Fate gifted Rosslare a
John Bradley looks back on four happy y
THE TROUBLING times we are living through right now serve as a timely reminder that our destiny isn’t always in our own hands.
Sometimes fate may intervene in ways we cannot control, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
And in the case of John Bradley, a couple of twists that certainly weren’t pre-ordained on his part resulted in a move to Rosslare Harbour in the mid-1960s that had a profound influence on his life.
I outlined the impressive playing career in Wexford of this affable Donegal man in last week’s edition, but unfortunately I had been unable to make contact with him beforehand.
Happily, I had the pleasure of chatting with him over the phone in his Stranorlar home for half an hour last Friday, with the pleasant memories flooding back as John recalled ‘four of the best years of my life’ spent in a welcoming spot far from his native shore between 1965 and 1968.
John was born and bred in Muff, Co. Donegal, a small village on the Inishowen peninsula just eleven kilometres from Derry city.
That requires an explanation on my behalf, because last week I incorrectly said he hailed from Lifford, which is 35 minutes’ drive from his homeplace, on the border with Strabane in Tyrone.
My confusion arose from the caption in ‘The People’ in early 1968, underneath a photograph of his wedding to Rita Doyle from Ballygillane, Kilrane.
It stated John was from ‘Muff, Lifford’, but I knew the two places were 40 kilometres apart from my own journeys to Donegal – either travelling through Muff en route to my brother-in-law’s home village of Greencastle, or passing Lifford on the way to cover Wexford F.C. matches in Ballybofey.
It turns out that, in one of those quirks of the postal system, ‘Muff, Lifford’ is the correct address despite the distance between them, but John pointed out that I wasn’t the only one thrown by this fact.
‘When I worked in customs in Lifford, many a lorry driver pulled in to us thinking their trip was over, only to learn they had maybe another hour to travel to get to Muff, Greencastle, or some other place on the peninsula,’ he explained.
John’s love for Gaelic football was developed when he attended a Christian Brothers school in Derry city, and his potential was evident when he was selected for the Donegal Minors in 1963.
While championship success eluded them, they did retain their Ulster league title with a 3-6 to 2-4 win over Down in Ballinascreen, Co. Derry, on June 23 of that year.
John lined out at right corner-forward, and it’s interesting to note that he was playing his club football at the time with Carndonagh – the current abode and workplace of St. Martin’s goalkeeper Luke White, whose league-winning exploits with the Donegal hurlers were highlighted in this newspaper a fortnight ago.
‘Later that year, just after turning 18, I went to London to find work,’ he explained. ‘I was there for a couple of years and I joined the Tir Chonaill Gaels club.’
It was at this point that our old friend – fate – intervened for the first time. ‘My mother didn’t want me over there, she was anxious for me to come home,’ he recalled.
‘She happened to see an advert in the “Irish Press” for the recruitment of customs officers. It would have been the first time since the Civil War that they were looking for a large intake of new people.
‘A lot of the original recruits [in 1923] would have been coming up on retirement age, so new blood was needed,’ John added.
‘I came back for an interview in Dublin and was successful, and then I had to learn the ropes in a school down there.’
And after getting a thorough grounding in his new occupation, the next big question was: where would he be posted?
It was time for fate to play its part once more. ‘We came in to an office and there was a brown envelope for everyone. We had to open it to see where we were being sent, and Rosslare was on my piece of paper,’ John said.
Not surprisingly, this youngster from the opposite end of the country had never set foot in the place before, and knew nobody from Wexford.
However, the warmth of the welcome is something he will never forget, and he remains thankful for it some 55 years down the line.
‘I moved in to Mick and Molly Farrell’s lodging house, a fantastic place and fantastic people,’ he recalled.
‘From day one I could see that Wexford as a county had a great sporting background, and the people were really into it.’
And as a means of settling in, there was no better way than joining the local St. Mary’s (Rosslare) club. ‘It helped that Mick Farrell was very involved himself, and it was mainly thanks to him and to Timmy O’Connor that I started playing with them,’ John noted.
And while the Mary’s were a struggling Junior team in Wexford District at the time, the decision to unite with St. Martin’s for year two of the newly-introduced Under-21 championship in 1965 had far-reaching consequences.
‘We went together and did very well,’ John said, so well in fact that the county title was captured, and then retained in 1966.
John’s performances put him in the shop window in terms of county selection, and it led to a period from July, 1965, to April, 1968, when he represented Wexford in 24 competitive matches across the Under-21,
Junior and Senior grades.
‘I had played a lot of football to a reasonably high standard in Donegal and London, and I must say that I was surprised at how good the quality was when I arrived in Wexford,’ he said.
Among the team-mates he can remember from those Under-21 teams were future All-Ireland Senior hurling medal winner Vinny Staples, and Rosslare clubman Brendan Walsh who went on to represent the county in Junior and Senior football in 1970.
John noted that his wedding reception in 1968 was held in the hotel run at the time by the father of another one of his colleagues, Liam Griffin.
And although Matt Wickham was only 15 when he shared in that second Under-21 success in 1966, he was quickly blossoming into a forward of quality, winner of a Leinster Minor medal three years later.
John also recalled another Rosslare clubman, Paddy Roche, who was county Secretary at the time, and he had a lot of respect for the county Chairman, Seán Browne, although he saw both sides of the long-serving Enniscorthy official’s temperament.
John’s second Senior game – on November 7, 1965 – was a shock 1-9 to 0-10 league loss to Kilkenny in Nowlan Park, and Seán wasn’t shy about telling the players what he thought of them in the dressing-room afterwards. ‘He gave us a right rollicking,’ he recalled with a laugh.
In July of the following year, there was a much happier occurrence, one that still fills John with pride all these years later.
‘We had won the club Under-21 title, and we were playing Carlow in the championship.
‘Seán approached me with the papers for the referee and told me I was appointed captain. It was such a wonderful feeling, an absolute honour.’
John’s Senior career included a couple of league outings in Croke Park against Kildare and Dublin, as well as two Leinster championship appearances in 1967 and ’68.
That win over the Lilywhites, by 4-6 to 0-9 in a Division 3 happiest memory of p although the Dubs did decider a fortnight la lost by 4-12 to 0-6.
Recalling some of h had special praise fo from Ballyhogue who well as one-time Le