Culloty: ‘He was a

A fellow Legion man, a Kerry football team mate and a neighbour Johnny Culloty remembers his time with his dear friend Weeshie Fogarty

IT’S hard to say a lot more about Weeshie than has already been said, but for me as an organiser he was a man ahead of his time.

I started in St Finian’s Hospital a few years before Weeshie started working there and there were so many working there after an influx around 1956 that St Finians actually entered the O’Donoghue Cup in East Kerry, which meant you were playing with them there for that competition but also for Legion when it came to the County Championship.

Weeshie played wing-back on our team that won the O’Donoghue Cup in 1967, but I suppose it is more as a goalkeeper he is known for as a player. He was what you might described as a ‘sub-goalkeeper’ before there ever was such a term because if the main Kerry goalkeeper got injured or was unavailable Weeshie would nearly always have been the next in line to play there.

He was a great shot-stopper as a goalkeeper, but kick-outs wouldn’t be the same as what they are now as normally one of the defenders would be expected to take it. Unfortunately, there were no All-Ireland medals for people in Weeshie’s position back then as there is now. If there were then he would have quite the collection of them now!

With East Kerry obviously, we were both on the team that won the Munster Club Championship and the first All-Ireland Club then in 1970 and we ended up winning a Junior East Kerry League together with Legion in 1976 when our playing days came to a close.

He played in six County Finals and ended up winning four of them, which was a fair achievement for the competition at the time with the standard that was out there. He was also a selector on the 1976 Legion team that won the O’Donoghue Cup and just to show how much ahead of his time he was he organised floodlit training before there was ever such a thing by using public lighting on the road for sessions!

Around that time too he got going what you might say were the first ever ‘Ladies Committees’ where Bazaars and other events would be organised and for me the finance from those events were a big part in Legion securing the finance for the purchase of a field for the club.

He was someone well able to fall in at anything he was asked to get involved in. The ‘Legion of Memories’ book was a massive project he was involved in and I remember him as a basketballer as much as I do a footballer.

The standard of basketball was quite high at the time and great to watch and Weeshie played at county level with distinction. It was a great sport to play over the winter when there was no Football and he was very much a true sportsman in that he loved taking part in all that he could.

He loved snooker and billiards as well and I remember the fondness he had for playing both of them with his brother Genie. He loved the ‘Tops of the Town’ competitions as well and really enjoyed