommy went on to remember the three in a row team from 1957