Part 2 of fascinating series
IN THE SECOND IN A SERIES OF ARTICLES WHICH WEXFORD HURLING LEGEND NICKEY RACKARD WROTE FOR THE SUNDAY PRESS IN 1975, HE RECALLED HIS STUDENT DAYS IN DUBLIN, HIS PASSIONATE INVOLVEMENT IN SPORT, THE GREAT SPORTING FIGURES HE MET ALONG THE WAY, AND HOW HIS DRINKING FINALLY BEGAN TO CATCH UP WITH HIM
This article first appeared in the Sunday Press on September 14, 1975
THE years I spent in the Veterinary College in Dublin were happy years. Students, then as now, were a bit wild and carefree, and I must confess that I spent too many years in the college – just over eight – for I was a chronic student.
Mind you, I wasn’t the worst. Though the average student qualified after five years, and it took me three and a half years more to make it, there is one vet, much respected today, who set an all-time record. Twenty years. Talk about the character in ‘Doctor in the House’.
It wasn’t that I was thick. I was reasonably good at the books, but there was so much to do in Dublin, and I was so wrapped up in sport of all kinds that I simply didn’t have time to settle down and study. It wasn’t until my father began to put in the boot that I finally got down to serious work and got my exams.
Dublin was a grand city in the war time. True there were some scarcities, but they didn’t really hurt much. Good digs could be had for thirty bob a week, and my mother, God rest her, sent me ten shillings every second Saturday for my pocket money. I was able to augment that to meet my needs because of my prowess at hurling, and in any event, we didn’t need much money.
I had good digs. Though I didn’t agree with the Ban, I observed it, except for playing different games with the college teams, yet I always believed in outdoor sport, and in the digs with me was a fair cross-section of the major sports in Ireland.
Dramatic
There was Weeshie J. Murphy, the Cork county full back, to represent Gaelic Games with me. There were Paddy Coad, Jim Clarke and Bob Bryson, the Shamrock Rovers soccer stars. There was rugby player Jimmy O’Rourke of Bective Rangers and the Wexford footballer Jackie Culleton, and many the night we held a sports forum between us. We Gaelic men were as interested in the weekend results of the soccer men and Jimmy O’ Rourke’s team, as they were in our fortunes. Between us, there was no Ban.
In fact, in 1956, when Wexford won the All-Ireland for the second time, I was delighted to see my old fellow boarder, Paddy Coad’s team, Shamrock Rovers, win the F.A.I. Cup Final in as dramatic a finish as ever happened. Rovers were being beaten 2-1 by Cork Athletic with 13 minutes to go, and yet they won the Cup by 3-2.
That was in April, and in the following month, Paddy was equally delighted that Wexford won the National League Final. That was some game, as dramatic as was the Rovers’ win. For us in Wexford, we had the satisfaction of beating Tipp, the county that had stopped our gallop too many times in the past.
With a strong wind behind them, Tipp got their tails up early and were romping away with the game when the half time whistle blew. They led us 2-11 to 0-2 as we went off the field and it looked like the ‘the blinds is down, Joxer’, for Wexford, particularly as Jim English had got a head injury and gone off.
Padge Kehoe came on for him. Padraig Puirseal, of The Irish Press, tells a good tale about that game.
For a fortnight before the match, the Irish Press had been running a series about Wexford, with Nick Rackard as the main figure, written by Padraig. He relates the story:
‘When they came out for the second half, I saw Bobby Rackard pulling the cap down over his eyes and looking up at the scoreboard when a huge grin broke over his face. After the game, I asked him why the grin when the cold figures showed that Wexford were 15 points behind. ‘I was thinking that your series was looking pretty sick at that particular time’.
Well, by the time the game finishes, Bobby had good cause to grin. For the incredible happened. We beat Tipp. And we beat them well, by four points.
Nick O’Donnell, Arty Foley, Bobby and Padge Kehoe were superb. The rest of the Wexford players also played like demons, and I contributed my share with
Since the drinking wasn’t affecting me, I didn’t know or want to know that I had a problem. I continued playing hurling and football for the province and the county and in 1950, I played in both Railway Cup finals for Leinster. But that time my drink problem was catching up on me
two goals and a point, one of them, the winning goal. I got the point from a free, and when I got a second free, I was steadying myself up so much, determined to get a score that I overdid it. The ball dropped short, but Tom Dixon dashed in from nowhere to smash in a goal.
Extra time
Because we were brothers, the three Rackards came in for a fair bit of publicity, but in fact, the three Rackard brothers played for the first time together on a team in 1940. Jimmy and I were already on the Rathnure team and Bobby, then only 12, came on as a sub in a final.
All Irelands notwithstanding, I think that it was in 1940 I took part in one of the greatest games
I ever played in.
It was on March 3, at Kilkenny, the Colleges inter-pro final between Leinster and Munster. Con Murphy, Harry Goldsboro and Din Jo Buckley, were the backbone of the Munster team, which led 4-4 to 1-3 into the last quarter. Then Tommy Maher and Eamonn Young on our side took command, and we fought back to equalise 3-7 to 4-4 by the final whistle.
