Rathnure goalie has a 25-year record
April 1979
Twenty-five years without missing a practice, tournament, or championship game for his club. That is the proud and probably unique record of Mickey Foley, the 39-year-old Rathnure goalkeeper, who began yet another competitive season on Sunday by manning the goal against Kilkenny champions, Ballyhale Shamrocks, in the New Ross Waterford Glass tournament.
And judging by the way he performed in the encounter, he will be minding the goal for Rathnure for quite a few seasons to come yet.
In between saving two semi-penalties, effecting numerous other top-class saves and exhorting members of his defensive sextet when to go and come, Mickey found time to tell me he made his debut as a juvenile in 1954 when he was fourteen years of age. He played minor in 1956 and graduated to the senior team in 1960.
Since then he has not been replaced in the Rathnure goal and he has picked up seven county senior hurling titles, three Leinster club championship medals, three All-Ireland club championship runner-up medals, and two All-Ireland seven-a-side titles, not to mention numerous tournament successes.
He is as agile and alert today as he was when he made his senior debut nineteen years ago and he is looking forward to another successful season with Rathnure, who matched the Leinster champions for fifty-five minutes on Sunday. ‘I never played for the county team only when they were stuck,’ he commented as I left the goal area, just before he snatched another ball from under the crossbar and cleared it to safety.
For fifty-eight minutes he defeated the best efforts of the Shamrocks to get through for a goal and he was on his knees after another spectacular block when Holden tapped home from close range, two minutes from the end. Then as Shamrocks players swarmed all over tired Rathnure men, Brendan Fennelly sought another goal from point blank range, but Mickey was equal to it and deflected a rasper over the bar.
Not many players have managed to stay active for twenty-five years, and I doubt if there is anyone who has not missed a match for his club in a career spanning a quarter of a century. Well done, Mickey Foley, and long may you continue to keep your net intact.
Note: Foley continued to play for almost another 20 years, before finally retiring after lining out in a Junior ‘B’ match in 1997, at the age of 57 years.