TO MAKE HISTORY!
to 1959 and the players involved.
“Sean Kennedy, for me, was the best hurler I’d ever seen. A Tipperary man, he married into the village. He always had a saying: ‘It’s not every hour you spend in the park, it’s every minute you spend in the park’.
“He played with Dublin in an All-Ireland senior final, Cork beat them in 1952. He won a Leinster hurling medal with Dublin. He scored 2-02 against the great Bobby Rackard of Wexford when
Tommy:
Wexford were the team in Leinster at the time.
“He won a Leinster senior medal with Dublin, he won a Leinster Junior championship with Wicklow in ’67 and he won a Leinster minor championship the same year as the senior one. He’s still alive.
“I remember when he first came into the park with the team. He was a different style.
“Pat Doyle and myself, we sat on the palm tree looking at him coming in. We were watching them playing a game of backs and forwards. Bob Douglas was playing centre back but there wasn’t a whole lot going on for ten minutes.
“We had heard about this Sean Kennedy and Pat and myself were kind of saying there wasn’t a whole lot there. And then Bob gave him a bit of a sneaky one and Bob never saw the ball after that. Kennedy won every ball no matter what way it came in.”
In 1960, Glenealy got to the semi-final against Avondale in Ashford and were winning by two points in injury time. A shot was going over the bar but the Glenealy goalkeeper, Lorcan Staines, jumped up to try and stop it. He batted it down and hit one of the Avondale forwards, who had turned around thinking the ball was over the bar, on his heel and went into the goal. The referee blew the whistle when the ball was pucked out. diate. The club went in search of a trainer and Tommy’s brotherin-law, former Mountjoy Prison Governor John Lonergan, was approached. While the club was at a low ebb, the 1982 under-21 winning team pointed towards a bright future.
“I trained under Dermot Earley with the county football team but he was nothing compared to what Lonergan did.”
“He was a serious trainer.” The 90s and the success since
“I think it started from the juveniles, because if you don’t have a good juvenile set up you won’t have a good Senior one. All of mine started as juveniles, my eldest lad was only six when he played under-12. His first match for the county was when he was 12, he was playing in the goal.
“I remember my brother and my brother-in-law going to Wexford and waited for two years for them to cut out a hurl for him.
“All of my children started as juveniles and then went all the way up. A lot of them were related, the O’Gormans, the Snells, the Drivers and the O’Neills, they’re all the one. They’re all cousins.
“I was just looking at a programme before we came out from 2010, there was a photograph of Flash and Bosco Jnr and Matthew in it, there were three generations on it.”
Did they always know that the likes of Bosco and the likes of Joey and the likes of Leighton and Enan were so good from the start?
Sheila: “Leighton was always brilliant. In that Minor team in the ‘90s, the no-hopers as we called it, when Leighton came on and Wayne and Nigel and a few others, with a few minutes to go we were losing by eight points or 10 points and we turned it around and won by eight points.
“Nigel was good, Wayne was good. They were a good group. If half your panel is outstanding and the other half are good you’re going to have a great team.
“The Minor final (a year after their success) was the first time they were ever bet from under-10.”
“That Minor team would have been the catalyst I think. I would say 14 or 15 of them went on to win Senior on the field of play. That was a special group of players.
“I’m a little disappointed that we could have won seven or eight in a row. We won two, and then Carnew beat us by a point in 2009. We won four and then we were beaten by a point going for five in a row in a game we should have won.”
Tommy: Pat: Sheila: Tommy:
asked if I could train the team. Jack Hollingsworth, another great man, he asked me if he could restart the team would I get involved. We had a do in Rathnew one year, I think we won something like 100 trophies in 15 years. Underage championships, leagues, shields, we won five senior championships.
“In ’91 we won the Leinster club championship, we beat Drumcullen here in Glenealy. We played Rathnure in a practice match and went out and beat them by 11 points.”
“Within the county Avoca were the big opposition, they were good.”
“We’ve actually won 20 Senior camogie championships along with the 15 hurling, we’ve brought 35 Senior championships to Glenealy.”
Pat: Tommy: