Childhood arrival served Seniors for a ten-year period

IHOPE the look back at non-Wexford natives assisting the county in football has stirred some memories in recent weeks. Certain players will be remembered with more clarity than others, but I have huge admiration for anyone deemed good enough to pull on a county Senior jersey, whether for just one game or for a hundred and more.

The columns only dealt with the years from 1964 onwards, and the focus was on adults who arrived in our midst for work purposes and went on to don the purple and gold.

However, I need to mention a few more people, who didn’t strictly fit into that rigid definition.

Firstly, I am aware that Diarmuid Kinsella was born in Laois, but his case is slightly different because he arrived in Gorey as a child.

I can remember him playing under-age football with Naomh Eanna before a later move to Castletown, and then St. Sylvester’s in Dublin.

He was drafted in to the Senior football squad immediately after featuring in the drawn and replayed Leinster Minor finals of 1999.

Diarmuid went on to represent the county 64 times in the top grade, from his debut in an O’Byrne Cup game against Kilkenny in Horeswood on January 9, 2000, all the way up to 2010.

As an aside, that match against our lowly neighbours more than 20 years ago will be remembered chiefly for the appearance with the opposition of D.J. Carey. He was asked to play as a once-off by their Chairman at the time, Ned Quinn, in a bid to give the sport an early-season boost in a generally disinterested county.

The case of Colin Furlong is also a little bit different. The son of Mary and Jimmy (the 1968 All-Ireland medal winner from Adamstown) spent a lot of his ‘growing up’ years in Wicklow town and would have first shot to prominence with the local St. Patrick’s outfit.

However, when the family purchased the Camolin Tavern, Colin moved to the club carrying the same name in his new parish.

He had four successive years with the county Junior team, from 1995 to ’98, and he also assisted the Seniors in 1996.

He had joined O’Loughlin Gaels by 1997, after work as a garda brought him to Kilkenny city, and he went on to show his prowess as a club hurler of some renown amidst a galaxy of All-Ireland winners.

Indeed, more than one former star referenced him as being a particularly tough opponent in their autobiographies.

Stephen Murphy will be remembered more so for his contribution to hurling in Wexford, but he did also play with the Junior footballers against Cavan (who were in Leinster at the time) in 2014.

He assisted St. Martin’s after arriving to teach in the county, following a long association with Kilruane MacDonagh’s and Tipperary.

However, he was always proud of his Wexford roots, and the fact that his father, Pat, had donned the maroon jersey of the men from Piercestown and Murrintown many years before him.

If I was to look backwards from 1964 to the foundation of the G.A.A., I would come up with a vast array of additional names.

In those days, if a footballer had cause to move to another county to work, then they immediately linked up with their team, given that travelling back and forth wasn’t nearly as straightforward as it is nowadays - if normal circumstances prevailed at present, of course.

From my own club (Sarsfields) alone, I can think of the likes of Dubliner Joe Smith (1937 to 1940), Jim Fox from Kildare (1936), along with Kerry duo Mick Brosnan (1932 to 1935) and Jonathan Moriarty (1934 to 1940), who were all Wexford football stalwarts.

Carlow’s Jim Byrne, after whom the county’s long-standing Minor football league is named, was one of the most prominent ‘outsiders’ during the golden era of Wexford football.

Paddy Mackey from Kilkenny also made a rich contribution in that period, while Westmeath man Fergus Coughlan - who played club football both in Castlebridge and Taghmon - featured prominently in the late 1920s.

Others that spring readily to mind include Paddy Kilroy (Monaghan), Jim Rogers (Wicklow), Dan Spillane (Kerry), Tim Bailey (Kerry) and Freddie Cudlipp (Galway).

However, I must stress that these pre-1964 names are off the top of my head, as access to my usual main source of research is considerably limited at present for obvious reasons.