We played 20 minutes a side extra time, and Leinster ran out very easy winners, 6-11 to 4-4! From the 44th minute, we scored five goals and eight points without reply.
Eamonn Young was a fine hurler, and though it was at football, he made his name with his native county, I think
Cork made a big mistake in not picking him for the hurling team. I know there was no man I’d rather have in my team in either code.
That year, too, I played for Wexford against Cork in the All Ireland junior final at Wexford, and I was terrible.
Though I had crowded around the master’s wireless set ever since I can remember to hear the broadcasts of the All Ireland finals, and had played in Croke Park in 1938, it wasn’t until 1939, in the month the war broke out, that I saw my first All Ireland.
With my black and amber paper hat pulped by the lashing rain and inadequate protection against the thunder and lightning storm in which the match was played, I ignored the elements and cheered myself hoarse as my favourites, Kilkenny, beat Cork. Jimmy Kelly scored the winner that day, and former Taoiseach Jack Lynch missed a goal from a close free which would have given victory to Cork.
With my brothers Bobby and Billy, I was making the county team, while in Dublin there was great demand for county players for the clubs. Two great rival clubs were Sean McDermotts and Young Irelands, both of whom numbered amongst their supporters publicans and other men of substance. I joined Young Irelands.
I elected for them mainly because their captain, Tommy Treacy, the veteran star of Tipperary,
had long been one of my idols, and I felt privileged to play in the same team with him. In 1943, we beat UCD in the senior championship final.
They had a great team, including Dick Stokes and Jim McCarthy of Limerick, Ned Daly and Mick Feeney of Waterford, and Eamonn O’Boyle of Westmeath, but we won.
It was about this time, I became a heavy drinker. After the matches, we’d go to the pub owned by a supporter of Young Irelands, and we’d drink free there until the small hours, Nick Rackard being foremost among the drinkers.
Often, too, knowing I was a penniless student, the publican would slip me a pound or two which I took and never looked on it as a breach of my amateur status.
Drinking didn’t affect me much at the time, because I was a fit young fellow. I was playing football and hurling both in the college and outside. In fact, three of my colleagues on the Vets College team, which we entered in the Dublin Senior Football League, were Jackie Lyne of Kerry, Weeshie Murphy of Cork and Paddy Smith of Cavan.
I was boxing for the college as well, running and trying my feet at the long jump. One all-sports trip to England with the students stands out in my memory to this day.
We left on the Thursday. I boxed on the Friday night, played a rugby match on the Saturday morning, went to Twickenham for the England-Ireland international that afternoon, got the train and boat home that night, arriving in Dublin early on Sunday morning, and set off for Northern Ireland to play in a county match on the Sunday afternoon.
So, since the drinking wasn’t affecting me, I didn’t know or want to know that I had a problem. I continued playing hurling and football for the province and the county and in 1950, I played in both Railway Cup finals for Leinster in Croke Park, at full forward in both hurling and football.
But that time my drink problem was catching up on me. I had qualified in 1949 and set up practice in my home county and was doing quite well.
And I’ll take a jump in time, to Easter Saturday, 1953, when something happened, which had a profound effect on me, and should have made me change my way of life - but didn’t.
I was at a point-to-point meeting and got a phone call to get to Killanne as soon as as I could. Bobby was seriously ill. When I arrived I could see that he was very sick and after some hours I went home. Then on the Tuesday, I got another urgent message to come at once. Bobby had collapsed.
Miraculous
Bobby, the brother to whom I was probably most attached, had a brain haemorrhage. I mentioned earlier that he had got a toss off a horse when he was a kid and whether that was the cause, or whether a blow over the nose he had got in a game some weeks earlier, brought on the haemorrhage, didn’t matter.
What did matter was that he was dying. The local doctor, after some days, told us there was no hope. Frantic, we called a top specialist from Dublin. He could do nothing for Bobby, only confirm the local man’s opinion, the haemorrhage was fatal.
The priest came to console the family and pray for the patient. We had almost come to accept that Bobby wouldn’t live another week. Believe it or not, it is perfectly true, no sooner had the priest finished his prayers and left the house than Bobby began to show signs of recovery.
Soon, he was on the mend, and though it was twelve months before he was fully fit again, he was back playing hurling three months after that. It was some years afterwards that an accident on the farm damaged a leg and he had to retire from hurling.
Bobby’s miraculous cure should have had an effect on me. But in my younger days I was wild and would go anywhere for drink and as they say in Irish, ag ragairne. It was just that I didn’t think, didn’t consider anyone, or any consequences, and continued on what I regarded as my merry way until after piling up a few cars while I was drunk, I took the pledge in a casual sort of way after the death of a dear friend of mine, a priest.
I kept the pledge for five years and then, on the All Ireland trip to New York in 1957, I took a few beers and my disease took over and led me to a hell on earth.
NEXT WEEK: Nickey tells of his trip to New York, a trip that was to be a turning point in his life. After keeping the pledge for five years, he gradually slips back into his old drinking habits and ends up in hospital. Finally, a chance meeting with an alcoholic sets him on the road to recovery