Spirit of Croke to inspire Charleville hurlers at Croker
WHEN Charleville’s intermediate hurlers run on to Croke Park on this Sunday they will be playing in a stadium bearing the name of their fellow North Cork man, Archbishop Thomas W. Croke, who was also closely associated with Charleville in his boyhood days and as a young curate.
Born in Kilbrin in 1823, the young Croke spent the majority of his boyhood in Charleville, where his widowed mother, Isabella, and her family were brought by the then parish priest of Charleville, Rev. Fr. Thomas Croke, in 1834. He attended the Endowed Classical School in Charleville for five years, where he was a diligent pupil and also excelled at sport, particularly hurling and handball.
He was then sent to the Irish Colleges in Parish and Rome to study for the priesthood, in the footsteps of his elder brother, William. After a glittering academic career, the future archbishop was ordained in Rome in 1846.
After a period as Rhetorical Professor at St. Patrick’s College Carlow, he returned to the Irish College in Paris, from where he was recalled, at the request of his uncle, to become curate in Charleville to replace his brother, Fr. William Croke, who had died of Famine Fever in 1848. Fr. William is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, and a few years later, when she died, his mother Isabella was laid to rest beside him.
Archbishop Croke was appointed to the diocese of Cashel and Emly in 1875, and when the GAA was founded in 1884 he was invited to become its first patron. He accepted and his letter of acceptance has become the Charter of the GAA, and their new field in Jones’s Road, Dublin was named in his memory.
So, the local hurlers will have a 16th man urging them on to create a further bit of history for their native town and for Cork county, with a victory in the intermediate All-Ireland final over their Connaught rivals Oranmore-Maree on this Sunday.